Our Unsuspected Perils
“Lord, I had chosen another lot, But then I had not chosen well; Thy choice, and only thine, was good;
No different lot, search heaven or hell, Had blessed me, fully understood; None other which thou orderest not.”
Christina Rosetti.
Many of life’s worst dangers are unsuspected. Where we suppose there are good and blessing, there is really hidden peril. Disease lurks ofttimes in a soft, still, dreamy atmosphere, which we think delicious with its sweet odors, while the chill, rough, wintry blast, from which we shrink as too severe, comes laden with life and health. Most of us think of a life of ease, leisure, and luxury as the most highly favored lot, one to be envied. We are not apt to think of it at least as one of danger. Yet there is no doubt that a life of rugged toil, hardship, and self-denial, which we look upon as almost a misfortune, is far safer than one of ease.
It is said that there was laid one morning on the minister’s pulpit a little folded paper which, when opened, contained the words, “The prayers of this congregation are requested for a man who is growing rich.,, It certainly seemed a strange request for prayer. If it had been for a man who through misfortune or calamity had become suddenly poor; or for a man who was suffering in some great adversity; or for one who was in sorrow and distress, who had met with sore loss or bereavement, every heart would at once have felt deep sympathy. Such experiences as these are thought to be trying and perilous ones, in which men need special grace. We instinctively pray for those who are in any trouble. We think these need our prayers. We regard such conditions as fraught with danger. But to ask prayers for a man who was growing rich, no doubt to many people in the congregation seemed incongruous. Was he not indeed specially favored? Was he not receiving peculiar blessing? Should it not rather have been a request for thanksgiving for this man’s success?
Yet when we open our Bible we find that the experience of growing rich is indeed set down as one full of spiritual peril. It was Jesus who said, “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” And St. Paul said, “They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all evil.” There is no doubt that when a Christian is prospering and growing rich is indeed a time when he needs the prayers of God’s people, whether they are requested and offered for him or not.
True, this is an experience which but few people are known ever to have dreaded. It is not often that men are heard to say that they are afraid to get rich. It is not the popular impression that this condition is one in which danger lurks. Yet thousands of souls have been lost in the valley of gold. Countless men have buried their manhood in the fabrics of earthly prosperity which their hands have reared. Many a man’s envied fortune is in Heaven’s sight but the splendid mausoleum of his soul. We do indeed need the prayers of God’s people if we are growing rich, that our hearts may be kept warm and soft; that the fires may not be suffered to go out on the secret altar; that we may continue humble and simple with all divine simplicity; that we may be held ever near to the heart of Christ, and that we may be sheltered by the love of God from all the insidious dangers and hurtful influences that belong to the experience of growing rich.
Another kindred condition which, according to the Scriptures, hides an unsuspected peril, is one of unbroken prosperity. “Because they have no changes; therefore they fear not God.” Those who are thus described are free from trouble. They do not suffer from adversity, from misfortune, from losses, from disappointments. They move along, year after year, without any breaks in their human happiness.
It is not usual that such an experience as this is regarded as one of danger. Indeed, we naturally consider such persons peculiarly favored. For example, here is a home which has gone on for a long time without saddening changes. Business has been prosperous, and the circumstances of the household have become more and more easy. Additions have been made to the comforts and luxuries enjoyed in the home. There have been no long, serious illnesses, causing pain and anxiety, and draining the resources of the family. There have been no deaths, breaking the happy circle of loved ones.
No one naturally looks upon such a household as in any peculiar danger. The neighbors do not have special prayer requested for it in the church. Friends do not feel distressed about its condition. Yet there is no doubt that insidious moral dangers do lurk in such an experience of unbroken prosperity. Ofttimes it is true that God has less and less welcome in such a home. The fires burn low and then go out upon the altar. The voice of prayer dies out of the home. Christ is lost out of the household life. And beneath the bright earthlyprosperity the angels see spiritual death.
The same is true of individual life. Unbroken worldly prosperity is the bane of spiritual good. For one thing, it hinders growth in knowledge and experience. There are truths that can be learned better in darkness than in light. We should never see the stars if there were no night to blot out for the time the glare of the day. And there are truths in the Bible which are perhaps never learned in the brightness of human joy. There are divine promises which by their very nature are invisible in the noonday of gladness, hiding away like stars in the light, and revealing themselves only when it grows dark around us. The deeper, richer meaning of many a word of Scripture is learned only amid life’s painful changes.
There are also developments in spiritual growth which cannot come in time of unbroken prosperity. The artist was trying to improve on a dead mother’s picture. But the son said, “No; don’t takeout the lines; just leave them, every one. It wouldn’t be my mother if all the lines were gone.” It was well enough, he said, for young people who had never known a care to have faces free from wrinkles; but when one has lived seventy years of love and service and self-forgetfulness, it would be like trying to cover up the tracks of one’s realest life to take out the marks. The very beauty of that old face was in the wrinkles and the lines which told of what her brave heart and strong hands had done for love’s sake. There is a blessing in such a life. But in the life of ease and luxury which many a woman lives, there hide sore perils.
Another of the unsuspected perils of “no changes” is in the lessening of dependence upon God. While all things go well with us, and there are no breaks in the flow of favors, we are apt to forget that all our good gifts come from our Father’s hand. It is a sad hour in any life when consciousness of the need of God fades out of it. It seems pleasant to be able to go on, making plans of our own, and carrying them out without check or defeat.
We like to be victorious. We like to say that we are master of circumstances, that we make all things serve us, that we turn obstacles into stepping-stones, climbing continually upward upon them. But a little thought will show the peril that hides in this having always one’s own way. It is not our own will, but God’s, that leads to perfect character and to blessedness. Unless, therefore, we are doing always God’s will, filling out his plan for our life, the unbrokenness of prosperity is not an unmixed good.
Most of us need to be baffled ofttimes in our schemes, to be defeated in our projects, to have our plans fail, to be compelled to yield to a stronger will. In no other way can the sense of dependence and of obligation be kept warm in the heart. If we always get our own way, we are apt, being human, to grow wilful, proud, and rebellious. Quiet trust in God and unswerving obedience and submission to his will can be learned at least by most of us only through long discipline and much thwarting of our own will. It is a sore misfortune to any of us if in having our own way we forget God and cease to love and follow Christ. Says Archdeacon Farrar — and we would better read the words twice: “God’s judgments — it may be the very sternest and most irremediable of them — come, many a time, in the guise, not of affliction, but of immense earthly prosperity and ease.”
Another unsuspected peril of prosperity lies in its easy circumstances, which make toil and severe exertion unnecessary. It is the young who are most exposed to this danger. They are not required to work to provide for themselves. All that they need comes to them without effort of their own. Such young people are envied by those of their companions and neighbors who have to work hard to earn their own bread and to win whatever opportunities for improvement they may gain. The latter do not suspect that there is any peril lurking in the easy condition of those they envy. They suppose it is in their own condition that the disadvantages lie, in their poverty and hardship, and in the necessity in their life for pinching economy and unceasing toil. They do not dream that theirs is really, the safer condition, that there is a blessing in work and self-denial and care, and that there is always danger in ease and luxury.
The story of the outcome of life shows that early disadvantages, instead of being a hinderance to the development of what is best in manhood, are helpful and stimulating. Most people are naturally indolent, indisposed to exertion, needing to be impelled to it by the pressure of necessity. No greater blessing can come to young people than to be compelled to endure hardship, to bear the yoke in their youth, to have their exacting tasks to perform, their burdens to carry, their responsibilities to meet, their own way to make.
Another hidden peril of continuous prosperity is the dropping of heaven out of our life-plan. The years pass without break, and all things go on well and prosperously, until at length we begin to grow content with earth, and lose our hunger, our homesickness, for the city which hath foundations. Spiritual things begin to have less and less interest for us and power over us. We grow materialistic, if not in our creed, yet in our life. Our souls begin to cleave to the dust, no longer flying aloft like the eagle, but grovelling like the worm.
This is a most serious peril. A picture which has no sky in it is without the highest beauty. “It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground,” A life without sky in it is most unworthy and incomplete. A man who sees only bonds and stocks and deeds, bales of goods and blocks of houses, stores and factories and machinery and chimney tops, with no gleams above and beyond all these, of stars and blue skies and a Heavenly Father’s face, is not living as an immortal being should live. There is no sky in his vision of life. This world is very beautiful in its place, and God means us to enjoy it and do faithful, earnest, and beautiful work in it; but it is only one little part of our Father’s house. When in our thinking, planning, and doing we do not look beyond this world, we are not living worthily. When we lose the sky out of our life-vision the glory fades from it. The only secret of spiritual safety and good in prosperous times is in keeping the eye fixed on heaven.
These are a few illustrations of the truth that the best things of life are ofttimes found in conditions that are not thought to be kindly or congenial, while in conditions regarded by men as exceptionally favorable and desirable there often lurk subtle perils to life’s highest good. This truth lets in strong light upon some of God’s ways with his people. He does not allow them to be hurt, even by kindness. He breaks the prosperity, that its bane may not leave poison in our lives. He gives us changes, that we may not forget him, but that the consciousness of our dependence upon him may never fade out. He thwarts us when we would let our own folly rule us, and baffles us when our selfish ambitions would only work our ruin. He breaks into our plans and schemes with the resistless requirements of his own will, to save us from the wilfulness which would destroy us. He lets us have hardship and toil, that our lives may be disciplined into strength and energy.
These are not pleasant interferences, for they break into our cherished hopes, and cut ofttimes into our very heart; but they are blessings which some day in the clearer light of the future we shall recognize and for which we shall give thanks. Our heart shall then sing: —
“Lord, for the erring thought
Not into evil wrought;
Lord, for the wicked will,
Betrayed and baffled still;
For the heart from itself kept,
Our thanksgiving accept.
For ignorant hopes that were
Broken to our blind prayer;
For pain, death, sorrow sent
Unto our chastisement;
For all loss of seeming good,
Quicken our gratitude.”