Chapter V

“Ask God to give thee skill

In Comfort’s art,
That thou mayst consecrated be

And set apart
Unto a life of sympathy.
For heavy is the weight of ill

In every heart;
And comforters are needed much

Of Christlike touch.”

A. E. Hamilton.

It is a sin to be a hinderer. He who makes it harder for others to live is doing the adversary’s work. We are in this world to lighten burdens, to gather the stones out of the way and to make the road of life a little smoother and easier. This is the law of Christian life. Noblesse oblige, we say, as we see men enjoying rare privileges of any kind. They cannot live for themselves; if they do they will lose all. They must hold all their gifts and powers for the blessing of others.

If I am weak and you are strong,

Why then, why then,
To you the braver deeds belong;

And so, again,
If you have gifts and I have none,
If I have shade and you have sun,
‘Tis yours with freer hand to give,
‘Tis yours with truer grace to live,
Than I, who giftless, sunless, stand
With barren life and hand.

‘Tis wisdom’s law, the perfect code,

By love inspired;
Of him on whom much is bestowed

Is much required. The tuneful throat is bid to sing, The oak must reign the forest’s king; The rustling stream the wheel must move, The beaten steel its strength must prove. ‘Tis given unto the eagle’s eyes To face the midday skies.”

It is a radical perversion of the law of Christian life, therefore, when one becomes in any way a hinderer of others. Yet there are many people who do this. There are some who do it in a negative way by withholding from other lives, in their care and burden and sorrow, the cheer, inspiration, or comfort which they have it in their power to bestow. Sometimes this is done in cold selfishness, from sheer indisposition to lend a hand to a brother. More frequently, however, it is through a lack of sensitiveness to others’ needs and sufferings, a want of true sympathy with human life in its weakness. There are those who have never known pain themselves and have no sense of pain in others. Some again there are whose hearts are sympathetic and kindly, but who have never learned the divine art of helping and encouraging others. They lack that delicacy of touch which is needed even when the heart is loving, to impart comfort and inspiration. So it comes that there are many people who are hinderers of others through the withholding of the cheer and help which they might give.

But there are others whose influence is directly and positively hindering. Instead of being wings to those whose lives they touch, they are weights. They are discouragers. They never have a glad, cheerful, hopeful word for any one; on the other hand, they always find some way to dampen ardor, to chill enthusiasm, to discount hope, and to put clouds into clear skies. They seem to think it a sin to be happy themselves or to encourage happiness in any other person. They find all the shadows in life and persist in walking, in them. They magnify small troubles into great trials. They look at little hills of difficulty through lenses of morbid feeling that make them grow into tall mountains.

Thus encompassed with gloom themselves, they make darkness for others, never brightness, wherever they may go. In this way they do a great deal of harm in the world. They make all life harder for those they influence. Instead of being comforters of others, they make sorrow harder to bear, because they exaggerate it, and because they blot out all the stars of hope and comfort which God has set to shine in this world’s night. They make others’ burdens appear heavier, because by their discouraging philosophy they leave the heart beneath less strong and brave to endure. They make life’s battles sorer for men, because, by their ominous forebodings, they paralyze the arm that wields the sword.

The whole effect of the life of these people is to discourage others; to find unpleasant things and point them out; to discover dangers and tell about them; to look for difficulties and obstacles and proclaim them. If you meet them with buoyant mood, you will not be long in their company before you will find all the buoyancy stealing out of you under the influence of their disheartenment. If you turn to them in your trouble, you will go away feeling that your condition is utterly hopeless, and will be ready almost to despair.

A thoughtful man was asked to contribute to the erection of a monument to one of these discouragers, and replied, “Not a dollar. I am ready to contribute toward building monuments to those who make us hope, but I will not give a dollar to help perpetuate the memory and influence of those who live to make us despair.” He was right. Men who make life harder for us cannot be called benefactors. The true benefactors are those who show us light in our darkness, comfort in our sorrow, hope in our despair.

We all need to be strengthened and inspired, never weakened and disheartened for life’s experiences. If we meet others cast down and discouraged, it is our duty as their friends, not to make their trials and their cares seem as great as we can, but rather to point out to them the bright light in their clouds and to put new hope and courage in their hearts. If we find others in sorrow, it is our duty not to tell them merely how sorry we are for them, how we pity them, but, coming close to them in love, to whisper in their ears the comforts of divine grace, to make them stronger to endure their sorrow. If we find others in the midst of difficulties and sore struggles, faint and ready almost to yield, it is our duty not merely to bemoan with them the severity and hardness of their battles, and then to leave them to go on to sure defeat; but to stimulate and inspire them to bravery and victoriousness.

It is of vital importance that we learn this lesson if we want to be true helpers of others in their life. If we have only sadness to give to men and women, we have no right to go among them. The cloister is the only fit place for such moods. It is only when we have something that will bless others, and lift up their hearts, and give them glimpses of bright and beautiful things to live for, that we are truly commissioned to go forth as evangels into the world.

“A singer sang a song of tears,

And the great world heard and wept; For he sang of the sorrows of fleeting years, And the hopes which the dead past kept; And souls in anguish their burdens bore, And the world was sadder than ever before.

A singer sang a song of cheer, And the great world listened and smiled;

For he sang of the love of a Father dear And the trust of a little child;

And souls that before had forgotten to pray

Looked up and went singing along the way.”

It is better that we should not sing of sadness if our song end there. There are sad notes enough already floating in the world’s air, making moan in men’s ears. We should sing always of hope, joy, and cheer. Jeremiah had a right to weep; for he sat amid the crumbling ruins of his country’s prosperity, looking upon the swift and resistless approach of woes that might have been averted. Jesus had a right to weep on the Mount of Olives; for his eye saw the terrible doom coming upon the people he loved, after he had done all in his power to avert the doom which sin and unbelief were drawing down upon them. But not many of us are called to live amid griefs like those which broke the heart of Jeremiah. And as for Jesus, we know what a preacher of hope he was wherever he went. Our mission must be to carry to men, not grief and tidings of ill, but joy and good news.

The preachers alone who truly bless the world are preachers of hope. One who has only questions and doubts to give has no right in a Christian pulpit. We ought not to add to the perplexity of men by holding up shreds of torn pages as if our Christianity were something uncertain, a mere “if” or “perhaps.” “Give me your beliefs,” said Goethe; “I have doubts enough of my own.” So people are saying to us, “Give us your hopes, your joys, your sunshine, your life, your uplifting truths: we have sorrows, tears, clouds, ills, chains, doubts enough of our own.”

This is the mission of Christianity in the world — to help men to be victorious, to whisper hope wherever there is despair, to give cheer wherever there is discouragement. It goes forth to open prisons, to unbind chains, and to bring out captives. Its symbol is not a cross only, — that is one of its symbols, telling of the price of our redemption, telling of love that died, — but its final symbol is an open grave, — open and empty. We know what that means. It tells of life, not of death; of life victorious over death. And we must not suppose that its promise is only for the final resurrection; it is for resurrection every day, every hour, over all death. It means unconquerable, unquenchable, indestructible, immortal life at every point where death seems to have won a victory. Defeat anywhere is simply impossible, if we are in Christ and

Christ in us. It is just as true of the Christ in us as it was of the Christ who went down into Joseph’s tomb, that he cannot be holden of death.

It follows that there never can be a loss in a Christian’s life out of which a gain may not come, as a plant from a buried seed. There never can be a sorrow out of which a blessing may not be born. There never can be a discouragement which may not be made to yield some fruit of strength.

If, therefore, we are true and loyal messengers of Christ, we can never be prophets of gloom, disheartenment, and despair. We must ever be heralds of hope. We must always have good news to tell. There is a gospel which we have a right to proclaim to every one, whatever be his sorrow. In Christ there is always hope, a secret of victory, a power to transmute loss into gain, to change defeat to victory, to bring .life from death. We are living worthily only when we are living victoriously ourselves at every point, when we are inspiring and helping others to live victoriously, and when our life is a song of hope and gladness, even though we sing out of tears and pain.

So it is our mission to be helpers, never hinderers, of others’ faith and hope. Wherever we find one who is weary or disheartened it is our part to take him by the hand and help him to rise, and to hold him by the hand till he is able to walk in safety. One word of discouragement from us in the presence of a human struggler is treason to a soul we are set to help and protect with our own life. Here are some lines which give us our lesson: —

“So you fell just now in the mud, poor heart!

And to try to rise and be clean is vain? Take both my hands, now, and do your part.

So you stand on your feet again. Did nobody tell you your feet might slip?

Did some one push you? (Such things are done.) Was your path so rough that you needs must trip?

Ah! the blame is on many — not on one. Sobbing still over that ugly stain?

I may not comfort or hush you, dear. Through such sad tears in their burning rain

Christ and his cross show clear.

Must you go sorrowing all your day?

Dear, in suffering souls grow white;
Keep my hand through this stony way —

See where the west turns bright.”

That is very beautiful. The world is ever full of human lives whose eternal destiny seems to depend upon whether they meet cloud or sunshine, encouragement or discouragement, hope or despair, in the faces that look into theirs. Guides sometimes warn tourists among the Swiss mountains not to speak as they pass certain points. Even the reverberation of a whisper in the air may start a poised avalanche from its place on the crags. There are times in the story of many human lives when they are so delicately poised that it depends on how the first person they meet greets them whether they sink into the darkness of despair or lift up their head to find hope. We never know when passing mood of ours may decide a soul’s destiny. We dare not then, even for a moment, or in one case, be a discourager of another soul.