The beauty of self-control

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HE figure of plowing, much used in the Bible, is very suggestive. The initial work in making men is plow-work. Human hearts are hard, and the first implement to go over them must be a plow, that they may be broken up and softened. In our Lord's parable some seeds fell on the trodden wayside. The soil was good — it was the same as that which, in another part of the field yielded a hundredfold — but it was hard. It had been long a roadway across the field and thousands of feet had gone over it, treading it down. There was no use in sowing seed upon it, for the ground would not receive it, and, lying upon the hardened surface, the birds in eager quest for food would pick it off. The only way to make anything of this trodden roadside was to have it broken up by the plow.

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The first work of Christ in many lives is plowing. The lives have not been cultivated. They have been left untilled. Or, like the wayside ground, they have been trodden down into hardness. Many people treat their lives as if they were meant to be open commons instead of beautiful gardens. They do not fence them in to protect them, and so beasts pasture on them, tramping over them, children play upon them, and men drive their light carriages and their heavy wagons across them, making roadways hard as rock. We readily understand this in agriculture, and it is little more difficult to understand it in life culture. A good woman said that God wanted her heart to be a garden filled with sweet flowers. A garden needs constant care. Our lives should be watched continually, that the soil shall always be tender, so that all manner of lovely things may grow in them. But there are many lives that are not thus cared for and cultivated. They are unfenced, and all kinds of feet go treading over them. No care is given to the companions

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who are allowed admittance into the field; soon the gentle things are destroyed and the tender, mellow soil has become hard. Those who are intrusted with the care of children should never fail to think of their responsibility for the influences which are allowed to touch them. On a tablet placed in the highschool building at Sag Harbor, Long Islanti, are inscribed these words by Mrs. Russell Sage : " I would like to have the people impressed with their obligations as guardians of children, to see to it that their training and education be such that in the future of this little hamlet, as in the past, its good women and noble men may enrich the world."

For the lack of such care many men and women become hardened, without capacity to receive tender impressions. They have large capacities for rich, beautiful life and for splendid service, but they are permitted to read all manner of books and to have all kinds of amusements and to see all kinds of evil life, and they grow up without beauty, really useless and without loveliness. They need to be

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plowed and plowed deep that they may be made fertile.

God himself does a great deal of plowing. His word is a plow. It cuts its way into men's lives, crushing the heart, revealing sinfulness, producing penitence. It finds men impenitent and leaves them broken and contrite, confessing sin and asking for mercy. David tells us, in one of his penitential Psalms, how he tried for a long time to hide his sins, but how his pain became unbearable, until he confessed. God's plow went deep into his heart. Then when at length he confessed his sin, forgiveness came and peace and joy. David became a new man after that. God's Spirit had plowed up his heart.

A Bible found its way into a home where a Bible had never been before. The man of the house began to read it aloud to his wife in the evenings, and the words entered their hearts. One night, after reading aloud portions of the book, the man said, " Wife, if this book is true, we are wrong." The book

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condemned them. They became troubled. The word was plowing its way in their hearts. Next evening, as they read again, the sense of sin in them became still deeper, and the man said, " Wife, if this book is true, we are lost." They became very greatly distressed. The words they had read had shown them that they were sinners, guilty, lost. Next night they read again, and found something of hope — they had read of divine love and mercy, and the man said, " Wife, if this book is true, we can be saved." The word of God does mighty plow-work in men's hearts before they can be made fruitful.

Sorrow ofttimes is God's plow. We dread pain and shrink from it. It seems destructive and ruinous. The plow tears its way, with its keen, sharp blade, through our hearts and we say we are being destroyed. When the process is completed and we look upon the garden with its sweet flowers growing, we see that only blessing, enrichment, and beauty are the result. We complain of our suffer-

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ing, but we cannot afford to have suffering taken away. One writes,

*The cry of man's anguish went up unto God:

* Lord, take away pain —

The shadow that darkens the world thou hast made.

The close-coiling chain That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs

On the winds that would soar; Lord, take away pain from the world thou hast made.

That it love thee the more!'

"Then answered the Lord to the cry of his world:

* Shall I take away pain

And with it the power of the soul to endure.

Made strong by the strain?

Shall I take away pity that knits heart to heart.

And sacrifice high?

Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire

White brows to the sky?

Shall I take away love that redeems with a price.

And smiles at its loss?

Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto mine

The Christ on his cross?'"

We cannot afford to lose pain out of the world or out of our life. It means too much to us. We owe too much, get too many joys and treasures from it, to have it taken out of our lives. We owe to suffering many of the treasures of experience. Without pain we never could know Christ deeply, intimately,

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experimentally. Two friends may love each other very sincerely, without suffering together, but it is a new friendship into which they enter when they stand side by side in a great sorrow. Grief reveals Christ and draws him closer to us, and we love him better afterwards. To take pain from the world would be to rob life of its divinest joy, its richest blessings. If the share never cut through the soil there would be no furrows and no golden harvests.

" Put pain from out the world, what room were left For thanks to God, for love to man? "

This plow-work is for every one of us. God is making us, and that is the way he has to do it. A little child had a garden, which her father had given her. But nothing would grow in it. The flowers and plants would begin to come up, but in a short time they would wither and die. She had little pleasure from her garden. One day her father brought some workmen with heavy iron tools, and they began to tear up her garden.

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They removed the soil. They destroyed everything beautiful in it. The child begged that the men would go away. She said they were ruining her garden. But they heeded not her implorings and tears. They broke up the ground and found a great rock just below the surface. This they took away, then smoothed down the soil, and made it beautiful again. After that the flowers and plants grew into beauty. Then the child understood the value of the plow-work, which at first seemed so destructive, but in the end left her garden a plac^ of rare beauty.

Christ has in his love for us a wonderful vision of what he wants us to become. He would have us share his own glory. " Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us " is a prayer God loves to answer. He wants us to become radiant in loveliness. He wants love to blossom in our lives into all gentleness, sweetness, purity, and patience, into ideal manliness, heroic nobleness, splendid sacrificial life. But we never can attain this vision in ways of ease. To spare us from pain,

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struggle and suffering is not the way of truest kindness for us. It needs the plow and sharp plow-work to bring us to our best beauty.

Plowing is hard work. It is hard for him who follows the plow through the long furrows. There seems to be no reward for him. It is all painful work that he does — cutting and crushing the soil. He sees no growing seed, no golden harvest. It is all weariness, ache and toil for him, with nothing to cheer his heart, nothing to enrich him. The reaper rejoices as he thrusts in his sickle and then threshes out the yellow grain. But the work of the plowman seems destruction for the time. Yet in the end it proves to be glorious work. In a little poem quoted in The British Weekly^ the plow is represented as speaking thus of its work :

" * I feed the peoples.

Eagerly wait on me

High-born and low-bom, pale children of want. Kingdoms may rise and wane.

War claim her tithe of slain. Hands are outstretched to me. Master of men am I, seeming a slave. I feed the peoples, I, the plow. [25]

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** ' I prove God's words true — Toiling that earth may give Fruit men shall gather with songs in the sun. Where sleeps the hidden grain Cornfields shall wave again; Showing that while men live Nor seed nor harvest-time ever will cease. I prove God's words true, I, the plow/ "

It IS hard also for the soil, to have the plow of God driven through our hearts and over our lives, breaking them and crushing them. Oh, how heavy God's plow is, as it is dragged over us, its sharp share cutting into the very quick of our being. Rough is the plow-work. It has no comfort in it. No reward is apparent. The plow cuts remorselessly. But the plowman may have visions of a rich outcome from all his toil. There will be a harvest by and by, when, in the place where his share now cuts, golden grain will wave, and he will fill his bosom with sheaves. You cry out to-day because of the pain you suffer as God's plow cuts into your life and seems to be spoiling all its beauty. But look forward. First the plow, then the fields with their glorious grain. Now you know nothing but pain; hereafter you will reap joy from the places now scarred and furrowed.

There is a picture in Revelation which explains it all. There appeared a great company, wearing white robes and carrying palm branches. "Who are these?" was asked. " These are they that come out of the great tribulation," was the answer. The way to heaven's highest glory lies through pain. To-day the plow is cutting through your life ; to-morrow a blessed harvest will wave. Dr. Babcock's little poem tells the story :

"The dark brown mold's upturned By the sharp-edged plow.

And I've a lesson learned:

"My life is but a field

Stretched out beneath God's sky. Some harvest rich to yield.

"Where grows the golden grain — Where faith? where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain."

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** Lord, keep me one — in deed, and word, and thought; With such distractions all the world is rife And different aspects cleave as with a knife

In fragments small the good that must he sought.

Give the controlling motive, for untaught By Thy divinity I am at strife. And shreds and patches make my troubled life;

From out my chaos order must he brought.

Oh, unify, direct, suhdue, control

These warring elements, diverse desires. These conflicts of the timid flesh with soul;

Hush Thou the voice that breathes the worldly word. Attune these ears to hear Thee speak, Lord — Quench zoith Thy Spirit all the earthly fires!'*

OME people have trouble in discovering God's guidance in everyday life. Perhaps the trouble is that they look for the direction in some unusual way, whereas, ordinarily, it is shown to them very simply. Lowell tells of one who journeyed to Horeb that he might see a revelation of God. After long search he found the revealing in some common little flowers. When he came home again he found these same flowers growing by his own doorstep. He need not have gone to Horeb to get what he sought.

Duty never is a haphazard thing. There never are a half dozen things any one of which we may fitly do at any particular time ; there is some one definite thing in the divine thought for each moment. In writing music no composer strews the notes along the staff

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just as they happen to fall on this line or that space ; he sets them in harmonious order and succession, so that they will make sweet music when played or sung. The builder does not fling the beams or stones into the edifice without plan ; every block of wood, or stone, or iron, and every brick has its place, and the building rises in graceful beauty.

The days are like the lines and spaces in the musical staff, and duties are the notes ; each life is meant to make a harmony, and in order to this, each single duty must have its own proper place. One thing done out of its time and place makes discord in the music of life, just as one note misplaced on the staff makes discord. Each life is a building, and the little acts are the materials used; the whole is congruous and beautiful only when every act is in its own true place.

"Far better in its place the lowliest bird

Should sing aright to Him the lowliest song Than that a seraph strayed should take the word And sing its glory wrong."

The art of true living therefore consists fi'nnfng out ^ntit^ largely in doing always the thing that belongs to the moment. But to know what is the duty of each moment is the question which to many persons is full of perplexity. Yet it would be easy if our obedience were but more simple. We have only to take the duty which comes next to our hand — " ye nexte thynge," as the quaint old Saxon legend puts it. Our duty never is some far-away thing. We do not have to search for it — it is always close at hand and easily found. The trouble is that we complicate the question of duty for ourselves by our way of looking at life, and then get our feet entangled in the meshes which our own hands have woven.

Much of this confusion arises from taking too long views. We try to settle our duty in long sections. We think of years rather than of moments, of a whole life work rather than of individual acts. It is hard to plan a year's duty; it is easy to plan just for one short day. No shoulder can bear up the burden of a year's cares all gathered back into one load, but the weakest shoulder can

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carry without weariness what really belongs to one little day. In trying to grasp the whole year's work, we are apt to overlook and to miss that of the present hour, just as one, in gazing at a far-off mountain top is likely not to see the little flower blooming at his feet, and even tread it down as he stumbles along.

There is another way in which people complicate the question of duty. They try to reach decisions to-day on matters which really are not before them to-day, and which will not be before them for months, — possibly for years. For example, a young man came to his pastor in very sore perplexity over a question of duty. He said he could not decide whether he ought to go as a foreign missionary or devote his life to work in some home field. Yet the young man had only closed his freshman year at college. It would require him three years more to complete his college course, and then he would have to spend three years in a theological seminary. Six years hence he would be ready for his if (nntng our ^utit^ work as a minister, and it was concerning his choice of field then that the young man was now in such perplexity. He said that often he passed hours on his knees at prayer, seeking for light, but that no light had come. He had even tried fasting, but without avail. The matter had so taken possession of his mind that he had scarcely been able to study during the last term, and he had fallen behind in his class. His health, too, he felt, was being endangered, as he often lay awake much of the night, thinking about the momentous question of his duty, as between home and foreign work.

It is very easy to see what was this young man's mistake — he was trying to settle now a question with which he had nothing whatever to do at the present time. If he is spared to complete his course of training, the question will emerge as a really practical one five or six years hence. It is folly now to compel a decision which he cannot make intelligently and without perplexity. It is very evident therefore that this decision is no part of his

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present duty. He wonders that he can get no light on the matter — that even in answer to agonizing prayer the perplexity does not grow less. But is there any ground to expect God to throw light on a man's path so far in advance? Is there any promise that prayer for guidance at a point so remote should be answered to-day? Why should it be? Will it not be time enough for the answer to come when the decision must really be made?

It is right, no doubt, for the young man to pray about the matter, but his present request should be that God would direct his preparation, so that he may be fitted for the work, whatever it may be, that in the divine purpose is waiting for him, and that, at the proper time, God would lead him to his allotted field. " Lord, prepare me for what thou art preparing for me," was the daily prayer of one young life. This would have been a fitting prayer for this young student ; but to pray that he may know now where the Lord will send him to labor when he is ready,

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SIX years hence, is certainly an unwarranted asking which is Httle short of presumption and of impertinent human intermeddling with divine things.

Another obvious element of mistake in this man's case is that he is neglecting his present duty, or failing to do it well, while he is perplexing himself with what his duty will be years hence. Thus he is hindering the divine purpose in the work his Master has planned for him. Life is not an hour too long. It requires every moment of our time to work out the divine plan for our lives. The preparatory years are enough, if they are faithfully used, in which to prepare for the years of life work which come after. But every hour we waste leaves its own flaw in the preparation. Many people go halting and stumbling all through their later years, missing opportunities, and continually failing where they ought to have succeeded, because they neglected their duty in the preparatory years. There are more persons who, like this student, worry about matters that belong

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altogether to the future, than there are those who are anxious to do well the duty for the present moment. If we would simply do always the next thing, we would be relieved of all perplexity.

The law of divine guidance is, step by step. One who carries a lantern on a country road at night sees only one step before him. If he takes that step, however, he carries his lantern forward and this makes another step plain. At length he reaches his destination without once stepping into the darkness. The whole way has been made light for him, though only a step at a time. This is the usual method of God's guidance. The Bible is represented as a lamp unto the feet. It is a lamp, or lantern, — not a blazing sun, nor even a lighthouse, but a plain, common lantern, which one can carry about in his hand. It IS a lamp unto the feet, not throwing its beams afar, not illumining a whole hemisphere, but shining only on the bit of road on which the pilgrim's feet are walking.

If this is the way God guides us, it ought [38]

ifintiing out J^utiejS never to be hard for us to find our duty. It never lies far away, inaccessible to us, it is always " ye nexte thynge." It never lies out of sight, in the darkness, for God never puts our duty where we cannot see it. The thing we think may be our duty, but which is still lying in obscurity, is not yet our duty, whatever it may be a little farther on. The duty for the moment is always perfectly clear, and that is as far as we need concern ourselves. When we do the little that is plain to us, we will carry the light on, and it will shine on the next moment's step.

If not even one little step of duty is plain to us, " ye nexte thynge " is to wait a little. Sometimes that is God's will for us for the moment. At least, it never is his will that we should take a step into the darkness. He never hurries us. We would better always wait than to rush on as if we were not quite sure of the way. Often, in our impatience, we do hasten things, which we find after a little were not God's next things for us at all. That was Peter's mistake when he cut off

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a man's ear in the Garden, and it led to sore trouble and humiliation a little later. There are many quick, impulsive people, who are continually doing wrong next things, and who then find their next thing trying to undo the last. We should always wait for God, and should never take a step which he has not made light for us.

"To wait is naught When waiting means to serve."

Yet we must not be too slow. This is as great a danger as being too quick. The people of Israel were never to march until the pillar moved — they were neither to run ahead nor to lag behind God. Indolence is as bad as rashness. Being too late is as bad as being too soon. There are some people who are never on time. They never do things just when they ought to be done. They are continually in perplexity which of several things they ought to do first. The trouble is, they are forever putting off or neglecting or forgetting things, and consequently each ftnDing out '^utit^ morning finds them not only facing that day's duties, but the omitted duties of past days as well. There never really are two duties for the same moment, and if everything is done in its own time, there never will be any perplexity about what special right thing to do next.

It is an immeasurable comfort that our duties are not the accidents of any undirected flow of circumstances. We are clearly assured that if we acknowledge the Lord in all our ways, he will direct our paths. That is, if we keep eye and heart ever turned toward God, we never shall be left to grope after the path, for it will be made plain to us. We are authorized to pray that God would order our steps. What direction in duty could be more minute than this ? " He that f oUoweth me shall not walk in the darkness," said the Master. " He that foUoweth me." We must not run on ahead of him, neither must we lag behind; in either case we shall find darkness, just as deep darkness in advance of our Guide, if we will not wait for him,

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as it is behind him, if we will not keep close up to him.

Prompt, unquestioning, undoubting following of Christ, takes all perplexity out of Christian life, and gives unbroken peace. There is something for every moment, and duty is always " ye nexte thynge." It may sometimes be an interruption, setting aside a cherished plan of our own, breaking into a pleasant rest we had arranged, or taking us away from some favorite occupation. It may be to meet a disappointment, to take up a cross, to endure a sorrow or to pass through a trial. It may be to go upstairs into our room and be sick for a time, letting go our hold upon all active life. Or it may be just the plainest, commonest bit of routine work in the home, in the office, on the farm, at school. Most of us find the greater number of our " nexte thynges " in the tasks that are the same day after day, yet even in the interstices, amid these set tasks, there come a thousand little things of kindness, patience, gentleness, thoughtfulness, obligingness, like f inlitng our J^utit^ the sweet flowers that grow in the crevices upon the cold, hard rocks, and we should be ready always for these as we hurry along, as well as for the sterner duties that our common calling brings to us.

There never is a moment without its duty, and if we are living near to Christ and following him closely, we never shall be left in ignorance of what he wants us to do. If there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do, at any particular time, then we may be sure that the Master wants us to rest. For he is not a hard Master, and besides, rest is as needful in its time as work. We need to rest in order that we may work. So we must not worry when there come moments which seem to have no task for our hands. " Ye nexte thynge " then is to sit down and wait.

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**Love, we are in God^s hand. How strange, now, looks the life He makes us lead; So free we seem, so fettered fast we are I I feel he laid the fetter: let it lie I "

Browning.

'^ But deep ivithin my heart of hearts there hid Ever the confidence, amends for all. That heaven repairs what wrong earth's journey did. When love from lifelong exile comes at call.'*

Browning.

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ERTAIN ancient mariners were accustomed to say, as they put out to sea, " Keep me, O God, for my boat is so small and the ocean is so great and so stormy." There could not be a fitter prayer for a life — any life — as it sets out on its career. The world is vast and full of perils, and a life, even the greatest, is very small and frail. It has no ability to face the difficulties, the obstacles, the hardships it must face, if it is to pass successfully through life.

Probably one-half the children born in this world die as infants. Then of those who get through infancy, how many drop during the early decades that follow? How many of those who reach adult years live vigorous lives and accomplish things worth while, attain success in business, in the professions, in life's

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callings? It has been stated, perhaps correctly, that only four or five per cent of those who enter business pursuits succeed, while ninety-five or ninety-six per cent fail. The w^orld is large and full of storm and struggle, and only a few get through it safely.

If there were no one greater and stronger than ourselves into whose keeping we may commit our lives, as we go out to meet the perils, what hope could we have of ever getting through safely? The Breton mariner believed that there was a God who ruled in all the world, whose footsteps were on the sea, and as he went out on the wild waters he entrusted his frail boat to the protection of that divine Keeper. Blessed is he who does the same with his life. He cannot guide himself. He cannot master the storms. He cannot shelter himself. ^' Keep me, O my God,'' should be his prayer, not once only, when he launches his barque, but daily, hourly.