Verse 10
Strength of Character
The special object of all the training and discipline through which we pass in life is the increase of strength. There are some things which we do, not so much for their own sake as for the sake of their strengthening effect upon the body, mind, or the character. No man goes through gymnastic exercises, for example, merely for their own sake. I do not suppose that any man plays with the dumb-bells simply because he finds in such play amusement enough to satisfy his idea of pleasure. Why, then, does a man pass through gymnastic engagements and exercises? It is to harden himself, to train his body, his muscles, that he may become agile, active, capable of walking, running, enduring, as the case may be. The object is not in the thing itself; it lies beyond the exercises. He says, "For every spin I have at these things I feel more muscular, more active, and better able to endure the fatigues of the day." So, also, there is much which a child learns at school, which he, in all probability, forgets; yet the very act of learning it is itself an advantage. A child may not be able seven years hence to tell you much about the technicality of the education through which he passed at school, yet there will be left in the child's mind and character a strength which nothing could have given but the trial and discipline through which he passed during his school-days. A father has sometimes said, "Why should this boy of mine learn Latin, when he is going into trade? he will have no occasion then for the Latin language. A little good sound grammatical English will answer all the purpose of his engagements in life; why should I put myself to the trouble of teaching him a dead language?" Not for the sake of the Latin; in all probability, by the time he has been three years away from school he will be utterly unable to quote one rule in Latin syntax. This is more than probable. Probably many of us, who have been tossed about a good deal in the world, would find it difficult to quote anything of the kind; yet the getting of it, the drill we went through in our Latin exercises, has left upon us a beneficial effect. We cannot explain it; we cannot tell the measure thereof; but there has been an influence at work in the mind, strengthening and quickening us, so that we are now in utter forgetfulness, it may be, of all scholastic and technical Latin able to look on subjects with a robuster intellect and keener eye than we otherwise could have done. The boy who is not very fond of doing much work at school says, "Why should I commit 'Paradise Lost' to memory, when I am only going to be a clerk in a warehouse? What can I do with 'Paradise Lost'? I am invited to commit the whole of the books to memory, and to repeat them aloud. What possible use can such an exercise as that serve in my case?" I answer frankly: "Probably, as a clerk in a warehouse, you will never meet persons who will judge of your abilities by the number of quotations you make from any book in 'Paradise Lost'; probably you will be able to get on in the world and make a fortune without ever quoting a solitary argument that Milton ever set himself to discuss in verse. Yet it will be an advantage to you as a clerk in a warehouse to commit Milton's 'Paradise Lost' to memory." "How so?" "Because it will be a tax upon your attention; it will compel you to read carefully; it will cultivate, develop, strengthen the memory; and though you may never have occasion to quote it, yet the intellectual exercise through which you have passed will give you strength which you may bring to bear upon what may be called the soberer and graver paths and pursuits of after life." So in all these things we are undergoing preparation. The things themselves, strictly looked at, may be of very little use to us; but they leave behind them influences which will tell in the whole scheme and tone of our after life.
So it is, then, in all the higher concerns of being! The events that are passing around us are to be studied in their moral bearings. Are you suffering to-day? If you rightly accept your suffering, it will prepare you to bear the still keener agonies that are coming to-morrow. The little worries and vexations of daily experience are to prepare us for the martyrdoms and the tragedies which lie beyond. There is no particular object to be served, may be, in the special affliction which you are now undergoing; it looks to you like mere worry, the thing you might have been spared at all events. You say, "I could lay down this right hand upon the block, and have it struck off by the axe of the executioner; something of that kind I should like to do. But to be bitten by these mosquitoes, and to be worried and fretted and chafed by the ten thousand little ills of everyday experience, oh! this is the thing I cannot submit to" not knowing that all these so-called little taxations, these visitations of anxiety and care, which are comparatively insignificant, are to be accepted as a preparation for higher engagements, for more energetic service, for more patient endurance. These things are educational. I know that we may go through them without learning anything from them; or we may so accept them that when the next great trial comes we shall be by so much the better prepared to bear it, and the better qualified to find honey in unexpected places, and joy in storm and darkness and trouble.
With what familiarity the writer of the text speaks of "the day of adversity"! It is not introduced with explanatory words; he does not speak of it as if it were a day for a particular latitude; he does not attach a marginal note, saying, "Probably this will not be known beyond a certain line of longitude, and therefore I wish to explain that by the day of adversity I mean so and so." No; he speaks of the day of adversity as if it needed no introduction, no hint, as if it were part of the universal language. He proceeds upon the assumption that he has only to name the day to be instantly understood by every living man under the sun. And so it is. Yet we see so many youthful, bright, glowing faces around us! So it is: every life has its day of adversity. Some lives are one long day of trial. There seems in some lives to be a great preponderance of depression, difficulty, disappointment, sorrow, pain; so that a streak of blue sky brings laughter to the face and gladness to the eye, it comes as an astonishment, as a surprise upon the beholder. The strongest of us, with the merriest and loudest laugh, has his bitter hours, his experience of keen pain and agony; and though he may not show all, yet he could, were he to take us into his confidence, tell us that the element of tragedy mingles strangely with that apparently mirthful and joyous life of his. It is, then, in the day of adversity that a man's character is tested. We do not know what we are until we have fallen into diverse temptations. You point out to me a particular building, and say, "Does not that look strong, beautiful? is it not well-proportioned architecturally? is it not most beautifully decorated?" I say, "So it is, but I cannot pronounce any further opinion upon it till I see how it bears up when the whirlwind gets hold of it." The house looks well, yes; but I shall defer my judgment until the wind blows and the rain falls and the floods come, and they all conspire and beat upon that house, then I shall know what it is. The paint is fresh and well laid, but what if the building rot at the foundations? It is the day of adversity that tests us; it is affliction that assails us and discovers whether we are gold or not, whether we be not red-lead with a little silver and a good deal of gilding. The day of adversity is the acid that tests us, the aquafortis that bites down through the surface. Trial is the force that gets hold of us and reveals us to ourselves. It says nothing to us, but just lays us before our own vision that we may form our own conclusions. Many a man promises well when there is no fear or difficulty at hand, who cuts up but badly in the time of distress and pain. Many a man speaks you fairly, but what will he do when the clouds gather and the storms break upon your fortunes? Young man, you don't know yourself, you don't know what life is until you have been ploughed up in your heart, till your affections have been torn, till your hopes have been turned into disappointment, until the wine of your supposed joy has turned to bitterness in your mouth. You will not be wise in these things till you have encountered the day of adversity.
Adversity makes or mars a man. A man is either the better or the worse for the trial through which he has passed. Afflictions, trials, temptations, either make a man worse or they make him better; they throw him down deeper, nearer the pit, or they lift him up nearer God; they either harden his heart, or they make the heart mellow, tender, sensitive, sympathetic. But rest assured of this, that no man knows himself until he has been caught in the storm, until he has been tried in the fire, until he has passed through the discipline of manifold temptations. Let us be gentle with one another whilst we are undergoing the process. It is one thing to stand off from the furnace and see a brother in it, and to be ourselves undergoing the trial of flame. Do not let us be impatient with our brother who is being tried. Give him time, that he may get his breath again; do not mock his tears. He says, "I know it looks unmanly to be seen in this way." He who can stoop gracefully to such unmanliness will rise to be a king! This is the result of my pastoral observation. I have watched the ways of men; up many a rickety staircase have I climbed to see the poor in their sorrow and pain and dying; beside the bed of many a rich man have I stood in his last spasms and convulsions. I know what life is a little, therefore. And this taking the whole breadth of a lifetime, not looking at this particular case or at that, but taking the great average of human experience this is my testimony: That Christianity does sustain and comfort and refine men beyond all other influences. It enables them to see that labour itself is rest, and pain is sweet, when accepted in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ It gives elevation to suffering, a new meaning to dark providences and painful visitations; and where it does not lift a man up to the point of praise and triumph it enables him to be quiet as a weaned child, to be submissive, to fall into his Father's hands, offering all prayers in one, all desires in one grand liturgy, "Thy will be done"! I have seen a man suffer until his suffering has actually tormented me. It has been a pain to myself. I have called upon him, from time to time, during a period of five years; I have heard his moanings and his complaints; and I have heard him mingle all the utterances of his sufferings with praises and with prayers and with hopes which I dare not re-echo. I have stood in silence as I have heard him I had not been in the same agony, I had not caught that highest lesson of human experience I wondered at his heroism, and felt myself but a craven and a coward! Christianity does sustain and does comfort men in the time of affliction.
An infidel lecturer was explaining his view, his creed, and his method of looking at things; and in concluding his discourse he told his audience that he was quite willing to answer any question that should be put, or any contrary statement that should be made. Whereupon a poor woman, bent and tottering upon a staff, came to the platform, and there was a rustle in the audience as though this poor creature was demented and had utterly forgotten herself. But with a true, strong, yet feminine voice she said: "Mr. Chairman, I have heard the lecture. Twenty years ago I was left a widow with eight children; I had not a crust in the house, I had nothing in the world that was worth calling my own; I may say that I was in a friendless condition. I was then converted by the preaching of the gospel; I was enabled to give my heart to God, through Jesus Christ, his Son; the promises of the Scriptures have been very sweet and precious to me; I have been able to give all my children a bit of schooling; I have never known them to want; we have had but little, but that little has been blessed to us. Now, Mr. Lecturer, what have your principles done for you?" A right challenge! "That," said he, "is not the question." "But," she said, tapping her staff on the platform, "it is the question. What have your principles done for you?" The woman had had a day of adversity; she had tried Christianity in the time of darkness, poverty, pain, and desolation, and Christianity had sustained and comforted her; and now that she heard an enemy attempting to tear it in pieces, she had a right to ask what his principles had done for him. Yes, we must wait till that day comes, the day of adversity, of cloud, of storm, and the shaking of things. Then we shall know what men's principles have done for them. It is one thing to chatter a blasphemous argument; and another to live a true, profound, beautiful and useful life!
Two men sustaining a great loss in business, the one a Christian and the other an atheist, the Christian man ought to bear his loss very differently from the way in which the atheist bears his. The atheist may have a louder Ha, ha! he may have a more defiant tone; he may stand in some rougher attitude; but the Christian will be more quiet and devout. He will have his pain; he will feel what it is to be crushed in heart; and yet under it all he will know that the everlasting arms are there, and that he is called upon, in the time of loss and desolateness, to glorify the Master whose name he bears.
Now it is here that we as Christian men can show what Christianity has done for us. But if we be as peevish, as restless, as excitable, as men who have no religious faith, what is our faith worth? It we be loud in our reproaches and complaints, in our weakness and moanings, and if we be hardly articulate in our praises and supplications, and utterances of loyalty, what is our faith worth? It is not easy to leave your house and go out into the cold streets, to give up everything; it is not easy, I say; I do not expect a Christian believer to do all this as if it cost him nothing. There will be a wrench, a time of pain, a crisis almost intolerable; and yet, under the pressure of all these contrary and difficult events, there will be a spirit of sweet submission, of deep religious confidence, that where right has been done, if it has ended in failure, joy will assuredly come after a nighttime of weeping. I would preach this to all who need it. Things have gone wrong with some of you, they have gone awry; though you have risen early, sat up late, and schemed and planned and racked your brain, so as to do that which was right towards both God and man, yet things have gone contrary with you, and the day of adversity has set in with all cloudiness and coldness upon your life. It is now you are to show the value of your faith, the value of your prayerfulness; it is now that you are to glorify God. This is the day of your martyrdom; men are watching you; and if out of the darkness of your present obscurity, and the pain of your present adversity, they hear a low, soft, sweet voice of resignation and prayer and praise, they will be constrained to say, "Truly this man is near to God."
Think what it is to faint as a Christian. It is to distrust God. Circumstances are contrary, winds seem to be beating upon us from all points of the compass, the sea is very rough and the vessel is all but unmanageable, and we faint. What does it mean? Our fainting means that we have lost somewhat of our old confidence in God. We cannot at least sit down and say, "It will be right yet, the sea is God's, the boat is mine; I myself am his; he has redeemed me by the precious blood of his Son; he will not cast me away, or if he do cast me away it will be that he may find me again; he will be sowing me as a farmer sows his seed, that I may bring forth fruit to his honour and his glory." We cannot triumph, perhaps, in our desolation; in our friendlessness and poverty we cannot utter the pean of victory; but we can say, though it be with a sob and a terrible spasm of grief, "Thy will be done!" A man who says that with his heart when the wolf is at the door, when there is no fire in the grate, no bread in the cupboard, no money in the bank, no friends about him, has spoken all the lessons that the Cross of Christ can teach the heart of man!
Will you faint in the day of adversity? Then you will be unlike the men who have made history glorious by their much-enduring, uncomplaining heroism. Job was one. He said, when things were breaking to pieces before him, when the earth was being dried up, when the very footprints of his children were being blown out by the cold, cruel wind, when all the earth was to him one gigantic graveyard, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" He did not faint in the day of adversity. Habakkuk came up afterwards and said, "Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation." He was prepared for the day of adversity. With what preparation was he qualified? With a deeply religious preparation. Nothing can break through the darkness of such days but the light of divine truth; nothing can heal such wounds but the balm of the grace of the Cross of Christ. Have there been no Christian heroes? Job and Habakkuk were Old Testament men. Are there not men in the New Testament who hold an equally high tone and an equally noble attitude? Yes. And Paul shall represent them. When they told Paul that the day of adversity was at hand, that bonds and imprisonments awaited him in every city, that every step he took was a step into danger, he said, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus." That was his tone in the day of adversity. When he was plagued with a thorn in the flesh, when his nights and days were but experiences of pain, and he cried mightily unto the Lord for the removal of his torment, and God said unto him, "My grace is sufficient for thee," he was quieted like a child in his father's arms. He spoke no more about the day of adversity, but the day of prayer and renewed consecration. As for the grand old men that come up from olden time, behold their port! "They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth!" See how they deported themselves in the day of adversity! We are in this great succession. They are no medium men who are in front; it is over no common dust that our pathway lies; we set our feet in the footprints of the giants, and we are to follow them as they followed Christ Yes, it was the Saviour who showed us how to act in the day of adversity, in Gethsemane pains, in Gethsemane darkness; it was he who taught us that all-including prayer, "Thy will be done!" That was the Lord's prayer. That other prayer of his was a prayer that children may learn; but this is a prayer that consecrates Gethsemane for ever! This should be the first prayer that a man learns; and when he has learned that prayer thoroughly, the next thing to learn is the song of heaven! God grant that when the battle is set, and the foe comes upon us in the fierceness of his wrath, we may be more than conquerors through him that loved us!
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