_CONTENTMENT._
"Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in
whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be
abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am
instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to
suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth
me."--Philippians iv. 11-14.
My purpose is to define and to recommend the Christian virtue of
contentment. I shall endeavour to show that its acquirement is a duty,
and that its possession is a joy; but I shall also have to show that
as a duty it is not practicable, and that as a joy it is not
attainable, except on Christian grounds. I trust that all this will be
made abundantly clear by the following observations.
I. Let us glance at the character of the man whose words are now
before us. There is in the words the ring of a high moral tone which
is irresistibly attractive. Yet the effect they produce upon us must
depend very much upon the kind of man who wrote them, and the
condition or conditions of life through which he had to pass.
We should be pained by such words as these if they came from the lips
of a man whom the world would consider prosperous. When the conditions
of a man's life are easy and comfortable, to make a profession of
contentment would be an abuse both of language and of sentiment. Such
a case is not one for content, but for devout and hearty gratitude
mingled with a sense of humiliation under the thought, which ought to
be present to every such man, that he deserves no more than others,
though God gives him more than many others possess.
We should think sadly of these words if they came from a stoical man.
Contentment is not the listlessness of indifference. It is
self-conscious, and finds in itself its own joy. Indifference is
loss--deterioration. It implies the blunting of sensibility. The heart
that is callous to grief is closed against gladness also.
We should pity the man who uttered these words from mere weakness of
character, devoid of aspiration, enthusiasm, or resolve. In his case,
content would be mere good-for-nothingness. The world is full of
uncomplaining men and women who do not cry, not because they are
content, but because they are spiritless, and consequently because
they are crushed down and hopeless.
There are other circumstances which would disparage contentment. We
will not mention them now; they will be suggested as we proceed.
Now Paul was every way the kind of man to give the noblest meaning to
the words we are considering. His whole constitution, make, rendered
him susceptible of the highest earthly enjoyment. Mentally, morally,
and socially, he was prepared to accept and to appreciate the best
that this world could offer to him. He had great powers of thought,
reflection, imagination, and will. He had great tenderness and
generosity of heart. Proofs abound that his social instincts were full
of life and strength. He was pre-eminently a man to be touched by
kindness or unkindness, by gratitude or ingratitude, by love or
hatred.
And what was his experience? It was not the one-sided experience of a
man who has known only one condition in life. On the contrary, he had
been familiar with almost the highest and the lowest. On the one hand,
he had enjoyed the love, and the tender, fervent gratitude, of many of
his converts; and on the other hand, he could speak of the bad
conduct, the ingratitude, and the vexatious opposition of others. He
had the manifold sorrows of a martyr's life of bonds, imprisonments,
scourgings, and stonings, to which must be added the prospect of a
martyr's death. He was not a man of one kind of experience only, to
which habit had accustomed him. He had known the terrible alternations
of life, and had learned to be content under them all. "I know both
how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all
things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to
abound and to suffer need."
Moreover, Paul was a man of prodigious activity. Contentment is easy
to a sluggish nature, but it must have been a difficult acquirement to
one in whom brain, heart, hands, and all the powers of life were
continually on the move. Couple with this incessancy of action the
loftiness and ardour of his aspirations. He was not only capable of an
intense enthusiasm in any work which he took in hand, but his whole
impulse was an energetic straining forward and upward.
These considerations give something of _marvellousness_ to the
contentment which the apostle here avows for himself; and they suggest
that it must have rested on some underlying conviction--some
established condition of soul which it is desirable for us to discover
and identify.
The language he uses is in the utmost degree significant. There is no
haste about it, nor is there any exaggeration. It is the expression of
the result of a severe and protracted mental and moral training, under
the influence of the Spirit of God. "I have _learned_." The lesson has
been a difficult one, but I have mastered it. "_I_ have learned." The
"I" is emphatic. "Whether others have learned the lesson or not, _I_
have learned it." The apostle does not speak either hesitatingly or
slightingly of his attainment. Thus, when he says, "I know both how to
be abased, and how to abound," he goes on to use a word which means,
literally, "I have been taught the secret," "I have been initiated
into the mysteries"--both of satisfaction and of hunger, both of
plenty and of want. Such language implies that his contentment was one
which had not been easily acquired. He had not passed into it by a
single step only. I do not suppose the process was a very slow one,
but it _was_ a process. The lesson had to be spelt out, word by word,
often syllable by syllable, perhaps sometimes with tearful eyes and a
bleeding heart. And so these words are a record of attainment such as
this world cannot snatch. The man who could so speak of himself was in
possession of the best knowledge. He had graduated and taken honours
in the highest university.
II. The practical importance of this lesson of contentment must be
obvious to all. Two considerations will enable us to see its
importance clearly.
1. Our earthly life is a scene of change. No position is secured to
any of us in this world, nor is it in the power of any of us to remain
always, and safe from molestation, in a coveted state of action, or of
existence, or of enjoyment. Some men never get into a state of
positive happiness, and, in the experience of many, the transitions
from high to low positions are startling, romantic, painful,
mysterious. Events which men call accidents are constantly changing
the aspects of things, and certainly the most marked characteristic of
our life is vicissitude. This is a truth which is known and recognized
by all, and possibly it is one which is felt acutely by not a few who
are here at this time.
2. The changes to which we are exposed are temptations to disquietude
of heart, and consequently to discontent. This is true in a peculiar
sense of those who look only to the present world for satisfaction,
but it is also true to a certain extent of the Christian. And why?
Partly because he is seldom perfectly free from unworldliness of
desire and of hope; partly because he does not always read aright the
meaning of his discipline, and keep in mind the truth that because it
is Divine it must be always wise and good; and partly because he looks
too much to "second causes," not only in disappointment and sorrow,
but also in success and joy, forgetting the hand and the purpose of
God.
So that a Christian who has passed through the numerous and various
vicissitudes of life, and whose faith, like a tree in successive
storms, has gained strength from every blast--whose hopes have
brightened while the clouds of life were lowering, and whose
experience by discipline has become enlightened, rich, and mature--is
one of the noblest, though, alas! one of the rarest, sights in the
world. Such a man was Paul in a pre-eminent degree. Reverses did not
sour him. He had often to contend against the hostile hand of his
fellow man, but persecution did not embitter him. He could retain
through all his absorbing interest in the salvation of human souls and
in the glory of God. His troubles did not shut him up in himself. He
did not always talk about them, as though he wanted everybody to pity
and help him; on the contrary, he was a peculiarly brave and joyful
man. He looked upon joy not simply as a possibility, nor simply as a
privilege, but as a duty, the neglect of which by a Christian was
shameful. He knew that whatever of earthly good might slip away from
him, or be snatched away, there was something immeasurably better
which was his for ever--God, Christ, immortality, heaven. "Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... Nay,
in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved
us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to
separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
III. What has been said will help us to form a true idea of the state
of mind which the apostle here avows for himself, and in doing so to
avoid some mistakes. We have seen that contentment is neither
stoicism, nor want of interest in life nor sluggishness of
temperament, nor weakness of character. We further say, that Paul does
not mean that he considers all conditions in life alike desirable,
that there is nothing to choose between them, that it is altogether
immaterial whether men be well or ill, strong or weak, rich or poor,
high or low, masters or slaves. Paul was not insensible to the
advantages of outward comfort, or to the disadvantages of poverty. Nor
does he mean to teach that a Christian may not use all means which are
intrinsically legitimate and right for improving his condition, in so
far as he has those means at his command, or the possibility of
obtaining them. What he means is that his happiness is not essentially
dependent on external circumstances. An illustration of Solomon's
words, "A good man is satisfied from himself," he carries within him
everywhere the elements of his own well-being. So that being the man
he is, being the man God has made him to be, being the man whom the
Holy Spirit is fashioning by His grace, through the instrumentality of
the discipline of life, with a hope that does not make him ashamed,
because he has the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy
Ghost given unto him--he is happy enough even in the midst of
privations and difficulties. His contentment is not indifference to
his work, but industrious fidelity. It is not the narcotizing of
aspiration; for a man may ardently aspire, and yet be content until it
is time to rise. Still less is it complacency with his own moral and
spiritual condition, or with that of the world around him; for he says
that he "forgets the things that are behind, and reaches forth to the
things that are before," and he "greatly longs after men in the bowels
of Jesus Christ." But with all his appreciation of life's comforts,
with all his aspirations after personal perfection, and with all his
longings to be useful in his day, he is not disconcerted by
difficulties and disadvantages;--he has learned in whatsoever state he
is, therewith to be content.
We must guard ourselves, however, from applying this example of
contentment to troubles of our own making. God entrusts every man,
more or less, with the means of blessing himself, and of maintaining
his own honour among his fellow men. But by sin, or by mistakes of
conduct arising from a culpable carelessness, we may lose our position
of advantage; and when we do so, we are not entitled to the comfort
arising from the thought that, as all events are in God's hands, we
must just take things as they come, and be satisfied! The sin which
has brought mischief must be deplored; its consequences must be
accepted as a Divine correction, and Divine help must be sought so
that the chastisement may be sanctified. And if on the lower ground we
become less worldly, holier, and more Christ-like, God will have the
greater glory and will give the deeper peace.
IV. And now for the secret of the apostle's contentment, and the
lessons that we are to learn therefrom for ourselves. Paul says, "I
can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." The language
is peculiar; what does it mean? It means that, in whatsoever condition
he might be, he had Christ for a Helper and a Friend; that Christ's
companionship with him was constant, full, tender; that His sympathy
was great, minute, comprehensive, cheering, exalting, all-sufficient.
So complete was his identification with Christ that he tells these
Philippians that living or dying he was Christ's. But how did this
come about? Once he persecuted the Christ whom he now glorifies. And
even now his happiness has nothing of the _miraculous_ in it. It does
not belong to him merely as an apostle, or in the same way as his
"inspiration" or other special, supernatural gifts with which he is
endowed. It is the work of God's grace--grace imparted to him through
the same channels along which it may come to us. The secret is this:
Paul was a Christian--a converted, regenerated man, a believer in
Christ, under the influence of the Holy Ghost; and the result was
accomplished by such simple means as faith and hope and prayer.
Paul had felt, as we all feel, that there is in man a soul as well as
a body, an eternal life as well as a temporal. He had also felt, as we
all feel, that he was a sinner, condemned and hopeless before that
holy law which he had broken, and the judgment of which he must one
day meet. But, in obedience to the message of the gospel, he had
accepted Christ as his Saviour, through whom he had received the
forgiveness of sins, Divine sonship, and sanctifying grace. So that he
had to regard himself as henceforth under training for heaven, the
training administered by a Divine hand. He knew that the present life,
with all its changes, was the thing that was wanted for his spiritual
education, that nothing was accidental, that no changes were chances,
and that all changes made up one great organized system of discipline,
in which "all things were working together for good." Thus he could
cherish in his heart a contentment which would cover all his
experiences. There are ills which certain men can bear patiently, but
a Christian contentment learns to bear all ills cheerfully;
unmurmuring and acquiescent when sorrows multiply, and when mercies
one by one are taken away.
This contentment under Christian conditions is a duty, not perhaps of
very easy attainment--Paul himself does not say that it is that--but
it is a duty, as being the natural fruit of faith and trust. Every
Christian should be able to say:
I will not cloud the present with the past,
Nor borrow shadows from a future sky:
'Tis in the present that my lot is cast,
And ever will be through eternity.
"Sufficient to the day the present ill,"
Was kindly utter'd by a heavenly Voice,
And one inspired to tell his Master's will
Hath bid us alway in the Lord rejoice.