A Bitter but Healthful Morsel

Whoso loveth instruction, lovcth knowledge; but he that hateth reproof is brutish.” — xii 1.

REPROOF is not pleasant to nature. We may learn to value it for its results, but it never will be sweet to our taste; at the best it is a bitter morsel. The difference between a wise man and a fool is, not that one likes and the other loathes it; both dislike it, but the fool casts away the precious because it is unpalatable, and the wise man accepts the unpalatable because it is precious. It is brutish in a man to act merely according to the impulse of sense. We are not so foolish when the health of our bodies is at stake. When we were children, indeed, if left to ourselves, we would have swallowed greedily the gilded sweetmeat that sickened us, and thrown away the bitter medicine which was fitted to purge disease from the channels of life; but when we became men, we put these childish things conclusively away. Day by day, in thousands of instances that concern this life, we accept the bitter because it is salutary, and reject the sweet because it destroys. Would that we were equally wise for higher interests! “I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me” (1 Kings xxii. 8): there, in the person of that ancient Israelitish king, is humanity in the lump and without disguise. Grown men lick flattery in because it is sweet, and refuse faithful reproof because it is unpleasant. The best of us has much to learn here: and yet we think that, by pains and prayer, Christians might make large and rapid progress in this department. No advancement will be attained without particular and painstaking trial; but such trial will not be labour lost. Paul reached his high attainments not by an easy flight through the air, but by many toilsome steps on the weary ground: smaller men need not expect to find a royal road to spiritual perfection, “Herein do I exercise myself,” he said, “that I may have a conscience void of offence:” what he obtained only by hard exercise, we need not expect to drop into our bosom. Here is an exercise ground for Christians who would like to grow in grace. Nature hates reproof: let grace take the bitter potion, and thrust it down nature’s throat, for the sake of its healing power. If we had wisdom and energy to take to ourselves more of the reproof that is agoing, and less of the praise, our spiritual constitution would be in a sounder state.

Some of the reproof comes directly from God by his providence and in his word. This, if there be the spirit of adoption, it is perhaps easier to take. So thought David; when he found that a terrible rebuke must come, he pleaded that he might fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of man. Still these chastenings are painful, and wisdom from above is needed to receive them aright. But although all are ultimately at the disposal of the Supreme, most of the reproofs that meet us in life come immediately from our fellow-men. Even when it is just in substance and kindly given, our own self-love kicks hard against it; and, alas! the most of it is mixed with envy and applied in anger. Here is room for the exercise of a Christian’s highest art. There is a way of profiting by reproof, although it be administered by an enemy. It is in such narrows of life’s voyage that the difference comes most clearly out between the wise and the foolish. A neighbour is offended by something that I have said or done; he becomes enraged, and opens a foul mouth upon me. This is his sin and his burden; but what of me 1 Do I kindle at his fire, and throw back his epithets with interest in his face? This is brutish; it is the stupid ox kicking everything that pricks him, and being doubly lacerated for his pains. It is my business and my interest to take good for myself out of another’s evil. The good is there, and there is a way of extracting it. The most unmannerly scold that ever came from an unbridled tongue may have its filth precipitated and turned into a precious ointment, as the sewage of a city, instead of damaging the people’s health, may as a fertilizer become the reduplicator of the people’s food. The process is difficult, but when skilfully performed it produces a large return. When Shimei basely cursed David in his distress, the counsel of a rude warrior was, “Let me go over and take off his head.” This was merely a brutish instinct — the beam that lay not on. the solid, rebounding, by the law of its nature, to the blow. But the king had been getting the good of his great affliction: at that moment he had wisdom, and therefore he got more. He recognised a heavenly Father’s hand far behind the foul tongue of Shimei: he felt that the rebuke, though cruelly given, contained salutary truth. He occupied himself not with the falsehood that was in it in order to blame the reprover, but with the truth that was in it in order to get humbling for himself. “Let him alone,” said the fallen monarch, meekly; “let him alone and let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him.” Here is wisdom. It is wise to receive correction from God, although it come through an unworthy instrument. Although the immediate agent meant it for evil, oui Father in heaven can make it work for good.

’s Crotoit.