Chapter 5 No.5

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.

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The Need of Retaining the Best Wisdom.

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