Acts 26:24-25 And as he thus spoke for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, you are beside yourself; much learning does make you mad.… In one of his works the late Charles Kingsley makes the suggestive and vigorous remark that "there never was anyone who spoke out the truth yet on the earth, who was not called a 'howling idiot' for his pains at first." And to anyone who is at all acquainted with the general facts and teachings of history, the remark will appear by no means too sweeping. It may not perhaps be very difficult to get at the root and reason of this ascription of folly and madness to men of strong religious earnestness and devotion. The madman, for instance, is very frequently a man of one idea. Some one oppressive thought has burnt itself into his brain, absorbs his attention by day, and colours his dreams by night, and he seems to know and care for nothing beside. And it is not therefore much to be wondered at that men of the world, to whom money, power, pleasure, luxury, are the sole ends of existence, should transfer this aspect of a disordered mind to those who have lived and laboured under the impulsion of strong religious enthusiasm, and brand them as monomaniacs. "Heretic!" "Fool!" "Fanatic!" "Madman!" "Antichrist!" those and many more such-like epithets of choice, ecclesiastical Billingsgate were shot at Luther from the catapults of the Pope and the priests of Rome. John Wesley, the great religious reformer of the last century, did not escape being placed in "shame's high pillory"; while the great leaders and pioneers of the modern missionary movement, as we know, took very high rank in the category of reputed "fools and madmen." The mission of William Carey to India was publicly characterised in the British House of Commons by one of its aristocratic members, as "the mission of a madman"; and even such a man as Sydney Smith, the witty canon of St. Paul's, found in the first batch of missionaries that went out for the evangelisation of the heathen, what he thought fit targets for the arrows of his caustic wit and satire. "Little detachments of maniacs!" was the only sentence which his Christian charity could find wherewith to label them. In the domain of science we have the case of Robert Bacon, of whom it has been said by Dr. Friend that "he was the miracle of his age, and possessed perhaps the greatest genius for mechanical science that has been known since the days of Archimedes." And how was this brilliant experimental philosopher of the thirteenth century treated when he had made known those wonderful discoveries in chemistry, astronomy, and mechanics, which were all anticipations of the inventions and findings of modern science? Why, as all readers of English history are well aware, he was accused by the ignorant monks of his order of being possessed with the devil. It was affirmed that he was a practiser of the black art, and was aided in his search for the philosopher's stone by infernal spirits. These accusations, together with eleven or twelve years' close confinement in a cell, were the rewards which his bigoted and fanatical contemporaries meted out to the "early star preceding dawn" of experimental science and philosophy. And the same rule we shall find holding good in relation to others who were conspicuous pioneers and factors in the social and material progress of the people. Especially was this the case with regard to the discoverers and propounders of the propelling power of steam, and to its practical application in the form of locomotive steam engines, steam vessels, and the like, for the promotion of more expeditious modes of travelling. The germ idea of the steam engine is doubtless to be traced to the machines, diagrams, and writings of Solomon de Caus; although the Marquis of Worcester is generally acknowledged to be the inventor. And yet both these men were accounted lunatics by their contemporaries, because of their doctrine concerning the moving power of steam. The former, we are told, "travelled from Normandy to Paris to present a treatise to Louis XIII on the subject. His minister, Cardinal Richelieu, dismissed the applicant, and on account of his importunity imprisoned him as a 'dangerous madman.'" And the latter, the Marquis of Worcester, was accounted not only a quack, but an impostor, and had to suffer the most bitter reverses on account of his advocacy of the brilliant discovery which his observing genius had made. Those who followed in the footsteps of these men, and who carried out their theories and principles to such glorious issues, may not have had to encounter quite such bitter persecution; nevertheless they had to run the gauntlet of the mockery and opposition of those whose ignorance prevented them from perceiving, or whose interests precluded them from entertaining, such so-called "mad" and impracticable projects. When Fulton proposed to navigate the river Hudson in a steamboat he was met with rude jokes, incredulous smiles, and contemptuous sneers by the wiseacres of his day, who charitably denounced his idea as the silliest that ever entered a silly brain. And when George Stephenson, the "Father of English Railways," proposed to run a train from Woolwich to London at the amazing rate of fourteen miles an hour, he was not only regarded by many as an impracticable dreamer, but by some as betraying premonitory symptoms of fitness for Bedlam and a straitjacket. It was the old trick of calling a man mad who is in advance of his fellows, until the madness becomes contagious and the tables turn; then, like the good boy in the fairy tale, on whose head the fool's cap, placed there by his scoffing brothers, turned into a crown, the jeers of opponents become transmuted into praise, and the very nicknames of such madmen become glorious. Additional and similar illustrations of the point we are seeking to set out lie ready to hand for gleaning in other field s of human thought and activity, but which can only be indicated. It is, for instance, a well-known fact that Mesmer, the discoverer of animal magnetism, was thought to be possessed of Satanic agency when he propounded his theory and made known his wonderful discovery; and had he lived at one time in England he would in all probability have been burnt to death at the stake as a wizard. As it was he was bitterly persecuted, his life threatened, and for a time he suffered imprisonment. The annals of political reform would also supply striking examples of the same thing, as the cases of Cobden, Bright, and Villiers would abundantly testify, who were branded as "fools and fanatics" for the part they played in the abolition of the Corn Laws, by which the death-knell of protective monopolies was rung, and the cheap loaf placed upon the poor man's table. So, too, with the records of the great Temperance reform. The pioneers of that great social movement had to pay the penalty of men in advance of their time, of being looked upon and labelled as "fools and madmen." (J. Cuttell.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as he thus spake for himself, Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself; much learning doth make thee mad. |
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