"Why should these cares my heart divide,
If Thou, indeed, hast set me free?
Why am I thus, if Thou hast died--
If Thou hast died to ransom me?"
Nothing is more frequently felt and spoken of, as a hindrance to the
inward life of devotion, than the "cares of life;" and even upon the
showing of our Lord himself, the cares of the world are the thorns
that choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
And yet, if this is a necessary and inevitable result of worldly
care, why does the providence of God so order things that it forms
so large and unavoidable a part of every human experience? Why is
the physical system of man arranged with such daily, oft-recurring
wants? Why does his nature, in its full development, tend to that
state of society in which wants multiply, and the business of supply
becomes more complicated, and requiring constantly more thought
and attention, and bringing the outward and seen into a state of
constant friction and pressure on the inner and spiritual?
Has God arranged an outward system to be a constant diversion from
the inward--a weight on its wheels--a burden on its wings--and then
commanded a strict and rigid inwardness and spirituality? Why placed
us where the things that are seen and temporal must unavoidably have
so much of our thoughts, and time, and care, yet said to us, "Set
your affections on things above, and not on things on the earth.
Love not the world, neither the things of the world"? And why does
one of our brightest examples of Christian experience, as it should
be, say, "While we look not on the things which are seen, but on
the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal"?
The Bible tells us that our whole existence here is a disciplinary
one; that this whole physical system, by which our spirit is
inclosed with all the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, and wants
which form a part of it, are designed as an education to fit the
soul for its immortality; and as worldly care forms the greater
part of the staple of every human life, there must be some mode
of viewing and meeting it, which converts it from an enemy of
spirituality into a means of grace and spiritual advancement.
Why, then, do we so often hear the lamentation, "It seems to me
as if I could advance to the higher stages of Christian life, if
it were not for the pressure of my business and the multitude of
my worldly cares"? Is it not God, O Christian, who, in ordering
thy lot, has laid these cares upon thee, and who still holds them
about thee, and permits no escape from them? And as his great,
undivided object is thy spiritual improvement, is there not some
misapprehension or wrong use of these cares, if they do not tend
to advance it? Is it not even as if a scholar should say, I could
advance in science were it not for all the time and care which
lessons, and books, and lectures require?
How, then, shall earthly care become heavenly discipline? How shall
the disposition of the weight be altered so as to press the spirit
upward towards God, instead of downward and away? How shall the
pillar of cloud which rises between us and him become one of fire,
to reflect upon us constantly the light of his countenance, and to
guide us over the sands of life's desert?
It appears to us that the great radical difficulty is an
intellectual one, and lies in a wrong belief. There is not a genuine
and real belief of the presence and agency of God in the minor
events and details of life, which is necessary to change them from
secular cares into spiritual blessings.
It is true there is much loose talk about an overruling Providence;
and yet, if fairly stated, the belief of a great many Christians
might be thus expressed: God has organized and set in operation
certain general laws of matter and mind, which work out the
particular results of life, and over these laws he exercises a
general supervision and care, so that all the great affairs of the
world are carried on after the counsel of his own will; and in a
certain general sense, all things are working together for good
to those that love God. But when some simple-minded, childlike
Christian really proceeds to refer all the smaller events of life to
God's immediate care and agency, there is a smile of incredulity,
and it is thought that the good brother displays more Christian
feeling than sound philosophy.
But as life for every individual is made up of fractions and minute
atoms--as those things which go to affect habits and character
are small and hourly recurring, it comes to pass that a belief in
Providence so very wide and general is altogether inefficient for
consecrating and rendering sacred the great body of what comes
in contact with the mind in the experience of life. Only once in
years does the Christian with this kind of belief hear the voice
of the Lord God speaking to him. When the hand of death is laid
on his child, or the bolt strikes down the brother by his side,
then, indeed, he feels that God is drawing near; he listens humbly
for the inward voice that shall explain the meaning and need of
this discipline. When by some unforeseen occurrence the whole of
his earthly property is swept away,--he becomes a poor man,--this
event, in his eyes, assumes sufficient magnitude to have come from
God, and to have a design and meaning; but when smaller comforts are
removed, smaller losses are encountered, and the petty every-day
vexations and annoyances of life press about him, he recognizes no
God, and hears no voice, and sees no design. Hence John Newton says,
"Many Christians, who bear the loss of a child, or the destruction
of all their property, with the most heroic Christian fortitude, are
entirely vanquished and overcome by the breaking of a dish, or the
blunders of a servant, and show so unchristian a spirit, that we
cannot but wonder at them."
So when the breath of slander, or the pressure of human injustice,
comes so heavily on a man as really to threaten loss of character,
and destruction of his temporal interests, he seems forced to
recognize the hand and voice of God, through the veil of human
agencies, and in time-honored words to say:--
"When men of spite against me join,
They are the sword; the hand is thine."
But the smaller injustice and fault-finding which meet every one
more or less in the daily intercourse of life, the overheard
remark, the implied censure, too petty, perhaps, to be even spoken
of, these daily recurring sources of disquietude and unhappiness
are not referred to God's providence, nor considered as a part
of his probation and discipline. Those thousand vexations which
come upon us through the unreasonableness, the carelessness, the
various constitutional failings, or ill adaptedness of others to
our peculiarities of character, form a very large item of the
disquietudes of life; and yet how very few look beyond the human
agent, and feel these are trials coming from God! Yet it is true, in
many cases, that these so-called minor vexations form the greater
part, and in many cases the only discipline of life; and to those
that do not view them as ordered individually by God, and coming
upon them by specified design, "their affliction 'really' cometh
of the dust, and their trouble springs out of the ground;" it is
sanctified and relieved by no divine presence and aid, but borne
alone and in a mere human spirit, and by mere human reliances; it
acts on the mind as a constant diversion and hindrance, instead of a
moral discipline.
Hence, too, come a coldness, and generality, and wandering of mind
in prayer: the things that are on the heart, that are distracting
the mind, that have filled the soul so full that there is no room
for anything else, are all considered too small and undignified to
come within the pale of a prayer and so, with a wandering mind and
a distracted heart, the Christian offers up his prayer for things
which he thinks he ought to want, and makes no mention of those
which he does. He prays that God would pour out his spirit on the
heathen, and convert the world, and build up his kingdom everywhere,
when perhaps a whole set of little anxieties, and wants, and
vexations are so distracting his thoughts, that he hardly knows what
he has been saying: a faithless servant is wasting his property; a
careless or blundering workman has spoiled a lot of goods; a child
is vexatious or unruly; a friend has made promises and failed to
keep them; an acquaintance has made unjust or satirical remarks;
some new furniture has been damaged or ruined by carelessness in
the household; but all this trouble forms no subject matter for
prayer, though there it is, all the while lying like lead on the
heart, and keeping it down, so that it has no power to expand and
take in anything else. But were God known and regarded as the
soul's familiar friend, were every trouble of the heart as it rises
breathed into his bosom, were it felt that there is not one of the
smallest of life's troubles that has not been permitted by him, and
permitted for specific good purpose to the soul, how much more
would these be in prayer! how constant, how daily might it become!
how it might settle and clear the atmosphere of the soul! how it
might so dispose and lay away many anxieties which now take up their
place there, that there might be room for the higher themes and
considerations of religion!
Many sensitive and fastidious natures are worn away by the constant
friction of what are called little troubles. Without any great
affliction, they feel that all the flower and sweetness of their
life have faded; their eye grows dim, their cheek care-worn, and
their spirit loses hope and elasticity, and becomes bowed with
premature age; and in the midst of tangible and physical comfort,
they are restless and unhappy. The constant undercurrent of little
cares and vexations, which is slowly wearing on the finer springs of
life, is seen by no one; scarce ever do they speak of these things
to their nearest friends. Yet were there a friend of a spirit so
discerning as to feel and sympathize in all these things, how much
of this repressed electric restlessness would pass off through such
a sympathizing mind.
Yet among human friends this is all but impossible, for minds are so
diverse that what is a trial and a care to one is a matter of sport
and amusement to another; and all the inner world breathed into
a human ear only excites a surprised or contemptuous pity. Whom,
then, shall the soul turn to? Who will feel that to be affliction
which each spirit feels to be so? If the soul shut itself within
itself, it becomes morbid; the fine chords of the mind and nerves
by constant wear become jarring and discordant; hence fretfulness,
discontent, and habitual irritability steal over the sincere
Christian.
But to the Christian that really believes in the agency of God in
the smallest events of life, that confides in his love, and makes
his sympathy his refuge, the thousand minute cares and perplexities
of life become each one a fine affiliating bond between the soul
and its God. God is known, not by abstract definition, and by
high-raised conceptions of the soul's aspiring hours, but known
as a man knoweth his friend; he is known by the hourly wants he
supplies; known by every care with which he momentarily sympathizes,
every apprehension which he relieves, every temptation which he
enables us to surmount. We learn to know God as the infant child
learns to know its mother and its father, by all the helplessness
and all the dependence which are incident to this commencement of
our moral existence; and as we go on thus year by year, and find in
every changing situation, in every reverse, in every trouble, from
the lightest sorrow to those which wring our soul from its depths,
that he is equally present, and that his gracious aid is equally
adequate, our faith seems gradually almost to change to sight; and
God's existence, his love and care, seem to us more real than any
other source of reliance, and multiplied cares and trials are only
new avenues of acquaintance between us and heaven.
Suppose, in some bright vision unfolding to our view, in tranquil
evening or solemn midnight, the glorified form of some departed
friend should appear to us with the announcement, "This year is to
be to you one of especial probation and discipline, with reference
to perfecting you for a heavenly state. Weigh well and consider
every incident of your daily life, for not one shall fall out by
accident, but each one is to be a finished and indispensable link in
a bright chain that is to draw you upward to the skies!"
With what new eyes should we now look on our daily lot! and if we
found in it not a single change,--the same old cares, the same
perplexities, the same uninteresting drudgeries still,--with what
new meaning would every incident be invested! and with what other
and sublimer spirit could we meet them? Yet, if announced by one
rising from the dead with the visible glory of a spiritual world,
this truth could be asserted no more clearly and distinctly than
Jesus Christ has stated it already. Not a sparrow falleth to the
ground without our Father. Not one of them is forgotten by him; and
we are of more value than many sparrows; yea, even the hairs of
our head are all numbered. Not till belief in these declarations,
in their most literal sense, becomes the calm and settled habit of
the soul, is life ever redeemed from drudgery and dreary emptiness,
and made full of interest, meaning, and divine significance. Not
till then do its groveling wants, its wearing cares, its stinging
vexations, become to us ministering spirits, each one, by a silent
but certain agency, fitting us for a higher and perfect sphere.