DEVELOPING OUR BEST UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
There is nothing in this world that more appeals to my admiration than
a man who makes the best of himself _under difficulties_. Robert Louis
Stevenson deservedly has many admirers by reason of his writings, but
what in him most appeals to my admiration was the struggle he waged with
difficulties. "For fourteen years," he wrote the year before his death,
"I have not had a day's real health. I have wakened sick and gone to bed
weary. I have written in bed, written in hemorrhages, written in
sickness, written worn by coughing, written when my head swam for
weakness. I am better now, and still few are the days when I am not in
some physical distress. And the battle goes on--ill or well is a trifle,
so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed
that my battle-field should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and
the physic bottle. I would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the
open air over my head. Still I have done my work unflinchingly."
The story of many a strong and useful life is very similar to this story
of Stevenson's.
Parkman wrote his histories in the brief intervals between racking
headaches. Prescott struggled with blindness as he prepared his volumes.
Kitto was deaf from boyhood, but he wrote works that caught the hearing
of the English-speaking world.
It sometimes seems as though God never intended to bring the best out of
us excepting through pain and pressure. The most costly perfume that is
known is the pure attar of roses, and one drop of it represents millions
of damascene roses that were bruised before the sweet scent they
contained was secured.
"The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer."
The sphere of difficulty is usually the sphere of opportunity. "I was
made for contest," Stevenson said. We all are made for it. As we let the
contest overpower us, we fail; as we overpower the contest, we succeed.
One particular personage of the Old Testament is in mind as
illustrative of these thoughts, Jeremiah. He always reminds me of a
violet I once saw growing on Mount St. Bernard in Switzerland. The snow
was deep on every side, excepting on one little slope a few feet in
width, exposed to the eastern sun. There, so close to the snow as almost
to be chilled to death by the cold atmosphere about it, was a violet
sweetly lifting its head and blooming as serenely as though it knew
nothing of the struggle for life.
Jeremiah was a mere youth when the conviction came into his heart, "God
wishes me to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right." He
lived at Anathoth, three miles from Jerusalem, the distance of an hour's
easy walk. His father was a priest who probably in his turn served in
the duties of the temple at Jerusalem. But though he came of religious
ancestry, and though he heard much of the religious exercises of the
temple, this call from God to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people
to do right, broke in upon his life as a disturbing force. The times
were worldly, and even wrong. Nobles and princes, merchants, scholars,
and priests had put the fear of God away from their eyes, and were
acting according to the selfish impulses of the hour. The general
outward life of the nation was pure, but it was the pureness of mere
formality. Beneath the surface ambitions and purposes were cherished
that uncorrected would surely lead the people into selfishness,
idolatry, and transgression.
It was no easy thing for Jeremiah to answer "yes" to this call of God.
The call involved a lifetime of brave service. Matters in the nation
were sure to go from bad to worse. Difficulties after difficulties
therefore, as they developed, must be faced. He stood at what we name
"the parting of the ways"; if he did as God wished, his whole life must
be given to the work indicated; if he said "no" to God's call, he would
drift along with the rest of the people, leaving them to their fate, he
no better and perhaps no worse than they.
In some respects there is nothing better than to be _forced_ to a
decision on some important matter, particularly if that decision is a
decision involving character. It was a choice with Jeremiah whether he
would live unselfishly for God or selfishly for himself. That choice
ordinarily is the supreme choice in every one's life. It is the supreme
choice that the Christian pulpit is constantly presenting. Present
character and eternal destiny are shaped according to that choice.
In Jeremiah's case there was a native reluctance to do the deeds which
he saw were involved in obedience to God's call. He was by temperament
modest and retiring. He shrank from publicity. He did not like to
reprove any one. Severe words were the last words he wished to speak. It
would have been a relief to him if God had simply let him alone and
imposed on others this duty of trying to make the people better. Some
men seem to be adapted for a fray, as Elijah was, and as John the
Baptist was. But Jeremiah was more like John the beloved. He would have
been glad to live and die, simply saying, "Little children, love one
another."
It is God's way, however, again and again, to take lives that to
themselves seem utterly unfitted for special duties and assign them to
those duties. Almost all the best workers in God's cause came into it
reluctantly, and against the feeling that they were fitted for it. We
are bidden ask the Lord of the harvest to _thrust_ men into the fields
of need. Jeremiah felt in his heart this "thrusting." He did not kick
against it. He yielded to it.
But with what results? The first result was _estrangement_. His goodly
life and conversation soon made the people of his village and even the
brothers and sisters of his home feel that he was different from
themselves. They chafed under the contrast of their carelessness and his
earnestness. He found himself left out of their pleasures and chilled by
their indifference. The estrangement developed until his fellow-townsmen
were eager to rid themselves of his presence, and his own family were
ready to deal treacherously with him.
It is just at this point that so often a good purpose breaks down. When
a man's foes are they of his own household or comradeship, he is very
apt to give up his good purpose. It is more difficult for a beginner in
the religious life to resist the insinuating and depreciating remarks of
near acquaintances than to face a mob. It must have cut Christ to the
heart's core when his brethren said of him, "He hath a devil!" "I would
rather go into battle," said a soldier newly enlisted as a Christian,
"than go back to the mess-room and hear what the men will say when they
know of my decision."
Jeremiah started his obedience to God amid estrangement. It was not long
before estrangement had given place to _threatening_. His duties as he
grew older called him to Jerusalem. The youth become a man must leave
the village, go to the city, and in the larger sphere of need, speak the
messages of God. In Jerusalem he assured the people that if they did
injustice, oppressed the poor, built themselves rich houses out of wages
withheld from servants, made sacrifices to base idols, and strengthened
the hands of evil-doers, God would bring a terrible overthrow upon them.
His task was made the more difficult because in his words and attitude
he stood alone. He had no following among priests or prophets to back
him. With one consent they affirmed that he was wrong and that a lie was
on his lips when he predicted desolation if present practices were
continued.
It is a great hour in any man's life when he is obliged to stand up
alone and state his case or defend his cause. What an hour that was in
Paul's history when before the Roman officials "no man stood with him,"
but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, he stood alone! It
is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the
deepest test of his character is reached. That is the reason why the
night-time, which seems to say to us "You are alone with God," has its
impressiveness, and why the death hour has a similar impressiveness.
Jeremiah felt his loneliness. There was nothing of the stoic in him. He
could not school himself to be brazen-hearted. He was so human, so like
the great majority of people, that every now and then some cry of
weariness would escape his lips. "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast
borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. I
have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury; yet every one
of them doth curse me." Sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us
feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. "Cursed be the day
wherein I was born! Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor
and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" But glad as he
would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and
glad as he would have been to hold the affection and regard of his
companions, he never for a moment kept back the truth, nor for a moment
did he distrust God's blessing on his life. "All my familiars watched
for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall
prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." "But the
Lord is with me," he declared, and so declaring he was immovable before
his adversaries.
There came a third experience into his life, which carried his
difficulties one degree higher. It was the experience of _disdain_. He
knew full well that the wicked course of the nation was inevitably
leading to destruction. Unless the evil of the people should cease the
powers of Babylon would come and would destroy Judah. He was debarred an
interview with the king. He therefore wrote his message on a roll, put
it in the hands of a messenger, Baruch, and in due time that roll was
carried into the king's presence by Baruch and read to the king. The
king was sitting in his winter house. The weather was cold. A fire was
burning before him in a brazier. As the king heard the words of Jeremiah
that called him and the people to penitence, his anger was aroused. He
seized the roll ere three or four of the columns had been read, cut it
up with his penknife, and cast the whole roll into the fire to be
utterly consumed therein. He did this in the presence of his court. He
did it with a disdain and contempt that made every man present feel that
Jeremiah and Jeremiah's words were to be despised.
It never is a pleasure to be despised. Contempt usually embitters a man
or suppresses him. The derisive laugh against a man is more powerful in
breaking him than the compactest argument. Many men can remain steadfast
to convictions in estrangement or in opposition who give way when they
hear that their words and actions are the subject of twitting and
ridicule. "Who is this Jeremiah, and what are his words, that we should
think of them a second time? I will cut these words into fragments even
with my pocket-knife, and then I will burn them in this little brazier,
and that shall be the last of them!" So said and did King Jehoiakim. And
his princes heard and saw.
But whatever the effect produced on others, the effect produced on
Jeremiah must have been to the king a great disappointment. Jeremiah
heard God's voice saying in his heart, "You must write those same words
of truth again." And again he wrote them on a roll. And just here comes
out one of the sweetest and most characteristic features of Jeremiah's
character. The ordinary man, if he has made up his mind to retort or to
ridicule, says to himself, "Now I will pour out my wrath on my
adversary." But such was Jeremiah's self-control and peacefulness of
temper that perhaps he would have erred on the side of leniency unless
God had charged him, not to soften or to suppress one part of the
message, but to write _all_ the words that were in the former roll and
add thereto other special predictions. To this charge, whatever his
obedience might lead to, Jeremiah immediately and completely responded.
Then came Jeremiah's fourth experience. His persistence in duty now
cost him _imprisonment_. Not an ordinary imprisonment, but such an
imprisonment as Oriental monarchs employ when they wish to place those
whom they dislike in a living death. The king first put Jeremiah in a
dungeon-house where there were cells. This was not very bad. Then, when
Jeremiah still was true to his testimony, the king put him in the court
of the guard, giving him a daily allowance of one little eastern
bread-loaf. This also was not very bad. But later the king, when the
princes claimed Jeremiah for their victim, as afterward the rabble
claimed Christ from Pilate for their victim, gave Jeremiah into the
hands of the princes to do with him as they pleased. Then it was that
they with cords dropped him down into a deep subterranean pit, whose
bottom was mire, so that Jeremiah sank in the mire.
How many people in the time of the Inquisition, when they were racked
to pieces, when thumb-screws agonized them, when water drop by drop fell
ceaselessly on their foreheads, and when pincers tore their flesh little
by little continuously, renounced their faith and so saved themselves
from slow torture! It was not an easy thing to die from starvation in a
dark, damp pit, with mire creeping up all about him. It never has been
easy to die slowly and alone for the faith; to die for a testimony; to
die for a message that involved others much more than one's self. All
that was needed to protect him from pain and to preserve his life was
silence. If Jeremiah would keep quiet all would be well. But for
Jeremiah to keep quiet would be to prove disobedient to a sense of duty
implanted by God in his heart. So this gentle nature, that shrank from
the horrors of the miry pit, horrors more to be dreaded than the lions'
den or the fiery furnace or the executioner's sword, went down into the
pit unbroken--precursor of those sweet natures in woman and child that
all the beasts of the Colosseum could not dismay, and that all the fires
of martyrdom could not weaken.
One more experience awaited Jeremiah--_deportation_. So far as we know,
it was the closing experience of his life. The dauntless soul had not
been suffered to die in the pit. Patriotic men who realized the folly of
letting an unselfish, high-minded citizen perish so terribly, and who
realized, too, the desirability of preserving alive so wise a counselor,
secured permission from the vacillating king to take rags and worn-out
garments, and let them down by cords into the pit. "Put now these rags
and worn-out garments under thine arm-holes under the cords," they said,
"and Jeremiah did so. So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords." Once
again he was in his position of responsibility as God's messenger. In
that position he held fast to his faithfulness.
Then came his final experience. Judah had passed through trial upon
trial. Jeremiah had shared in her trials, never running away from them,
but always bearing his full brunt of burden and loss. Then he was forced
to go away from the land of his love and his tears to Egypt! He did not
wish to go. He assured those who headed the movement that it was folly
to go. But they took him with them, and carried him, like a captive, off
to a foreign land.
All this would have meant little to some men, but to Jeremiah it meant
everything. Jerusalem and the land of Judah were dear to his heart. He
had lived for them, spoken for them, suffered for them, and well-nigh
died for them. In older years the land of one's birth and of one's
sacrifices becomes very dear. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my
right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth!" Into that deportation we cannot follow
him. We only know that up to the very last minute in which we see him
and hear his words, he was unceasingly true to his God, and true to the
people around him, loving his Master and loving his brethren, with an
unfailing devotion.
But this we do know, ignorant as we are whether he died naturally or was
stoned to death, that in after years this Jeremiah became among the Jews
almost an ideal character. They saw that all his words predicting the
destruction of the holy city and the captivity were fulfilled. They
learned to revere his fidelity. They even called him "the greatest" of
all their prophets. They well-nigh glorified him. In times of war and
difficulty they used his name wherewith to rouse halting hearts to
bravery and to lead the fearful into the thick of perilous battles.
Here, then, is a life that came to its best and developed its best under
difficulties. "Best men are molded out of faults." So was this man
molded to his best out of faults of hesitation and unwillingness and
impatience. No one knows the best use we can make of ourselves but the
One who created us and understands our possibilities.
In the struggle against difficulties we have Christ's constant
sympathy. Were not _estrangement_, _threatening_, _disdain_,
_imprisonment_, and _deportation_ His own experiences? And did not they
come in this same order? And does not He realize all the stress through
which a soul must pass that would fight its contest and advance to its
best? Certainly He does. And when He lays a cross upon us, it is that
through our right spirit in carrying that cross we may become sweeter in
our hearts and braver in our lives, and thus change our cross into a
very crown of manliness and of usefulness.
To many a man there is no object in this earth that so appeals to his
admiration as a person who makes the best of himself under difficulties.
We may well believe that to Christ likewise there is no human being so
prized and admired as he who advances to his best through the conquest
of difficulties.
THE NEED OF RETAINING THE BEST WISDOM.