Part 5

Fathers toil that they may give their children wealth and all that it will buy. They slave in offices, wear out their health, and give up most of the refining and elevating influences of life. And the children squander as fast as they can the money that has come to them so easily, in ways that only do them harm; in ways that take energy and will and purpose out of them; or rather, that never give these virtues an opportunity to develop. A few years ago much attention was directed to an epigrammatic remark of Mr. Roosevelt's in regard to the American multi-millionaire, "whose son is a fool and whose daughter a foreign princess." The gratification of every want without effort on the part of the individual must breed selfishness and a whole train of attendant evils. Indeed, many young people whose parents are far from wealthy grow up with utterly selfish ideas about money and little knowledge of its true use and value.

I might speak of many more things which indulgent parents often wish for their children, but perhaps they may all be summed up in one phrase--easy lives. They want no rough winds to blow on their beloved ones; for them no dusty roads, or stony paths, or rugged heights to climb. They must walk in sunshine on beds of flowers. For the children of others the toil, the hardship, the suffering; for their own a life of luxurious ease.

But what gift or blessing does St. Paul ask for the young man so dear to him? An easy, luxurious life? How the great apostle would have scorned such a thought! Instead he asks that the youth may learn how to endure hardness.

"Hardness" in our lives is not likely to be mainly physical hardship, perhaps not that at all, though this kind of endurance was one of the elements that contributed to St. Paul's greatness. He tells us that he had been beaten with rods, that he had been stoned, had suffered shipwreck, cold, hunger, and nakedness. Nothing daunted him, no obstacle was to him insurmountable, he feared naught, even death itself. The greatness of his work is due to his remarkable physical endurance as well as to his superb moral courage. In comparison with him how weak and useless must even the best of us seem to ourselves! Though we may never be called upon to endure dangers or privations, can we not see what a splendid thing it is, this independence of physical comfort, this fearlessness, this dependence upon inward resources rather than upon outward support? And yet how many people we know whose day is spoiled if the morning meal is not to their taste, whose spirits sink with cloudy weather, whose physical comfort or discomfort largely governs disposition and conduct! Surely a quality which it is worth the while of young people to cultivate is physical "hardness"--ability to endure discomfort, indifference to luxury and ease, independence of outward conditions.

But for most of us there is another kind of "enduring hardness" which is even more important. It is learning to do without the things we cannot or ought not to have, whatever they may be, and to derive happiness from the things which we can have. It is learning to do as a matter of course the difficult and the disagreeable things that ought to be done. There is not one of us who does not long for some unattainable thing. Yet if it is not for us, we should turn to what we have, or can have, and make the best of that.

Suppose that circumstances refuse to allow you to surround yourself with the friends you love best or to live after the manner that would most please you,--and this will happen to many after school days are over,--what is there left but to make the very most of the friends whose companionship you have and to find the best in the circumstances which surround you? And if you cannot choose the kind of life you dream would be best for you, in the place where you feel that you could be happiest, remember that success or failure in life for you will depend upon your power to adapt yourself to your environment and to draw forth, from every inevitable combination of circumstances, new material for growth. This is, in a very high sense, "enduring hardness." Suppose you have been making cherished plans for the future and all at once they are torn to shreds. What then? Can you pick up the threads of your life, change the pattern, but still weave something beautiful with them? And can you do it--not with cold and stoic fortitude, but cheerfully and serenely? If so, that is "enduring hardness" in the same spirit in which St. Paul endured it.

It is well for us sometimes to imagine ourselves stripped of all these external props to happiness, such as money, position, and influential friends, and to ask ourselves what kind of a life we could make without them. It is then that we find out what we are really worth. We all believe--though we usually act as if we did not believe it--that to build up a strong and noble character is the chief end and aim of life. But how seldom, unless forced by circumstance, do we give ourselves the opportunity of acquiring those virtues which more than any others make for high character! Nothing is so good for the development of character as struggle, suffering, hardness.

I remember a letter that I received recently from a young woman of my acquaintance. The only daughter of wealthy parents, she had enjoyed every advantage and comfort of life and she knew that it was likely she would continue to have them. This very fact gave her anxiety, and she wrote, "What can we, who are born to luxury, do to offset the lack of struggle?" She did well to be anxious. There must be something to counterbalance this lack, yet how few who are born to wealth realize it!

I often say to myself, as I think of some aimless, indolent, yet really able girl, "What a blessing it would be if she were thrown upon her own resources and forced to earn her own living!" Of another, too pleasure-loving, lacking in earnestness and depth of character, I regretfully say, "I am afraid nothing will touch her or wake her up to the realities of life until some great grief comes to her." What a pity to be able to learn one's lesson only at such great cost!

When Adoniram Judson, about to go to India as one of the group of our earliest foreign missionaries a little over one hundred years ago, sought in marriage the hand of Ann Hasseltine, of Bradford, he wrote as follows to her father:--

"I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter early in the spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, persecution, and perhaps a violent death."

A remarkable letter, indeed! And Adoniram Judson and Ann, his wife, did suffer most of the hardships predicted. But if they had not, those lands which sat in darkness would not have seen a great light. The blessings of civilization and of Christianity would not have spread to the remotest parts of the earth as they have, unless there had been some cast in heroic mould who were ready to take their lives in their hands and if need be pay the last full measure of devotion.

The habit of having everything one wants and of doing all one desires to do is a fatal habit and never should be formed at any age, especially in youth. Instead, cultivate independence of luxury and ease and learn the joy that St. Paul felt in knowing that he had within himself the power to meet and cope with whatever difficulties, obstacles, or dangers life might have in store for him.

In this thought of Phillips Brooks we find a striking likeness to the earnest message of St. Paul to Timothy:--

"Do not pray for easy lives! Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks! Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come in you by the grace of God."

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Footnote 2:

Certain disputed points regarding the authorship of the Epistles to Timothy and other critical questions connected with these books are not pertinent here.

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE

In the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes occur some verses which have suggested the subject of this talk. They illustrate a certain balance or rhythm in nature and in life.

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven;

"A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

"A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance."

These words are used by the author, not so much to illustrate the rhythm of life as its monotony. He is not admiring the wonderful harmony which meets us in nature wherever we turn, so much as he is lamenting that there is nothing new in nature or in human life. The same things recur over and over again. The sun rises in the morning only to go down again in the evening, and the same process will be repeated through endless to-morrows. "The rivers all run into the sea, yet the sea is not full." "That which hath been is what shall be." Man is born, laughs and labors and weeps, and when his little life is ended, dies. This has been the history of countless multitudes and it will be the history of countless multitudes to come. There is nothing new under the sun.

Written as this book was at the darkest hour of Hebrew history, at a time of oppression and unrest, it is a sad book. The writer, a serious and earnest-minded man, strives nobly to discover light for himself and his race, but the world looks dark. Yet he is a brave and devout soul, and his book, so full of stimulus to high endeavor, ought to be read more widely than it is.

The words I have quoted may well start several different trains of thought. One of these I will suggest. There is nothing new under the sun, it is true; but we do not need anything new. The same old things we have always had are just what we need and shall always need; as springtime and harvest, day and night, work and rest. In the regular recurrence of these great and necessary things is found the rhythm of life in accordance with which we live and must live. May we learn something from nature's ways that will help us to make our lives strong? I think so.

Have you ever thought of rhythm in nature? Here there is no monotony, but constant and beneficent change. Nothing, perhaps, is quite so blessed as the sunshine, yet eternal day would be almost as bad as eternal night. How our tired eyes would long for the calm and restful darkness! We love the springtime and the warm days and the green growing things; but how much more we love them because they follow cold and snow, leafless trees and bare earth!

Nowhere do we find the rhythm of nature better illustrated than in our bodies, these wonderful machines only partially under our control. Sleeping and waking, the contraction and extension of the muscles, the inhalation and exhalation of the breath are a few of the many examples. The most important of all the activities of the body, the systole and diastole of the heart, Nature keeps within her own control, and gives alternate work and rest to that vital organ, as if to say that when it comes to a matter of life and death, man cannot be trusted to his own keeping. Fortunate it is that this is so, for if it rested with us to decide when they should work and when rest, some eager, ambitious hearts would beat themselves to death ere life had well begun.