USING ARIGHT OUR BEST HOURS.
Every writer who has described what we call opportunity has insisted
upon the necessity of seizing opportunity as it flies. We are told that
there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at its proper moment
leads us on to fortune. It is also asserted that once at least there
comes into every one's life a special hour which used aright has much to
do with assuring his permanent welfare.
Universal experience bears witness to the truthfulness and force of
these sayings. Every human being who has studied the history of the race
is aware that now and then decisive hours come to his fellows, and
according as those hours are used to advantage or to disadvantage, is
the success or failure of his fellows. We know this fact applies also to
ourselves. All our hours are not the same hours, either in their nature
or in their possibility. Some hours are special hours when, for one
reason or another, crises are present; if we meet these hours aright we
advance, if we fail to meet them aright we fall back.
Such hours are the supreme opportunities of our entire existence: the
hours when duty appears more clear than is its wont, or hours when the
heart is strangely moved toward the good, or hours when a new and very
uplifting sense of God's presence is felt. It is not asserted that such
hours are equally bright and glorious to every one. They may not be
bright at all. They may be dull and heavy. But they bring us a
conviction of what is right, a sense of obligation to do the right, and
an assurance that God's way is the way our feet should tread. Given any
such hour, whether it be on the mountain or in the valley, and a man has
his best hour. All other hours, as we plod or play, may be good, but the
hour when a soul is brought face to face with duty and with God is the
best hour in that particular period of our life.
It was simply and only because Jacob used aright his best hours that he
rescued his name from disgrace and crowned it with glory. If ever a man
started in life handicapped by unfortunate characteristics and
unfortunate environments Jacob was such a man. One of the modern
sculptors, George Grey Barnard, has a life-sized marble, showing what he
names "Our Two Natures," two men, one the good and one the evil, coming
out of the same block of stone, and struggling, each to see which shall
gain the ascendancy over the other. Such two natures are in every one;
but they appear with special prominence in Jacob. The question of his
life was, Which is to conquer, the good or the evil? The struggle of the
good for ascendancy was prolonged and severe. It was a struggle in which
there were disgraceful defeats, but in which there was also a
persistency of purpose and a reassertion of effort whereby the good
finally triumphed. And this triumph, it may safely be asserted, was
secured through the use Jacob made of a few supreme hours in his life.
When we first begin to notice Jacob, we see him participating in the
deception of his aged and almost blinded father, Isaac. We do well, in
studying that deception, to bear in mind that the mother, before Jacob's
birth, had been told that Jacob should inherit his father's blessing. So
she had probably taught Jacob that this blessing belonged to him, and
that she and he were justified in securing it in any way they could. And
we do well also to bear in mind that the mother recognized a certain
undeveloped but capable fitness in Jacob for this blessing, a fitness
that Esau lacked. Esau was a lusty, out-of-doors, happy-going man who
would not control his appetites, and who, however pleasant he might be
to have around when merry-making and sport were in the air, was not
prudent enough and judicious enough to be the head of a great people.
Rebekah, and Jacob, too, may have felt that it would be the height of
family folly to leave the family blessing with Esau, who probably in a
short time would squander it; it ought, therefore, to be diverted from
him. Besides, the age was one in which fine distinctions between right
and wrong, as we to-day see these distinctions, were not clear. We thus
can understand some of the reasoning which lay back of the fraud
practiced on Isaac when Jacob made believe that he was Esau bringing the
desired venison, and so secured the blessing.
But we do not mean to justify the deception. It carried--as every sin
carries--fearful consequences, and those consequences affected all of
Jacob's future life. As he had deceived his father, again and again his
children deceived their father. Even immediately upon its perpetration
Jacob's life became endangered. He was obliged to flee from enraged and
threatening Esau. Then it was that Jacob, at nightfall, coming alone to
rocky Bethel, and lying down to sleep--a wrong-doer, a fugitive,
homeless, friendless, and in peril--had his dream. He saw heaven opened
over him, with angels ascending as it were by a ladder to God and then
descending by that ladder from God to his resting-place. The dream bore
in upon his mind certain thoughts. One was, that God had not forsaken
him, but was with him. Another was, that God was ready to forgive him
for his sin and bless him. And still a third was, that God would take
even his life and so use it, if he should be consecrated to Him, that
he, Jacob, should some day come back to Bethel as its owner and be the
head of that people through whom the whole world should be blessed. And
a fourth thought was, that however long the delay in fulfilling the
promises, God certainly would fulfil them, and He would watch over Jacob
until they were fulfilled.
As Jacob awaked from his dream those four thoughts were in his mind: of
God's presence, of God's forgiveness, of God's call, and of God's
protection. Up to this time the hour of this awakening was the best hour
of his life. Thoughts stirred in his heart different in degree and
different in quality than any he had ever had. There came a new sense of
the wonderful love of God. What had he done to deserve it? Nothing. Why
should not the heavens be closed, and be dark and forbidding to a
defrauder like himself? That certainly was what one like himself might
expect. Did not the cherubim drive sinful Adam and Eve out of the
garden, and stand with flaming sword forbidding their return? But here
was God appearing in mercy, assuring of His readiness to pardon
transgression, and calling upon the wrong-doer to repent, to be earnest,
and to make his life a benediction rather than a curse. Here, too, was
God pledging His unfailing aid to Jacob if Jacob would struggle toward
success!
What should Jacob do with these thoughts? He might have brushed them
away from his heart as he brushed away the morning dew from his eyes,
and thus immediately have banished them. He might have pondered the
thoughts for a day or two, being softened and comforted by them, and
then let them pass out of his mind forever. Many men have acted in such
ways. A wicked man opened a letter from his mother, and with the sight
of her penmanship there came to him the memory of all her interest in
his purity, integrity, and godliness. He crushed the letter in his hand
and threw it into the fire burning on the hearth. But another man, many
another man, though moved by good impulses, and even touched to the
quick by them after a while has let such impulses glide away from his
heart and carry with them their helpfulness. That is what Darwin says
that he did. The thought of God came to him now and then in special
hours of his earlier life, but he did not hold fast to it, he let it
escape, and the thought of a personal God who watches over and blesses
never became the cheering possession of his soul.
But it was not so with Jacob; and because it was not so, hope of
betterment dawned upon his character. He _valued_ the thoughts that had
come to him. He was awed. Awe, or reverence, is the originating spring
of worthy character. His was not a simple mind easily affected. Jacob
was a cool, calculating, careful, worldly-wise man, almost the last type
of man that finds it easy to be awed. But to him--with whom money and
sheep and slaves and retinue were now and were long afterward to be very
prominent objects of ambition--there was a feeling that, after all, God
and God's blessings are the supreme things of life. So he did not let
the awe of the hour pass unimproved. He acted on that awe. He then and
there as best he could confessed God and his faith in Him, raising a
pillar of stone in God's name and anointing it with oil in significance
that the spot upon which it stood was consecrated to God. Thus he
erected the first of all those tabernacles, temples, synagogues,
churches, cathedrals, chapels, that have been a testimony to faith in
God all over the earth. And then, as though an outward thing was not
enough, but some inner thing of character was now required, he vowed a
vow--the best vow probably that he, with his idea of God and of money,
knew how to vow. He vowed that if God who had thus shown him his
opportunity and duty would be true to His promises and would take care
of him as covenanted, he, Jacob, would uphold the worship of God and
would give a tenth of all he might ever obtain unto God.
That vow laid hold on Jacob's life. It began to work a change that only
many, many years advanced toward completion. But it began the change.
When a soul, in a best moment of life, seeing duty clearly, or beholding
a new revelation of God, crystallizes the emotions thus aroused by a vow
that consecrates its dearest treasures to God, then the soul has taken
its first step toward strong and beautiful character. Here it was that
Esau failed. He seems to have had more traits that men would name
attractive than had Jacob. An open-hearted, open-handed, out-spoken man,
rough but kind and generous and ready, he at life's beginning appeared
to have more in his favor than this grasping, secretive brother. When
Esau's best hours came--hours when the sense of his own misdeeds rankled
in his heart and when he was aware that repentance and reformation and a
new application to duty should be his--he felt his situation deeply; he
even, as a man of his temperament could do, shed tears of grief over his
mistakes and losses. But he did not realize with awe the gravity of his
situation, nor did he turn to God and to duty with a softened, chastened
spirit, and vow his life in devotion to God. Jacob's right use of his
best hours set Jacob's face towards God and character. Esau's wrong use
of his best hours set Esau's face away from God and character.
But Jacob's life needed, as every life needs, more than one best hour.
Off in Haran where he dwelt for twenty years he was among heathen
people. As he served seven years for Leah and seven years for Rachel and
six years beside, he preserved many of the ideals and purposes that came
to him in the morning hour at Bethel, but not all of them. These
purposes seem to have kept him from idolatry and to have given him
patience and fortitude and prolonged endurance. Laban treated him
deceivingly and unkindly. Jacob showed much self-control and much
generosity. Laban's flocks increased beneath Jacob's care until Laban
became a very rich man. If a lamb or a sheep was injured in any way
Jacob bore all the expense connected with its hurt or its death. Had
Laban recognized the value of his services, then perhaps Jacob would not
again have come under the power of his own crafty, calculating,
money-making propensities. But Laban treated Jacob like a slave, and
Jacob retaliated with meanness. He speciously secured from Laban a large
proportion of Laban's cattle, and with his wealth thus gathered started
away from his angry master toward the old-time Bethel, that somehow was
always in his memory. There was a sense in which he deserved every sheep
and goat and servant that he had: he had earned them all; they ought by
right of service to be his. But in another sense he had tricked Laban
and was going away with ill-gotten gains.
Now is to come the second great crisis in his life. Jacob is to venture
into the country where Esau is, Esau who for years has been cherishing
hatred against Jacob. Hatred cherished sours and becomes malice. Esau
was a difficult one to meet--fierce, strong, and determined. It was then
that another great hour came to Jacob. To the east he had parted company
with Laban, who had become reconciled to Jacob and who had given him his
farewell blessing. To the west, where Bethel lay and whither his heart
called him, is Esau. How shall he meet Esau? He does now what seems,
from the night at Bethel, to have become more or less of a custom with
him; he consults God. He lays the situation as it lies in his mind
before God. He thus tries to see the situation as it actually is when
seen in the presence of One who is omniscient. As he thus studies the
situation he deems it wise to send ahead, in relays, goodly parts of his
flocks, which, as they pass Esau, should be announced as gifts to Esau.
It is the same cool, calculating Jacob still at work. Then he sends
forward all his family and all his cattle, over the Jabbok, toward the
country where Esau is. This done he remained behind alone.
Again it was the night-time. There was darkness, the darkness that often
is so conducive to earnest thought and clear vision of the right. Light
is indeed essential that men already in the path of duty may walk safely
therein, but the path of duty itself is more often discovered when we
look out of darkness than when we stand in the sunlight.
It was a time of uncertainty and almost of fear on Jacob's part--a
time of heart searching in view of the past and of hesitation in view of
the present. Such a time can come only to one who has ceased being a
mere child and has entered into the experiences of manhood. The great
questions of the nature of God and of the protection of His providence
stirred in Jacob's heart. His had been a sinful career. Still he had
repented, and repenting had grown in grace. But even yet his faith was
fearful and his trust hesitant. Was God really on his side? Would this
God, the God that had promised to bring him back to Canaan and give him
a place there, surely preserve him? Then it was, while these questions
were throbbing within him, that in the darkness one like a man grappled
with him in wrestling. Should he be faint-hearted and cowardly,
distrusting God's promise of protection, and let this stranger throw
him, kill him, and so forever end the possibility of God's fulfilling
His promise? Or should he lay hold of God's promise to sustain him, and
do his best to throw this stranger, and thus preserve his life and
accomplish his mission? It was a decisive time. Luther had such a time
the night before the Diet of Worms, when he had to wrestle with the
thought "Shall I be distrustful of God's providence and recant
to-morrow, or shall I hold fast to my faith in God and stand by the
truth to-morrow?" Hamilton had such a time the night before he decided
that he would be burned at the stake rather than deny the truth. Such
times come into many lives, when great questions about a right or a
wrong marriage, a right or a wrong business, a right or a wrong
amusement, must be decided.
Jacob _would_ not surrender to fear! He _would_ trust God to continue
his life. He therefore relaxed no hold on the stranger, but wrestled
with him as best he could. Then came the revelation. The stranger simply
touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh and by that touch put it out of
joint! Here was an Almighty One wrestling with him! Jacob realized that
_God_ had come to him! With that revelation, even in his weakened
condition, he clings the closer to the stranger; he _will_ hold on to
God. "Let me go, for the day breaketh," cries the stranger. "I will not
let thee go, except thou bless me," Jacob replies. Jacob cleaves to God.
Jacob longs for God's blessing. He has found God very near to him. He
will avail himself of His nearness. The face of God is turned upon him
in love. He will not let this hour go without getting from it all the
inspiration and help he can obtain.
And he did obtain the best blessing that ever came to his life--the
blessing that assured him his character was to be completely changed,
and made beautiful and strong for God. Christ once said to a weak,
impulsive, oft-falling man: "Thou art Simon, son of Jonah"--that is, the
"listening" son of a weak "dove," unreliable, changeable, frail--"thou
shalt be Peter"--that is, a "rock," firm, stable. Christ thus indicated
that he would make of weak Simon a resolute, trustworthy Peter, as He
did. Just so God in this hour said, "Thy name shall be called no more
Jacob"--the "supplanter," the tricky, the calculating--"but Israel"--a
"prince of God," a man that has power with God and men, a man that even
_prevails_ with God and men!
What a benediction that was, one of the choicest in all history! No
higher designation could be promised to such a man as Jacob had been,
than "Israel"! I would rather--under God and for God--have that name
given me by God than any other name that can be named upon a weak, frail
man: "Israel"--a man who can _prevail_ with his _fellows_ and with _God_
for _human good_!
All this came about because Jacob used aright his best hours; because
when God was near him, he held on to God; because when he was
discouraged and heavy-hearted and the prospect was dark, he trusted God;
because when he was weakened and brought low, he would not let God go
unless He bless him. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him," Job
said. "Even if God will not deliver us from the burning fiery furnace,
still we will not disobey Him," said the three prisoners at Babylon.
Henceforth in Jacob's life there would still be vicissitudes. Troubles,
responsibilities, disappointments, sorrows, needs, would come. His
children did not always treat him aright. Joseph was mourned as dead.
Benjamin was taken from him to Egypt. He had cares and burdens, as all
men must have them, until life's end. But the thought of God became
increasingly precious to him year by year; his spirit sweetened and
softened; his memory was full of the loving kindnesses of God, and his
hope laid hold on a blessed future. Down in Egypt as he draws nigh to
death he triumphantly speaks of "God, before whom my fathers, Abraham
and Isaac, did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this
day, and the Angel which redeemed me from all evil." He died a man of
God, honored in his day, and honored since--a man who had such faith in
the promises that he charged Joseph to carry his body to the Holy Land
and bury it there where the Christ was to come. He started life with
most unfortunate traits of character and in most unfortunate
surroundings of environment, but he came off a victor, not a perfect
man, but a successful man, a man whom we may well praise, a man who
preserved the faith and blessed the world, and all because he made a
right use of his best hours.
Where the highest thoughts are in the air, where the holiest persons
gather, where the loftiest influences of God's Holy Spirit breathe,
there we do well to go. There we do well to stay. Any voice that calls
us nearer God should be followed, any motion of our heart toward duty
should be obeyed. God is sure to send us, one and all, special hours in
which His wishes are clear to our understandings and His promises are
reassuring to our wills. Those are the golden hours of existence. Even
God can provide no better. If we use these best hours aright, our whole
moral nature is changed, and the weakest of us becomes a mighty "prince
of God."
GIVING OUR BEST TO GOD.