A Cure for Fretfulness

Fret not thyself.” — PsaLm xxxvii. 1.

Ir the counsel thus given to me were to end with these words it would form only another of the mocking voices which fill our heavy roads with ironical cheers. ‘* Fret not!” Yes, but how? It is like telling one who is picking his way through the thick undergrowth of a dense wood to avoid the thorns. How can I do it? If the nettle-plant sprawls across my track, how am I to avoid being stung? How am I to get rid of fretfulness? How am I so to think about it as to destroy its strength? The trouble is that my very way of thinking may only add to its vigour. My attention may give it nourishment. It may feed on my very attempts to get rid of it. And, therefore, unless I am very careful, I may be its servant rather than its master, and while I am seeking my release new chains may be thrown upon me. I may begin to fret about my fretfulness and thus intensify its tyranny. I am therefore looking for counsel which will probe to the very secret of my servitude and lead me to complete deliverance.

So much of the counsel which I hear only trifles with my bondage. For instance, there is what is called “‘ the smile cure.” I am advised to face my fretfulness with a smile! I am to light an artificial fire, a sort of stage fire, and in these artificial flames my frets are to be consumed! I am just to smile upon them and they will shrivel like moths in a candle. Yes, but there is nothing so exhausting as artificial smiling. The Lord Mayor of a great city told me that the most tiring function in his term of office was the continual smiling upon

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the almost endless procession of guests at one of his great civic receptions. It is the travail of a forced emotion. Nay, it is worse than that — it is the exactingness of an apparent emotion. The features had to be constrained into a smile when the smile had died out of the heart. That was the burden of it. And this suggested duel of smiling versus fretting — I am afraid of the struggle. I shall some day labour in smiling when the frets are like young, lusty athletes, and I shall be sorely beaten; my defeat will be added to my troubles, and I shall fret all the more. This sort of counsel, and there is a great deal of it about, only trifles with my bondage.

If fretfulness is like a weed in a garden it is altogether needful to remember that it is a weed with a fearfully long root. It is not like some weed which runs lightly over the garden, and which you can easily pull out with your finger and thumb. There are weeds in a garden which are like travelling Bedouin; they only take light settlement anywhere. They pitch their tents upon the surface, and they never penetrate to any depth. There are other weeds which are like the dwellers and builders in great cities; they seek their foundations at great depths. I have known this type of weed, this settling, settled type, have a length of root which runs right under a garden bed, and the whole bed has to be overturned before you could eradicate it. And fretfulness is just like that. It is a tough, strongly-rooted thing, and it goes very much deeper than you would believe.

And so deep treatment is required if it is to be expelled. The remedy must be something really radical, something which will explore its entire length and circuit, and so fetch it clean out of the soul. The trouble about these long-rooted things in the garden is this — that if you leave one little bit of root in the ground you are in for another ‘progeny. And a bit of fretfulness left buried in the soul will strengthen and multiply itself until we have all the old trouble over again. And so the treatment must be fundamental, something which will reach the last fibrous thread at the end of the long root, and leave everything sweet and clean.

Well, that is the glory of the counsel in the thirty-seventh Psalm. The remedy is deeper than my necessity, for it is as deep as God. How does the counsel begin? ‘“* Trust in the Lord and do good.” I am to fling myself upon the trustfulness of God. God’s grace and fidelity are to be as green pastures, and I am to lie down in them. They are to be as “‘ waters of quietness,’ and I am to go right up to them and drink. I am to do it of set purpose, consciously, deliberately, by an act of faith and hallowed imagination. And while I am in the green pastures I shall hear of “‘ ways of righteousness,” where the trusty, trustful knights of God can go and render knightly service. They can “do good.’ And the wonderful thing is this, that when a knight takes to the chivalrous crusade he takes the green pastures and the quiet waters with him. These knights are at rest even while they serve. Every part of this counsel leads my necessity to the deeper things of God. “Delight thyself in the Lord”: we are to carry our devotion into such deep inwardness that we reach the springs of joy. ‘‘ Commit thy way unto the Lord.” The mile as well as the inch, the inch as well as the mile! The next step as well as “the distant scene,”

the bit of road that is far away, and the stretch that is quite near. The entire way — commit to thy Friend, Greatheart, who is the Lord of the way, and who knows it from end to end. “Rest in the Lord.’ Yes, indeed, and that will surely follow. The once harrased heart will be at rest, and fretfulness will be dead.