INSTABILITY

PERFECT stability has ceased from the world since the day when Adam fell. He was stable enough when in the garden, he was obedient to his Master’s will, but when he ate of the forbidden fruit he did not only slide, himself, but he shook the standing places of all his posterity! Perfect stability belongs alone to God. He alone, of all beings, is without variableness or shadow of a turning. He is Immutable, He will not change! He is all-wise, He need not change. He is perfect. He cannot change. But men, the best of them are mutable and, therefore, to a degree they are unstable and do not excel. Yet it is remark- able that although man has lost perfect stability, he has not lost the admiration of it! Perhaps there is no virtue, or, rather, no compound of virtues which the world more esteems than stability of mind. You will find that although men have often misplaced their praise and have called those great who are not great, those moral who are far below the level of morality, yet they have scarcely ever called a man great who has not been consistent and who has not had strength of mind enough to be stable in his principles. I know not how it is, but so it is—whenever a man is firm and consistent—we always admire him for it. Though we feel certain that he is wrong, yet his consistency in his wrong still excites our admiration. We have known men whom we have thought to be insane—they have conceived a design so ridiculous that we could only laugh at them and despise their idea. But they have stuck to it and we have said, “Well, there is nothing like a man standing to a thing.” And we have even admired the senseless, brain- less idiot, as we have thought him so, when we have seen him stubbornly insisting that his idea would at last triumph and persevering in futile endeavors to realize his wish.