30 April: Boreham on Hammer and Nails

Hammer and Nails
In certain villages of East Anglia, the last day of April was always put aside for odd jobs and miscellaneous repairs. The record is suggestive. For the one who takes the trouble to analyse the universe in which they live will discover that it consists of four classes of things—four and no more. There are the things that never get out of repair; there are the things that, given a fair chance, will repair themselves; there are the things that are incapable of repair; and there are the things that will rapidly go from bad to worse unless somebody undertakes to repair them. As to the first class, the minds of thoughtful men have, since the world began, been filled with wonder at the contemplation of those things—the biggest things of all—that never get out of repair. The masterly mechanism of the universe—the rising and the setting of the sun; the phases of the moon; the persistence in their orbits of the stars; the revolution of the earth; the cycle of the seasons; the round of the year; the exact adjustment of sunshine to rainfall, of heat to cold and of storm to calm—all this machinery, which must of necessity be extremely complicated, keeps in perfect repair, year in and year out, age after age. It is never overhauled and never lubricated. If a bolt flew out or a crank got jammed, it would be the end of all of us. There are no engineers, on this planet or on any other, capable of effecting such repairs if the need arose.

The phenomena of the second division are no less marvellous—the things that repair themselves. The most sensational revolution effected in medical and surgical science during the nineteenth century was the revolution led by Lord Lister and Louis Pasteur. As a result, the surgeon now knows that it is not in his power to heal a wound. The wound must heal itself. The surgeon's duty is to render it so clean from foreign substances and so immune from malignant bacteria, that the injured limb is able to bring about its own restoration. The same is true of disorders of another kind. In cases for which, a generation or two ago, the doctor would have prescribed a plethora of drugs, he now orders his patient away for a change. He recognises that it is not in the power of any physician to repair damaged tissues and shattered nerves. Nature must be given her superb opportunity.

The Pathos Of Cracked Vases And Fallen Idols
Of life's irreparable things—the things of the third category—there is little to be said. The philosophers will tell us that such calamities must be regarded stoically. Why weep, they ask, over spilt milk? This morsel of sophistry sounds well; but if tears are not to be shed over the things that are broken, and that cannot be mended, one wonders why tears were ever invented. When there is a crash in the kitchen, there is nothing for it but to sweep up the pieces; but it is by no means exhilarating work. The housewife has never yet been born who could gaze with perfectly dry eyes on the scattered fragments of her choicest china.

One has but to call to mind the Hon. John Collier's famous painting, "The Fallen Idol," representing the beautiful wife in tears at her husband's feet, in order to remind himself that human experience, at every point, is subject to heartbreaking catastrophes that are incapable of repair. Our idols fall; they are dashed to shivers; they lie in fragments about us. They can never be lifted to their pedestals again. It is sorrow's crown of sorrow. The vacant pedestals remain as outward and visible emblems of empty and aching hearts. It is of little use to tell us that we are not to grieve over such things. There is a wiser and happier philosophy. At a Jewish wedding, a wineglass is held aloft, dropped and dashed to pieces, and, whilst their eyes are fastened upon the fragments, the young people are exhorted jealously to guard the sacred and beautiful relationship into which they have just entered, since, once it is fractured, it can never be repaired.

The Challenge Of A Crumbling Universe
But the section of the universe that holds the most challenging significance for most of us consists of those things that, falling into disrepair, must go from bad to worse unless we ourselves repair them. We are living in a world in which everything gets out of order. Our clothes wear out or are destroyed by moths. Our tables and chairs fall to pieces in time. Even our most majestic buildings crumble and decay. It would almost seem that we have been placed in a world in which everything is falling to pieces in order that we may be ceaselessly engaged upon a ministry of repair. The principle applies, not only to clothing and furniture and buildings, but to everything under the sun. Our friendships, for example. Life knows no wealthier enrichment than the enrichment represented by the linking of other lives with our own. We are made for each other; we become part and parcel of each other; and life becomes like a flower in full bloom when soul responds to soul. But, like most rare and precious things, this treasure is exceedingly fragile. It must be guarded, cherished and kept in constant repair. There must be letters and meetings and the free flow of sympathy from heart to heart. If too much be taken for granted, friendship goes the way of the furniture and falls to pieces. Friendship is a sensitive plant growing in a stony patch. In the rough-and-tumble of this workaday world, it is perilously easy to misconstrue, to misinterpret, to misunderstand. No pathos is more common.

Nor does the loftiest friendship of all lie beyond the danger zone. The crisis in one of Florence Barclay's best known novels is reached when the hero, Rodney Steele, gazes upon a picture that hangs in a little church in an English fishing village. The painting represents the church before its restoration—an ivy-covered ruin, useless and desolate. Inscribed beneath the picture are two of Charles Wesley's familiar lines:

"The ruins of my soul repair
And make my heart a house of prayer."

Rodney Steele recognises in a flash that the decay of the old church is symbolic of a certain moral and spiritual deterioration in his inner life; he makes the prayer on the picture his own; and the renewal of the finest qualities in his character begins from that hour.


F W Boreham

Image: Hammer and Nails