Some such thought shines through the passage in which Paul tells us how
the great words came to him. He was irritated by his thorn; he prayed
repeatedly for its removal; but the only answer that he received was
this: _My grace is sufficient for thee!_ Grace sufficient for a thorn!
It is an almost ludicrous association of ideas!
It is so easy for Bunyan to believe that the divine grace is sufficient
for the wide, wide world; it is so difficult to realize that it is
sufficient for him!
It is so easy for Wesley to believe in the forgiveness of sins: it is so
difficult for him to believe in the forgiveness of his own!
It is so easy for Paul to believe in the grace that is sufficient to
redeem a fallen race: it is so difficult for him to believe in the grace
that can fortify him to endure his thorn!
And yet, in a fine essay on _Great Principles and Small Duties_, Dr.
James Martineau has shown that it is the lowliest who most need the
loftiest; it is the tiny thorn that calls for the most tremendous grace.
The gravest mistake ever made by educationalists is, he says, the
mistake of supposing that those who know little are good enough to teach
those who know less. It is a tragedy, he declares, when the master is
only one stage ahead of his pupil. 'The ripest scholarship,' he
maintains, 'is alone qualified to instruct the most complete ignorance.'
Dr. Martineau goes on to show that a soul occupied with great ideas best
performs trivial duties. And, coming to the supreme example of his
subject, he points out that 'it was the peculiarity of the Saviour's
greatness, not that he stooped to the lowliest, but that, without
stooping, he penetrated to the humblest wants. He not simply stepped
aside to look at the most ignominious sorrows, but went directly to
them, and lived wholly in them; scattered glorious miracles and sacred
truths along the hidden by-paths and in the mean recesses of existence;
serving the mendicant and the widow, blessing the child, healing the
leprosy of body and of soul, and kneeling to wash even the traitor's
feet.' Here is a strange and marvelous and beautiful law! The loftiest
for the lowliest! The greatest grace for the tiniest thorn!
Is it any wonder that, this being so, Paul felt that his splinter
positively shone? '_I will glory in it_,' he cried, '_that the power of
Christ may be billetted upon me._' He feels that his soul is like some
rural hamlet into which a powerful regiment has marched. Every bed and
barn is occupied by the soldiers. Who would not be irritated by a
splinter, he asks, if the irritation leads to such an inrush of divine
power and grace? It is like the pain of the oyster that is healed by a
pearl.
And so, with Paul as with Bunyan, the grace turns the scales. It is
better to have the pain if it brings the pearl. It is better to have a
thorn in the one balance if it brings such grace into the opposite
balance that one is better off _with_ the thorn than _without_ it.
Therein lies life's deepest secret--the secret that Catherine Booth and
John Bunyan learned from the lips that unfolded it to Paul. In _The
Master's Violin_, Myrtle Reed tells us the secret of the music that the
old man's fingers wooed from the Cremona. You have but to look at the
master, she says, and you will comprehend. 'There he stands, a stately
figure, gray and rugged, yet with a certain graciousness; simple,
kindly, and yet austere; one who had accepted his sorrow, and, by some
alchemy of the spirit, transmuted it into universal compassion, to
speak, through the Cremona, to all who could understand!'
_That_ is the secret--the old musician's secret; Catherine Booth's
secret; Bunyan's secret; Paul's secret; the secret of all who have
learned the text _by heart_!
_My grace is sufficient for thee_--the inrush of the grace turned Paul's
torturing splinter into a cause for life-long thankfulness!
_My grace is sufficient for thee_--the inrush of the grace turned Mrs.
Booth's fierce struggle into a ceaseless song!
_My grace is sufficient for thee!_ To the man who like John Bunyan,
stands weighing his gladnesses and sadnesses with that text in his mind,
it will seem that the one scale is overflowing and the other empty. For
it is the glory of the grace that it takes what sadnesses there are and
transmutes them into songs sublime.