How to Be Contented

“If we can not bring our means to our minds, then let us try to bring our minds to our means.” That is an old Puritan minister’s version of Paul’s cheerful message to his Philippian brethren: “1 have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.” The great apostle was not content to be in a low spiritual state, and therefore he pressed toward the goal of a higher spiritual life every day. But he was content to be where his Master put him, to bear all the hard knocks and endure all the rough usage that he had to encounter in the path of duty. Paul’s spirit was like a watch. You may carry it up and down with you, and shake it hither and thither; but the mainspring is not put out of order, nor do the wheels lose their regular motion. Paul was knocked about with cruel treat- 124 mcnt and fierce persecutions; but the mainspring of love for Jesus was not broken in his heart, and the wheels of his consecrated activity was undisturbed.

Christian contentment is the cheerful acquiescence of the soul to the will of God in all conditions and under all weathers. It is the habit of the mind, just as faith is the habit of a healthy Christian, and benevolence is the habit of a philanthropist. Like faith it grows by practice, and, like faith, it is learned from God’s Word, and is matured by experience. The great, brave apostle learned it where he learned Christ, and he learned it from Christ, and in a pretty severe and costly school. Like every precious thing, we must pay the price for it. And, like most precious things, it is quite too rare, and the thoroughly contented people are in the minority. It is not every young minister who is satisfied to preach Jesus to a hundred new settlers in a frontier log church, or to a few hundreds of poor children in the mission-school of the slums; yet, unless he is willing to be right there 125 and to do just that thing, his Master will sooner put him down lower than say, “Come up higher.” We may overrate this grace, but it seems to us that genuine contentment, that is ready to let God have his own way, to let God put us where he chooses, even though the furnace be hot, is more scarce than it ought to be. He or she has attained to it who has learned to say, under disappointments the most bitter, and under trials which give the last turn to the screw and make the blood start, “Thy will, O God, be done!”

This style of contentment is not reserved for sublime occasions; it is visible in all the little, unnumbered events of everyday life. It is patient, not only under death strokes, but under petty vexations and wounding words and neglects; it does not worry over hard seats or boring visitors or stupid servants or a crying child. It manages to be happy in a small house when it can not afford a three-story mansion. So rich is it in God’s promises and the sweet smiles of the Master and a good title to heaven, that 126 it does not mind wearing a coarse coat and to trudge on foot toward the better country. It wears the herb called “heart’s-ease” in its bosom; it finds a cool spring to drink of in the lowliest vales of life, and catches grand outlooks from the summit of every steep hill it climbs. As it treads along its patient path it chants John Bunyan’s quaint, simple song:

*T am content with what I have,

Be it little or much; And, Lord, contentment still I crave

Because thou blessest such;
Fullness to me a burthen is,

As I go on pilgrimage.
Here little, and hereafter bliss,

Is best from age to age.”

Would to God we were all more contented with our mercies and more discontented with ourselves! It is the trying to live on external conditions that makes a Christian restless and wretched. A soul at peace with God and itself, a soul that delights in making other people happy, can sleep sweetly, like the old-time patriarch, with a stone for a pillow. 127