Wrestling and waiting

Introduction

John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware, the son of Henry Ware, Jr., and Elizabeth Watson Waterhouse, was born in Boston, Aug. 31, 18 18, and died in Milton, Feb. 26, 188 1. A graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1838, and of the Cambridge Divinity School in 1842, he was minister of Unitarian churches in Fall River, Cambridgeport, Baltimore, and Boston, successively. In the latter city, he was the successor of Dr. Channing and Dr. Gannett, and had charge of the Arlington Street Church, formerly located in Federal Street.

Those wno knew him in life remember him. Those who knew him not will find him at his truest in these sermons. The pulpit is the preacher's confessional. The anointed of his people know how to receive and shrive him there. The sermons brought together in this iv

INTRODUCTION.

book do not give an adequate idea of the scope and richness of his ministry. His work surpassed his word, strong as that was. Home and camp, church and school, acknowledge his helping hand. The rich and the poor thank and bless him. To the home, he has given Home Life, a book which is a grateful memorial of his youth, a witness of his manhood, and now a keepsake which will long maintain his ministry by the fireside. His "white tracts," as the soldiers called them, flew in and out the camp like the doves of the old Arsenal. He also revised and republished the Silent Pastor, for use in the hospitals. He labored for the Church, as a son honoring his father and his mother, filial love blending ever with missionary zeal. The freedmen remember what he did for their education and uplifting.

A few friends, believing that the word which had helped them would help others, have chosen these sermons and published them. Nor would they disavow a loyal impulse to offer some tribute to the memory of the faithful pastor, true friend, and honest man. They know that the only honor he would value is the privilege of

INTRODUCTION.

V further ministry. In hours of pain and weakness, he never gave up the hope of preaching again. If, with God's blessing, this book only half fulfils his longing for further service on the earth, it will wholly accomplish the purpose and hope of its compilers.

GEORGE LEONARD CHANEY.

Boston, March 26, 1882.

Contents

Sermon Page

I. Wrestling and Waiting i

" I will not let thee go except thou bless me." — Gen. xxxii., 26.

I. Wrestling And Waiting

" I will not let thee go except thou bless me." — Genesis xxxii., 26.

I wonder if this experience of Jacob by the brook Jabbok may not have been somewhat akin to that of Jesus in the wilderness. It is impossible really to know anything about it ; but do they not each in some sense represent the personal conflict of two young men coming up to face the first great crisis of life, — a wrestling with the great fate that confronts them, a struggle for that moral, mental supremacy and calm which we all feel the need of as we first actually meet that life for which we have been preparing ? In the wrestling of the night, in the temptation of the wilderness, each man may recognize his own experience. They are very human incidents, and do not require the ordinary bald, literal interpretation to make them solemn and effective. As allegories, epitomizing universal experience, they are of as true value as if they were statements of fact.

Fleeing from his exacting father-in-law, Jacob had approached the place where he knew that his brother Esau had established himself. Naturally uneasy at this fact, — for he had not forgotten how he had cheated him out of his birthright or how he had afterward

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defrauded him of his blessing, — he sends messengers to him, who were to address him in terms of respect. Esau, without sending any reply, sets out immediately to meet his brother. More anxious than ever, Jacob divides his herds and his servants into two bands, separated by wide interval, so that, in case of attack, that which was behind and with which his household was might escape, at the same time again sending servants forward with a gift taken from the choicest of his flocks and of his herds. It was while awaiting the result of this embassage that the incident from which the text is taken occurred.

The last division of herds had passed over the brook by which he had encamped, and Jacob was left alone. And it was night. Plenty of work for conscience to do, as it is apt to be when night brings us to face a foecoming morrow. And Jacob had much in his past connection with his brother for conscience to busy itself about. It was the great hazard moment of his life, and there were conditions to the problem of which he was not the master. He was a very unhappy man, and sorely perplexed. Then there appeared to him, as the Scripture says, a man who wrestled with him a large part of the night. In some way, Jacob was seriously injured. His thigh was dislocated or strained. Crippled, he was not mastered ; and, the day beginning to dawn, his antagonist desired to be released. Somehow, he seems to have been in Jacob's power, could only get away by Jacob's consent (which ought to shut out the ordinary belief that his antagonist was the Divine Being himself). Jacob has the power of dictating terms, — the condition of the conqueror. His reply is, " I will not

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let thee go except thou bless me." We simply do not know anything about this incident, the narrative of which starts a flood of unanswerable questions ; and it were better to hasten to get our moral from the words, than to linger over possible or impossible interpretations of the event.

The simple elements of the incident are these, — a contest between Jacob and an adversary, in which the adversary gets the worst of it. He is resisted, held, and in place of any proposed mischief is compelled to bless. The incident is striking, the lesson invaluable.

For here, in epitome, is human experience. Jacob may stand for you and for me, for any, for every man ; and the antagonist for our baser selves and the baser things of the world, and the wrestling, the struggle that has to go on between us. We grow up to that point where we are to undertake the handling of ourselves. That certain shield which home has been, that certain support, guide, which parents have been, expires by limitation. We cease being child, we begin to be man. The bars are thrown back through which we have gazed at the field of life, while they have restrained us from entering. We enter. As we pass the line, we at once meet opposition ; and our first work, duty, experience, is resistance. We are at once put at task, at the task life keeps us at ever after. It would be very pleasant could this first part be only a sort of school-boy's holiday, in which we could wander here and there over the field, and pick up every joy. We would like to throw an idle hook in this stream, lie under that tree, enjoy the sweet. do-nothing, letting our eyes lazily rest themselves on sky and earth, refreshing

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and informing the other senses, taking in the keen, but superficial, relish of all the novel wonders about us. It is not at holiday we are put, but at school, and our masters are hard and exacting. We may not doze and dream and get an animal fill of pleasure first. First we have to go to work, and our first work is hard work. Inexperienced and ignorant, timid and weak, we are called upon to resist the subtlest foes of the soul. If we take the Book of Genesis, the first duty to which the first man is called upon is the duty of resistance. Before he does anything, he must resist somebody. If we take the Gospels, they repeat the story. Before Jesus goes out to do, he retires to resist. Resistance — the negative, the opposite of will — is our primary obligation. The young possibilities of virtue seem to be so nurtured. We have to get strong, assured in our resisting powers, before we can essay anything by way of progress. Before we grow, we must be able to stand, and overcome the powers that would not have us stand.

There are many things that will put themselves in the way of a growing soul, many that must be at once met and resisted. At first, we have not-helps. The mission of things seems to be not to help you live, but to force your death ; not to establish, but to overthrow. It is not that hindrances strew the way, — obstacles you might expect to meet and to have to surmount, — but more than hindrances, positive, virulent opponents. All the way up, through the various grades of nature, existence seems to be a struggle, a fight for itself. Nothing is cradled, but everything attacked. Nurse, care, afterward ; at first, hindrance, opposition, things to be learned which other things seem bound to prevent

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your learning. Once establish yourself, and you get help, friends; reach for and receive support. Nothing can be drearier than the first life of the seed in the cold and dark, its way to make against hindrance. If you go into a garden or a field some days after your sowing, you will see how the great vigor of tiny shoots has pushed aside the earth crust, perhaps has lifted a lump of dirt, or a chip, or a stone, — how it has overcome resistance, is born by virtue of that into beauty and light.

Once established, once in the light, things begin to consent, become friends. So with our virtues. The law seems to be resistance as the condition of taking root, of becoming established, of growth. We do not begin and just grow easily and pleasantly, but through all sorts of pains and aches and mishaps, — the frictions, jars, antagonisms of other things. Our moral hindrances naturally divide themselves into two classes, — those from within, self-born, nurtured, grown ; those from without, which have no self about them. If it were worth while to stop long enough to say it, one might perhaps say that the self things are the more obstinate, while they perhaps are less recognized, watched, controlled. The things that go wrong with us, the self-hindrances, are largely matters of temperament ; and temperament is a thing never entirely original, but largely of inheritance : it is the twist to my nature, the thing I find in me and that starts me the me that I am. If I understand myself at all, my great trouble as a moral being is with a certain something which goes by this name. As I understand it, it is the sub-structure of my whole being. It underlies my life, my thinking,

WRESTLING AND WATTING.

and my doing. There is a peculiarity native to me, as sap to the tree or blood to the body, which shapes my thoughts and methods, my hopes and my deeds. It has its felicities, it has its infelicities. No man's temperament is wholly the one or the other. The felicities we set aside. We do not want them now. The infelicities are our concern. What is to be done with them ? Shall I yield to them, and say : " This is my temperament. I cannot help myself. I obey the dictates of nature ? " Obedience to nature is very well where the dictates are all right ; but, where they are wrong, they are to be disobeyed, just as any wrong thing is. That is what we live for. Temperament is amenable to the laws of discipline. Its imperiousness, its tyranny, is to be resisted. The unlovely is to be grown away from, the lovely grown into, — two distinct processes. Jacob resisted his opponent ; but he did more. He held him. The unruly part of temperament is to be more than resisted : it is to be held hard, and turned at last into an ally, a friend. A blessing, it is to be held until it bless. There is an illustration of what temperament may become when its bad is well ruled and its good is master, in the apostle John. In his early discipleship, he belongs to a club called " Sons of Thunder," loudmouthed, noisy, restless, revolutionary men, the Socialists, the Nihilists of their day, — wants the lightning to destroy the Samaritans. He is as hot and impulsive and rash as Peter.

In the maturer days of his intercourse with Jesus, he lays his head upon that sainted bosom, becomes the Christ's special favorite, and in his mid-life and old age is as the microcosm of gentleness and love.

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It is not that a new nature, a new being, is given him through his changed faith, but that he has through his faith so worked upon that ardent, vindictive temperament, has so resisted, chastened, held it, that it has ended not merely in blessing others, but himself. He has clone that most radical, difficult thing, — not destroyed his temperament, not got another one, which no man can ever do, for it is that which bases individuality and keeps one man from being like every other man, — but he has held the inimical thing in his temperament until he has wrung from it a blessing. He is the John he is not by inheritance, not through force of temperament, not by an act of nature, but by a resolute self-culture that has whipped the offending Adam out, and has supplanted the natural, inherited, by a broader, braver, better, sweeter self. I do not know anywhere a more striking illustration of what may be done at the very root of things where one really takes hold. It is overturn, it is annihilation, it is rooting out the bad and overgrowing the place of it with the good, and making the other things of the temperament the sweeter and the stronger. In that way, not merely may adversities be made friends, but self-antagonisms be changed to blessings. What we need all through is the attitude, the endurance, of that midnight wrestler by the brook Jabbok. We may be wounded, crippled, bear the mark of bruise and scar of wound, feel it our lives long, though we may not show it. But we are the conquerors, and the vanquished thing has made us over ; has been compelled not only to yield, but to do that thing so doubly hard for a vanquished foe, — bless,

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, So it is with the whole catalogue of the self things, — passions, appetites, prejudices, dislikes, habits. The thing we really ought to do with them is to turn them in to do better work. We do not readily see it that way. They are imperative, and mean to control, and we get an easy habit of letting them. If we get brave enough to make some trial of ourselves against them, we soon give over. We tell children to try and then try again. That is at the basis of domestic training, and it is the trying again that makes the child. We who are mature do not do as we tell children. We do not try. We do not resist. We become impatient, despairing, give up. Giving up is the most unhappy thing a man does. To give up is to take one's life, is to win curse, not blessing. One is never to give up, but to hold on and to hold out, and compel the beatitude which comes of healthy struggle, though he should not reach that which comes of a complete victory. These and all troublesome things within us have great capacity to bless, only we do not yield to them, only we make them feel us.

Beside self-hindrances are others from outside, and very various. They are to be treated the same way, made to yield the same reward.

In every day, we have disappointments, — common, trifling, troubling things. Life is a good deal made up of them. They are its severest trials. We bear great things with at least a show of equanimity. We break under little ones. If we know there is something serious, we muster our energies and face it. But little, annoying things which spring at us from the wayside, from unexpected corners,, at most unwelcome

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moments, just at the time of all others when we fancied all going smoothly, just where we can least brook opposition, postponement, or delay, — these every one feels to be serious annoyances of life, and of no special use. But suppose, — instead of fretting and disappointment over the rain that keeps you indoors, over the dinner that is not ready or is badly cooked, over the man who is not punctual, over the investment that does not pay, over annoyance of domestic or child, — instead of scolding and fuming about the present, immediate form of the trial, you hold it, study it, reason about it, look at it every way, turn it over on all sides, and see if something cannot be made of it, if there be not some fine gold there. • Instead of taking these into your temper, suppose you take them into your heart, and hold them there till all shadow of the ugliness of temper is melted away, and the blessing comes, — the blessing that as surely comes, under these conditions, as the blessings of sunlight and spring breezes come after the fret of east winds, and low leaden clouds, and dull rains or hasty showers. Suppose one were to make it, not a principle only, but a habit, to hold on to every trying and adverse thing until it blesses, plucking away the disguise beneath which lies the beatitude ! It would not be long before all these wearing, worrying irritations would be transformed into angels of light, teaching the once captious spirit great and solemn truths, and leading it into gentleness, patience, and forbearance. Every one of us who has had any self-discipline knows what has come to himself out of the most hopeless elements in him, simply through handling them wisely, compelling

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them to do good work. Every such one knows how, out of the little irritations and vexations of life, once, like the little foxes of the field, destroying all that was fair and manly, he has made great blessings ; and you will generally find the happiness and security of maturer life to lie just where hard wrestling has wrung blessings out of hostile things. Then there are a thousand things in one's intercourse with others which are unpleasant, vexatious, irritating. Some men and women are merely annoyances, aversions. We don't see why they were made, or why they should themselves care much to live. They make us feel uncomfortable, if they come near us. They cross our paths every way, ' and if we cross over to the other side, they cross over too. They contrive to run counter to our wishes, to set themselves against our prejudices, to throw ridicule upon our principles, to set things awry, to be every way repellent, to offend our tastes or somehow to be only disagreeable. And, where things do not run to this extreme, there still is much in every-day intercourse, at home and with friends, which puts us into an uncomfortable humor, and makes us wish ourselves well rid of such society. This is the first, the outside feeling, and too frequently the only and the lasting one. It does only and purely harm more to ourselves than to them. Let a man become conscious of the folly of allowing the petty annoyances of character or conduct to have so much influence over him. Let him resist the annoyance, hold it till he sees how, by that very antagonism, some good thing is drawn out and strengthened in himself, or some bad thing avoided. Let him hold it till out of

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II the ashes of aversion shall spring a true, courteous regard, till he find a blessing in that which had been only a plague. For myself, I confess that, among the people of worth whom I have known, not a few were those with- whom my first intercourse was unpleasant, and my first impressions repulsive. And I have no small self-rebuke at that want of moral steadfastness which neglects to hold back the crude or unpleasant opinion, that lack of fidelity to conviction which allows me still to refuse to hold the man till I find the blessing in him.

The truth will bear to be carried higher, among the great troubles and sorrows of life, — the sorrows in which, long time, the stricken spirit can discern no light. Nothing would seem, — did we not know it by experience, — nothing does seem to many still so utterly impossible as that any blessing can come of sorrow. Of none of Christ's Beatitudes are we so skeptical as of that which promises blessing to them that mourn. And yet, hold sorrow till its more selfish aspect passes, till it turn its religious side to you, till time and experience and faith do their work, till you feel, not its gloom, but its glory; not its storm, but its peace ; not its loss, but its gain ; not its cross, but its crown. Do not, through any device, lose its sanctifying influence, the greatest loss the soul can meet. Do not flee from it, or seek to smother it, or yield to it, but hold it, — hold it till it blesses, till you have consecrated it by prayer and submission, till all other views grow dim, and only its religious side, its heavenly side, God's side, is toward you. Keep it till it bless, though it long delay, and you will then see how, out

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of seeming evil, God educes good ; how, out of the darkness of earth, he brings the light ineffable of heaven ; how, as night precedes day, so sadness and suffering precede peace ; how, as day issues from night, peace from trouble comes.

That surely is a mysterious, but not the less real, power of blessing which lies within every well contested, rightly borne trouble. He knows but little who supposes that, if there is to be a blessing in his earthly lot, he shall at once detect it, as he would who, searching for gold, should look to find it scattered liberally upon the surface. The things of permanent value are mostly hidden, — have to be sought. Did not he of old entertain angels unawares, — only know them, get their blessing, as they departed ? Did not Jesus walk with his disciples, and only as he left them did they see that the crucified was risen ? And does not God still hold men's eyes, and behind disguises conceal the ultimate good ? In lesser things, man has learned the divine law. The pure and glittering metal lies in the dull ore. The diamond's coat is rough, uttering no prophecy of the wealth beneath. Forbidding forms enclose choicest souls. Only as one perseveres, gets through the crust, knocks off the covering, or penetrates beneath the surface, is it that the true worth is revealed. The form of trial, harsh and repulsive, and all its earlier manifestations setting strongly against a man's desire and will, makes him feel that it is only trial, only pain, — takes him on his lower side, his selfish, his earthly side. He may resist it because his nature prompts, or he thinks it duty, or because he feels that, if he do not, it will destroy him.

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He does not see beyond the necessity, the impulse of resistance ; and the resistance is that dogged, soulless resistance wherewith so many confront their lot. It must be borne ; and he will set himself to bear it. It must be met ; and he will set himself to meet it. But, as to any good in it, any blessing to be got out of that harsh and repulsive fact, any yield from it beyond a dogged bearing, he does not see it. If it be a serious thing, he may grow rebellious and question God's right or God's love. Let him, however, set himself to bear in a real child-spirit. By degrees, slow and uncertain at first, the painful pressure is relaxed a little. The shades are a little less dark. A possible good begins to be suspected. Then it is half-confessed, till finally, if he will but hold it long enough, he will find that this crushing thing, which was only gloom and only harm, has its bright and holy side, and where misery came blessings are left. The very thing which rose in its terrible might, and seemed about to sweep him from the earth, against which he had feared to measure his puny strength, is found to be a priceless good.

" Surely," said one writing me who knew something of greater as lesser trial, "it is only our fault if we do not turn the hard trials into blessings ;• and I take shame that the things which were sent to sweeten I have so much allowed to embitter me." That statement grasps and holds the great truth and the great confession. We yield or resist, and are only embittered ; we hold, and grow sweet ; and where the sweetness is established, the beatitude follows. The secret of successful living is to extract blessings out of all

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conditions, to compel of them that. God does not lay them upon the surface, and sometimes he buries them deep. You may not know where the blessing lies except by search, weary and baffling many times. Where it seems most useless, there oftentimes is its most blessed reward. Learn the wisdom to hold everything till - it bless, though ill be heaped on ill. Make every discipline what the brook Jabbok was to Jacob, — the place of conquest and blessing. Let nothing go till you have probed it well, and got the uttermost of blessing, as the bee does not desert the bitterest flower till she gets the last drop of sweetness from it. Never withhold searching because it seems of no avail. Search as the woman did for her money, as the shepherd did for his sheep, as the seeker did for his goodly pearl, — till you find. Having found, hold as Jacob did, and there shall be nothing in life, however frowning, hostile, baffling, which shall not have for you a blessing, — a blessing you would not surrender, a blessing you in no other way could attain.

II. What Sufficeth?

" Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth." — John xiv., 8.

I have always felt the incident with which the text is connected to be one of deepest pathos. The air of gentle, suffering tenderness which invests this scene, as the whole language of that last interview, seems to deepen just here; and the little dialogue that introduces, and in part shapes the after-talk, is as exquisitely true to nature as touching in itself.

I think that either you or I would have said just what Thomas did. It was an outspoken piece of honesty. He really did not know whither Jesus was going; and it was confidence in his Master, and not doubt, that made him say so. More confused men probably were never gotten before so great a fact ; and it was just as natural for Philip — and again you and I might have done the same — to say at the next point Jesus made: "Why, now there is really something ! Only show us the Father, and that is enough." And I think the very grave way in which Jesus met them, with a tenderly pained surprise, with a something in tone and look which was not rebuke, while it had a dash of disappointment about it, helped to steady them all, keep their tongues quiet, and their ears alert, and their minds active, receptive, if they failed of being wholly sympathetic.

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WHAT SUFFICETH?

The showing of the Father was the whole mission of Jesus, his one aim, his life's work. Never was that other or less ; never was it other or more. The one thing was to manifest not the being of God, which was an already established fact with his nation, but the character of God, which they never had understood, which they of that generation were understanding very much less than such men as Isaiah and Daniel- — men of the most spiritual insight under the old dispensation — did. It was with faith when Jesus came a good deal as with art when Raphael came, with the Church when Savonarola from within and Luther from without attempted its reform, — a time of grotesque deterioration, falseness and deadness, when the name of a great thing covered only ghastly and foul decay. Even the Jehovistic idea of God was very much degenerated, and may be said to have had little real following. The idea one man has of another is betrayed by the manner of his intercourse with him ; and, more than by any language, we reveal through the methods of our intercourse our interior conception of God. The Jew of Christ's time was a ritualist, the most servile believer in and follower of form, a formalist so rank and so mean as to always have had only the Saviour's contempt. Growing out of his formalism, its inevitable concomitant, was self-righteousness ; and to be self-righteous is inevitably to be hypocrite. The brave old prophet had said that God could not bear the sacrifice of bulls and of rams, and another as brave had added just what God did desire. All that had been displaced, and the tradition of the elders, abrogating the sure word of God, taught the cleanliness of the outside of cups and platters, in the