The School of Life
VI do not ask for place among Great thinkers who have taught and mng,
And scorned to bend
Under the trifles of the hour — only would not lose the power
To comprehend,’^
These lessons thou dost give
To teach me how to live,
To do, to bear,
To get, to share,
To work and play,
And trvt alway,
—Maltie D. Babcock.
Cie ^clool of life
HE business of life is learning. We know nothing when we begin. On the tomb of an English historian is the inscription, “He died learning.” Learning is not confined to what we get from reading books. All life is a school and books are ever being put into our hands, and lessons are set for us continually. St. Paul tells us of one of the lessons he had learned in the school of experience. “I have learned,” he said, “in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content.” We are glad to know that St. Paul had to learn to be contented. We are apt to get the impression that such a man as he was did not have to learn to live as common people do, that he always knew, for instance, how to be contented. Here, however, we have the confession that he had to [187]
Cle WiUt life
learn the lesson just as we do. He did not always know the secret. Then he was well on in years when he said this, from which we conclude that it took him a good while to learn the lesson, and that it was not easy for him to do it.
There is a remarkable word in the Hebrews which tells us that even Jesus learned his lessons as we must do — he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. It was not always easy for him to do the Father’s will. Even in Gethsemane we see him learning. Each time he prayed that the cup might pass the pleading was a little less intense and it was growing easier for him to submit. The fact of the truth and reality of his humanity shows us that even Christ, the Son of God, had to learn the lessons of life just as his followers must do. He learned to be content in whatsoever state he was. He learned to be patient, to suffer injustice and wrong, to endure insults and not resent them. He learned to give up, to accept unkindness quietly and return kindness instead. [188]
We are all in Christ’s school. Disciples are scholars and we are all disciples. We enter the lowest grade when we begin to be Christians. We have everything to learn. Each new experience is a new lesson set for us by the great Teacher. There will come to you to-morrow a sharp temptation. You wonder why God permits it if he loves you. Why does he let you be assailed and put to the test? He certainly does not want you to fail. Satan’s purpose in bringing temptation upon us is to entice us to sin, to disobey Christ and prove disloyal to him; but that is not God’s thought in permitting us to be tempted. He means the temptation to prove us and then to strengthen us and fit us for braver, better life.
It seems strange to us that Jesus had to be tempted, he of the pure soul and the sinless life. But we know that a large element in his helpfulness as our Saviour and Friend comes from his own experience of temptation. We know that he is able to help us, and deliver us in our temptations because he was tempted [189]
Cle Wihtt Uft
and was victorious. If he had been defeated he could not have helped us. He is able also to sympathize with us in our struggles because he endured the same. In like manner temptation met and overcome makes our lives mean more to others. One who by God’s grace has kept himself unspotted from the world becomes thus a comfort and a strength to many others. One writes:
^’Sometimes the world seems black with shade and dole — The grimy haunt of sin-smirched evil men; Then shines the unstained whiteness of your soul, And all the earth is clean and fair again.’
One brave and valiant soul that is not smirched by the world’s evil and does not fail in the testing becomes indeed a strength to many others. He has not failed and we need not fail. For others’ sake, as well as for our own, we should stand firm and true in every experience of testing. If we falter and fail, others are made less strong to endure. One [190]
Cie ^clool of JLife
courageous man who never turns back to the foe puts courage into others and they grow strong, too. But one faint heart puts fear and dismay into many other hearts. Remembering that others will do what we do, be brave and victorious, or craven and defeated, should be in us a mighty motive to stand. Then we need not fail. We may win in the battle. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear.” Each temptation is a lesson set for us by the Master, and the lesson is never too hard to learn with his help.
Sorrow is also a lesson in Christ’s school. It is not an accident breaking into our life without meaning or purpose. God could prevent the coming of the sorrow if he desired. He has all power, and nothing can touch the life of any of his children unless he is willing. Since we know that God loves us and yet permits us to sufFer, we may be quite sure that there is a blessing, something good, in whatever it is that brings us pain or grief. We have this in the Master’s Beatitude,” Blessed [191] mt wmt life
are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” The child of a patriotic soldier had been listening to his father as he told of a great battle in which he had been engaged. As the soldier spoke of the terrific struggle the boy said, “I would have run.” The father replied, “Ah, there are some things, my son, dearer than life.” The cause of country was dearer to the soldier. We shrink from pain. We would run away from grief. We would refuse to accept sorrow. But there are things worth suffering for, things dearer than ease and pleasure. We learn lessons in pain which repay a thousand times the cost of our tears. Suffering is hard, grief is bitter. To some people it seems almost cruel in Jesus Christ to say, “Blessed are they that mourn.” How could he say it, they ask, if his heart is tender and loving as we claim it is? How can God permit such suffering and woe, so much grief and sorrow, as we see everywhere, if he is a God of love and of compassion as he says he is.^ “If I were God,” said one, “I would take [ 192 ] away all pain, all grief, all suffering from the world.” That is just what God is doing through the gospel of his grace and love. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” But we must not forget what it costs to do this. Jesus wept that our tears may be dried.
“It seems to me,” said another, “that if God is the compassionate being the Bible says he is, his heart would break as he looks down upon the world and beholds the pain and anguish, the injustice and wrong, which are everywhere.” The answer is, “His heart did break.” That is the meaning of the cross. From God’s own sorrow comes blessing for the world and comfort for all sorrow. Jesus does not say that mourning itself is blessed, is good or pleasant or beautiful. What he says is that the comfort of God is blessed, that those who mourn and receive comfort are so enriched, their lives so enlarged, so lifted up into the blessing of God’s love, that they can rejoice even in their tears. A young man who for fourteen years has [193]
%)t wmx life
had a great sorrow in his home — his wife being an incurable sufferer — speaks of the hard years bravely and joyfully, without a word or a tone of bitterness, testifying that he owes to the burden and sorrow of these years all that is worthy and beautiful in his life. Whatever he is as a man, especially as a Christian man, is the fruit of what he has suffered. He can say that he has learned to rejoice in his pain and trial. He accepted the lesson set for him and has learned it. An ingenious photographer has been photographing the heart of a dried teardrop, under a microscope, revealing in it myriads of forms of beauty. The Bible tells us that God preserves the tears of his children, putting them in his tear-bottle. Tears are sacred to God, because of the blessings that come through them to those who love God. In heaven those who look back on lives of pain and sorrow on the earth will find that their best lessons have come through tears. All the Christian graces have to be learned in Christ’s school. There St. Paul had learned [194]
Cle ^ciool of life
contentment. He never would have learned it, however, if he had had only bounty and ease all the while. Contentment comes from learning to do without things we once supposed to be essential to our comfort. St. Paul had learned contentment through finding such fulness of blessing in Christ that he did not need any more the secondary things. Perhaps we would succeed better in learning this same grace if we had fewer of life’s comforts, if sometimes we had experience of want. The continuity of blessings that flow like a river into our lives gives us no opportunity to learn contentment. We think we are very happy and grateful for our favors; but how would we behave if instead of the unbroken supply of pleasant things, we were to suffer without them for a few days; if for our splendid health we fell sick for a while; if for the happy circle of love and the sweetness of unfailing joy, sorrow came and we were bereft and lonely? Perhaps it is well that we have some dark days, that we may learn to appreciate the blue sky. There are beautiful [195] things In the darkness which we never would see if there were no break In the sunshine. When sufferings come into our life, disagreeable things, hunger, want, instead of plenty, rough ways Instead of flower-strewn paths, God is teaching us the lesson of contentment so that we can say at length that we have learned it.
Patience Is another lesson set for us in life’s school. Many of us are impatient with others. We are impatient with their slowness in learning. An English head-master used to tell how once he sharply reproved a pupil for dulness when he failed to know his lesson. The boy looked up into the teacher’s face and said, conscious of the injustice he was enduring: “Why do you speak so severely to me? Indeed, sir, I am doing the very best I can.” The teacher used to tell years afterward how he always had regretted his loss of patience with that boy. Great wrong is often done a child by impatience in reproving him. We should remember that it was an outbreak of Impatience that kept Moses out of the prom- [196]
Cie ^clool of Uit
ised land. We do not know how often impatience limits our usefulness. Impatience is often shown in hasty temper. Ruskin in a letter to girls has this good advice: “Keep sweetly calm of temper under all circumstances, recognizing the thing that is provoking or disagreeable to you as coming directly from Christ’s hand. And the more it is like to provoke you thank him for it the more, as a young soldier would thank his general for trusting him with a hard place to hold on the rampart.” We should always remember that when we are disposed to become vexed, to fly into a passion, to speak harshly or pettishly, a lesson has been set for us — we are to learn to keep sweet, to endure patiently. The fact that we are inclined to become impatient shows that we have not yet fully learned our lesson, and therefore it is set for us again.
Lessons are also set for us when we are sick. The doctor sends you to your room and bids you to be quiet for a season. This means a good deal more than merely being sick. Your [197] mt WMv Uft
sickness has some mission for you. If your minister or your friends pray for you, there are two requests they should make. One is, that you may recover in God’s good time, but the still more important prayer is that the mission of the sickness may not fail, that you may come from your sick-room in due time with a new blessing in your life. When you are sick, you should ask God what the mission of your illness is to you and then ask him to teach you the lesson set for you. It is not accidental. Nor does it come purposeless. It would be a sad thing if you should get over your fever and miss the lesson which the fever was sent to teach you, or the good it came to work in you.
It gives life a new sacredness to think of it thus as a school, the school of Christ. The Master is always saying to us, “Come unto me, and learn of me.” Are we learning.^ Some men set for themselves the rule to learn some new fact every day. Goethe says we ought every day to see at least one fine work of art, to hear one sweet strain of music, to read [198[
Cle ^clool of life
one beautiful poem. Are we learning something new in Christ’s school each day? Are / we adding a line of beauty every day to our / character? /