Living for the Best Part 3

It sometimes seems as though G.o.d never intended to bring the best out of us excepting through pain and pressure. The most costly perfume that is known is the pure attar of roses, and one drop of it represents millions of damascene roses that were bruised before the sweet scent they contained was secured.

"The best of men That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer."

The sphere of difficulty is usually the sphere of opportunity. "I was made for contest," Stevenson said. We all are made for it. As we let the contest overpower us, we fail; as we overpower the contest, we succeed.

One particular personage of the Old Testament is in mind as ill.u.s.trative of these thoughts, Jeremiah. He always reminds me of a violet I once saw growing on Mount St. Bernard in Switzerland. The snow was deep on every side, excepting on one little slope a few feet in width, exposed to the eastern sun. There, so close to the snow as almost to be chilled to death by the cold atmosphere about it, was a violet sweetly lifting its head and blooming as serenely as though it knew nothing of the struggle for life.

Jeremiah was a mere youth when the conviction came into his heart, "G.o.d wishes me to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right." He lived at Anathoth, three miles from Jerusalem, the distance of an hour's easy walk. His father was a priest who probably in his turn served in the duties of the temple at Jerusalem. But though he came of religious ancestry, and though he heard much of the religious exercises of the temple, this call from G.o.d to be his mouthpiece in teaching the people to do right, broke in upon his life as a disturbing force. The times were worldly, and even wrong. n.o.bles and princes, merchants, scholars, and priests had put the fear of G.o.d away from their eyes, and were acting according to the selfish impulses of the hour. The general outward life of the nation was pure, but it was the pureness of mere formality. Beneath the surface ambitions and purposes were cherished that uncorrected would surely lead the people into selfishness, idolatry, and transgression.

It was no easy thing for Jeremiah to answer "yes" to this call of G.o.d.

The call involved a lifetime of brave service. Matters in the nation were sure to go from bad to worse. Difficulties after difficulties therefore, as they developed, must be faced. He stood at what we name "the parting of the ways"; if he did as G.o.d wished, his whole life must be given to the work indicated; if he said "no" to G.o.d's call, he would drift along with the rest of the people, leaving them to their fate, he no better and perhaps no worse than they.

In some respects there is nothing better than to be _forced_ to a decision on some important matter, particularly if that decision is a decision involving character. It was a choice with Jeremiah whether he would live unselfishly for G.o.d or selfishly for himself. That choice ordinarily is the supreme choice in every one's life. It is the supreme choice that the Christian pulpit is constantly presenting. Present character and eternal destiny are shaped according to that choice.

In Jeremiah's case there was a native reluctance to do the deeds which he saw were involved in obedience to G.o.d's call. He was by temperament modest and retiring. He shrank from publicity. He did not like to reprove any one. Severe words were the last words he wished to speak. It would have been a relief to him if G.o.d had simply let him alone and imposed on others this duty of trying to make the people better. Some men seem to be adapted for a fray, as Elijah was, and as John the Baptist was. But Jeremiah was more like John the beloved. He would have been glad to live and die, simply saying, "Little children, love one another."

It is G.o.d's way, however, again and again, to take lives that to themselves seem utterly unfitted for special duties and a.s.sign them to those duties. Almost all the best workers in G.o.d's cause came into it reluctantly, and against the feeling that they were fitted for it. We are bidden ask the Lord of the harvest to _thrust_ men into the fields of need. Jeremiah felt in his heart this "thrusting." He did not kick against it. He yielded to it.

But with what results? The first result was _estrangement_. His goodly life and conversation soon made the people of his village and even the brothers and sisters of his home feel that he was different from themselves. They chafed under the contrast of their carelessness and his earnestness. He found himself left out of their pleasures and chilled by their indifference. The estrangement developed until his fellow-townsmen were eager to rid themselves of his presence, and his own family were ready to deal treacherously with him.

It is just at this point that so often a good purpose breaks down. When a man's foes are they of his own household or comradeship, he is very apt to give up his good purpose. It is more difficult for a beginner in the religious life to resist the insinuating and depreciating remarks of near acquaintances than to face a mob. It must have cut Christ to the heart's core when his brethren said of him, "He hath a devil!" "I would rather go into battle," said a soldier newly enlisted as a Christian, "than go back to the mess-room and hear what the men will say when they know of my decision."

Jeremiah started his obedience to G.o.d amid estrangement. It was not long before estrangement had given place to _threatening_. His duties as he grew older called him to Jerusalem. The youth become a man must leave the village, go to the city, and in the larger sphere of need, speak the messages of G.o.d. In Jerusalem he a.s.sured the people that if they did injustice, oppressed the poor, built themselves rich houses out of wages withheld from servants, made sacrifices to base idols, and strengthened the hands of evil-doers, G.o.d would bring a terrible overthrow upon them.

His task was made the more difficult because in his words and att.i.tude he stood alone. He had no following among priests or prophets to back him. With one consent they affirmed that he was wrong and that a lie was on his lips when he predicted desolation if present practices were continued.

It is a great hour in any man's life when he is obliged to stand up alone and state his case or defend his cause. What an hour that was in Paul's history when before the Roman officials "no man stood with him,"

but, dependent as he was on sympathy and fellowship, he stood alone! It is when a man is absolutely left alone, in danger or disgrace, that the deepest test of his character is reached. That is the reason why the night-time, which seems to say to us "You are alone with G.o.d," has its impressiveness, and why the death hour has a similar impressiveness.

Jeremiah felt his loneliness. There was nothing of the stoic in him. He could not school himself to be brazen-hearted. He was so human, so like the great majority of people, that every now and then some cry of weariness would escape his lips. "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth. I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me." Sometimes his outbursts of mental agony make us feel that the man has almost lost his bravery. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born! Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" But glad as he would have been to escape the responsibility of rebuking people, and glad as he would have been to hold the affection and regard of his companions, he never for a moment kept back the truth, nor for a moment did he distrust G.o.d's blessing on his life. "All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him." "But the Lord is with me," he declared, and so declaring he was immovable before his adversaries.

There came a third experience into his life, which carried his difficulties one degree higher. It was the experience of _disdain_. He knew full well that the wicked course of the nation was inevitably leading to destruction. Unless the evil of the people should cease the powers of Babylon would come and would destroy Judah. He was debarred an interview with the king. He therefore wrote his message on a roll, put it in the hands of a messenger, Baruch, and in due time that roll was carried into the king's presence by Baruch and read to the king. The king was sitting in his winter house. The weather was cold. A fire was burning before him in a brazier. As the king heard the words of Jeremiah that called him and the people to penitence, his anger was aroused. He seized the roll ere three or four of the columns had been read, cut it up with his penknife, and cast the whole roll into the fire to be utterly consumed therein. He did this in the presence of his court. He did it with a disdain and contempt that made every man present feel that Jeremiah and Jeremiah's words were to be despised.

It never is a pleasure to be despised. Contempt usually embitters a man or suppresses him. The derisive laugh against a man is more powerful in breaking him than the compactest argument. Many men can remain steadfast to convictions in estrangement or in opposition who give way when they hear that their words and actions are the subject of twitting and ridicule. "Who is this Jeremiah, and what are his words, that we should think of them a second time? I will cut these words into fragments even with my pocket-knife, and then I will burn them in this little brazier, and that shall be the last of them!" So said and did King Jehoiakim. And his princes heard and saw.

But whatever the effect produced on others, the effect produced on Jeremiah must have been to the king a great disappointment. Jeremiah heard G.o.d's voice saying in his heart, "You must write those same words of truth again." And again he wrote them on a roll. And just here comes out one of the sweetest and most characteristic features of Jeremiah's character. The ordinary man, if he has made up his mind to retort or to ridicule, says to himself, "Now I will pour out my wrath on my adversary." But such was Jeremiah's self-control and peacefulness of temper that perhaps he would have erred on the side of leniency unless G.o.d had charged him, not to soften or to suppress one part of the message, but to write _all_ the words that were in the former roll and add thereto other special predictions. To this charge, whatever his obedience might lead to, Jeremiah immediately and completely responded.

Then came Jeremiah's fourth experience. His persistence in duty now cost him _imprisonment_. Not an ordinary imprisonment, but such an imprisonment as Oriental monarchs employ when they wish to place those whom they dislike in a living death. The king first put Jeremiah in a dungeon-house where there were cells. This was not very bad. Then, when Jeremiah still was true to his testimony, the king put him in the court of the guard, giving him a daily allowance of one little eastern bread-loaf. This also was not very bad. But later the king, when the princes claimed Jeremiah for their victim, as afterward the rabble claimed Christ from Pilate for their victim, gave Jeremiah into the hands of the princes to do with him as they pleased. Then it was that they with cords dropped him down into a deep subterranean pit, whose bottom was mire, so that Jeremiah sank in the mire.

How many people in the time of the Inquisition, when they were racked to pieces, when thumb-screws agonized them, when water drop by drop fell ceaselessly on their foreheads, and when pincers tore their flesh little by little continuously, renounced their faith and so saved themselves from slow torture! It was not an easy thing to die from starvation in a dark, damp pit, with mire creeping up all about him. It never has been easy to die slowly and alone for the faith; to die for a testimony; to die for a message that involved others much more than one's self. All that was needed to protect him from pain and to preserve his life was silence. If Jeremiah would keep quiet all would be well. But for Jeremiah to keep quiet would be to prove disobedient to a sense of duty implanted by G.o.d in his heart. So this gentle nature, that shrank from the horrors of the miry pit, horrors more to be dreaded than the lions'

den or the fiery furnace or the executioner's sword, went down into the pit unbroken--precursor of those sweet natures in woman and child that all the beasts of the Colosseum could not dismay, and that all the fires of martyrdom could not weaken.

One more experience awaited Jeremiah--_deportation_. So far as we know, it was the closing experience of his life. The dauntless soul had not been suffered to die in the pit. Patriotic men who realized the folly of letting an unselfish, high-minded citizen perish so terribly, and who realized, too, the desirability of preserving alive so wise a counselor, secured permission from the vacillating king to take rags and worn-out garments, and let them down by cords into the pit. "Put now these rags and worn-out garments under thine arm-holes under the cords," they said, "and Jeremiah did so. So they drew up Jeremiah with the cords." Once again he was in his position of responsibility as G.o.d's messenger. In that position he held fast to his faithfulness.

Then came his final experience. Judah had pa.s.sed through trial upon trial. Jeremiah had shared in her trials, never running away from them, but always bearing his full brunt of burden and loss. Then he was forced to go away from the land of his love and his tears to Egypt! He did not wish to go. He a.s.sured those who headed the movement that it was folly to go. But they took him with them, and carried him, like a captive, off to a foreign land.

All this would have meant little to some men, but to Jeremiah it meant everything. Jerusalem and the land of Judah were dear to his heart. He had lived for them, spoken for them, suffered for them, and well-nigh died for them. In older years the land of one's birth and of one's sacrifices becomes very dear. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning; if I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" Into that deportation we cannot follow him. We only know that up to the very last minute in which we see him and hear his words, he was unceasingly true to his G.o.d, and true to the people around him, loving his Master and loving his brethren, with an unfailing devotion.

But this we do know, ignorant as we are whether he died naturally or was stoned to death, that in after years this Jeremiah became among the Jews almost an ideal character. They saw that all his words predicting the destruction of the holy city and the captivity were fulfilled. They learned to revere his fidelity. They even called him "the greatest" of all their prophets. They well-nigh glorified him. In times of war and difficulty they used his name wherewith to rouse halting hearts to bravery and to lead the fearful into the thick of perilous battles.

Here, then, is a life that came to its best and developed its best under difficulties. "Best men are molded out of faults." So was this man molded to his best out of faults of hesitation and unwillingness and impatience. No one knows the best use we can make of ourselves but the One who created us and understands our possibilities.

In the struggle against difficulties we have Christ's constant sympathy. Were not _estrangement_, _threatening_, _disdain_, _imprisonment_, and _deportation_ His own experiences? And did not they come in this same order? And does not He realize all the stress through which a soul must pa.s.s that would fight its contest and advance to its best? Certainly He does. And when He lays a cross upon us, it is that through our right spirit in carrying that cross we may become sweeter in our hearts and braver in our lives, and thus change our cross into a very crown of manliness and of usefulness.

To many a man there is no object in this earth that so appeals to his admiration as a person who makes the best of himself under difficulties.

We may well believe that to Christ likewise there is no human being so prized and admired as he who advances to his best through the conquest of difficulties.

THE NEED OF RETAINING THE BEST WISDOM.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEED OF RETAINING THE BEST WISDOM.

No one can read the story of Solomon's life, as given in the Bible and as given in eastern writings, without wonder. That story in the Bible is amazing; that story in the historic legends of Persia, Abyssinia, Arabia, and Ethiopia is still more amazing. It is said of Solomon that "those who never heard of Cyrus, or Alexander, or the Caesars have heard of him," and that "his name belongs to more tongues, and his shadow has fallen farther and over a larger surface of the earth than any other man's. Equally among Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan nations his name furnishes a nucleus around which have gathered the strangest and most fantastic tales."

Almost at the beginning of his public activities he made a prayer to G.o.d that may well be the prayer of every one. In a dream G.o.d appears to him, asking what he most wishes G.o.d to confer upon him. Humbly and earnestly he asks for a discerning mind--a mind capable of distinguishing between good and evil. He pa.s.ses by long life, pa.s.ses by wealth, pa.s.ses by victory over enemies, and he asks only for such understanding as shall enable him to know the right from the wrong.

We cannot call this prayer a surprise to G.o.d, but we can call it a delight to Him. There are very many kinds of wisdom, but in G.o.d's judgment, the best wisdom is that which always discriminating between the good and the bad, the true and the false, the permanent and the fleeting, prefers the good, the true, and the permanent. It surprises us that Solomon was wise enough to make the desire for discrimination the one pet.i.tion of his heart. He was comparatively young, he was inexperienced in life's responsibilities, he was at the threshhold of what promised to be a great, almost a spectacular career. Most men, under such circ.u.mstances, given the opportunity of asking for anything and everything they pleased, would have said, "Give me many, many years of mental growth; give me much, very much material wealth; give me great and constant triumphs over all who in any way oppose me." But Solomon asked only for a discerning mind that could see the difference between right and wrong, and in asking that, he asked for the best wisdom any human life can ever have.

Solomon had other kinds of wisdom. How they came to him we do not know.

Perhaps he was born with a large degree of mother wit and with a very strong mental grasp. Perhaps his father, himself a thoughtful man and a brilliant writer, provided the best teachers that wealth could procure for his son. Perhaps his mother, who had eager ambition for her son, constantly urged him on to large intellectual development.

Explain his case as we may, the facts are that he had _scientific_ wisdom. He knew nature so well that careful writers have even called him "the father of natural science." He knew trees, from the lordly cedar-tree that graced Lebanon to the little hyssop that springs out from between the stones of a wall, as I once saw it in an old well near Jerusalem. He knew beasts of the field, fowls of the air, animals that creep on the ground, and fishes that swim in the water. Such is the brief resume by the Scriptures of his acquaintance with nature. The legends of the East add that he could interpret the speech of beasts and birds, that he understood the hidden virtues of herbs, and that he was familiar with the secret forces of nature.

He had also _literary_ wisdom. He was a beautiful, trained, and forceful writer. The seventy-second Psalm, beginning "Give the king thy judgments, O G.o.d, and thy righteousness unto the king's son," is ascribed to him. So is the one hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm, opening with the words, "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." Much of the book of Proverbs is written by him or compiled by him--a book whose concise, striking, intelligent, helpful utterances are a monument of literary skill. Ecclesiastes, with its philosophical dissertations on the fleeting and disappointing elements of human life, is also a.s.signed to him. So is the Song of Solomon, which breathes a wealth of poetical fervor, that understood and applied spiritually, is as sweet as the voice of the meadow lark soaring skyward in the light and beauty of a summer day. Yet these writings are only a part of what he produced. His songs were a thousand and five, his proverbs not less than three thousand. What we have in the Bible simply suggests the variety and power of his literary style, the force and sagacity of his sound sense, the brilliancy and fitness of his practical wisdom. Solomon's words are such that to this day, in this land, and in every land of the earth, they are competent to teach prudence, economy, reverence for parents, self-protection, purity, honesty, and faithfulness to duty. The boy that learns them and carries them with him as a vital principle of being and of conduct will move unsoiled and unhurt wherever he may go. The home that places them at its center and reveres them will be cheerful and brave. The grown man that carries them with him into every detail of business and care will be upright and beautiful.

The wisdom of Solomon was _commercial_ as well as scientific and literary. He recognized the advantages of trade. He extended it. He sent ships so far away to the east that pa.s.sing through the Red Sea out into the Indian Ocean they brought back the treasures of Arabia and India and Ceylon--gold and silver and precious stones; nard, aloes, sandalwood, and ivory; apes and peac.o.c.ks. He sent other ships along the Mediterranean coasts to the north, where Hiram, king of Tyre, lived, and then to the west, out between the gates of Hercules, past the present Gibraltar, up the Atlantic Ocean to the north until they touched at southern England, at Cornwall, where they found the tin which, combined with copper, formed the bronze for armor and for all so-called "brazen"

furniture. Not alone through ships of the sea did he seek out the best treasures of all the accessible earth and beautify Jerusalem with them, but also through ships of the desert--camels--did he do the same. He caused the great caravan routes of the day to pa.s.s through Jerusalem, and he levied duties on the objects transported from Damascus on the north to Memphis on the south, and from Tadmor in the east to Asia Minor in the west. He put himself into contact with all the thought and purposes of other nations than his own, he learned what their kings and queens, their merchants, their sailors, their writers, were saying and doing, and thus he brought home to his mind the leading ideas of his time. His knowledge of men, of methods, and of enterprise became vast.

Nor did his wisdom stop with commerce; it included government also, and was _political_. He took the throne at a time when government was weak, or almost disorganized. David's last years were years of physical disability, wherein he could not curb the rebellious spirits that were gaining influence in many quarters. Solomon, upon his a.s.sumption of rule, judiciously subdued all rebellion of every kind, united the entire kingdom, and started that kingdom upon the period of its greatest glory.

He made treaties that bound adjacent princ.i.p.alities to him and caused them to pay tribute. He held such power that nations did not care to fight with him, and so he became a king of peace. He laid taxes on his own people that brought in large revenue. It was indeed the golden period of Israel.

The effect of Solomon's wisdom was great and extensive. His _reputation_ went far and wide. People made long journeys to see him, ask him questions, and honor him. Even one like the Queen of Sheba came with a great retinue, up through the desert, past village and town, to bring him costly gifts and talk with the man who knew so much. His _influence_ became pervasive. It entered into the legends of people who never saw him, and became so fixed a part of those legends, that those legends, repeated until to-day, still sound his praise. He was known in tent and in palace as the wisest man that had ever lived, and the most exaggerated statements were made and received of his insight into the mysteries of the spirit world and his power to control the supposed spirit forces of the air. His _wealth_ became almost incredible. Nothing like it has ever been known--not in the time of the Roman emperors, nor in the time of to-day. The fabulous magnificence of Mexican and Peruvian kings helps us to realize Solomon's glory. "The walls, the doors, the very floor of the temple, were plated with gold, furnishing gorgeous imagery for John's description of heaven." Two hundred targets and three hundred shields of beaten gold were held by the guard through whose lines Solomon pa.s.sed to the temple or to his house of the forest. His throne of ivory, as were its steps, was overlaid with plates of gold.

All his drinking-vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest were of pure gold, none were of silver. He was able to make the temple the costliest structure for its size the world has ever seen. Hundreds of millions of dollars went into its erection and decoration. When to-day the traveler visits Baalbec and sees stones over seventy feet in length and fourteen in width and in depth--stones quarried, conveyed, raised up into high walls and securely masoned there; when to-day the traveler sees the golden jewelry gathered from ancient Grecian graves and placed on exhibition in Athens; and when to-day the traveler examines the ma.s.sive work done in Egypt, whose ruins are overpowering in their grandeur, and seeing these stones, jewelry, and structures remembers that Solomon knew all the skill, wealth, and buildings of the whole Mediterranean world, then he can understand how Solomon, with his resources, built a city like Palmyra, and a house of worship like the temple, and made silver to be as stones in Jerusalem.

Ah, if this Solomon, so brilliant and so powerful, so "glorious," as Christ called him, could only have preserved the best wisdom all through his years, whose name--except Christ's--would be comparable to his!

He asked G.o.d for the wisdom that discerns between the good and the evil. G.o.d answered that prayer and gave him such wisdom. How clearly he saw at the first! If two women came to him, each claiming to be the mother of a little child, and asking for the child's possession, how skilful he was in ordering that the child be cut in twain in their presence, thus causing the true mother to cry out in love for her child and then giving her the child unhurt. The traditions of the east--some of them perhaps once a part of those lost books mentioned in the Bible, The Book of the Acts of Solomon, The Book of Nathan the Prophet, The Prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, The Visions of Iddo the Seer, tell again and again how quiet and accurate Solomon's perception was in distinguishing real flowers from artificial, in distinguishing girls from boys though dressed alike, and in deciding case after case of legal perplexity. He did have a discerning heart when, in his early days, he knew who his enemies were and he crushed them, who his true counselors were and he listened to them, what his supreme duty was and he built G.o.d's house, what his sinful heart needed and he shed the blood of atonement for it. It was discernment when, though he made his own house rich, he made G.o.d's house richer; when he counted his gift of millions of dollars to G.o.d's honor a delight; and when he would let neither knowledge nor pleasure nor pomp nor glory withdraw his supreme affection from G.o.d.

Would that he had always continued as he was! Would that he had remembered that the prayer offered to-day for a blessing in character must be offered again to-morrow if that blessing in character is to be retained! Prayer is not so much a momentary wish as a continuous spirit.

His momentary wish and the resolve that sprang from it were at the time all that G.o.d or man could desire. A mind distrustful of its own omniscience, humbly waiting on G.o.d for discernment, is the wisest of all minds. That mind was once in Solomon, but not always. When grown to maturity he talked philosophy, still he was wise. But when he came to act upon his philosophy, he was unwise. He failed to discern between the value and the curse of wealth. He became a lover of money for money's sake. He laid taxes on the people that they could not endure. He treated them no longer as a father, but as a master. He ceased to distinguish between the beauty and the disease of luxury. He built gardens and palaces, and made displays, not with the thought of any praise they would be to Jehovah, or to the establishment of G.o.d's people on a sound financial and political basis, but for the honor and recognition that would come to him. He became a captive to the love of magnificence and to the desire for display. He made marriages that were matters of state expediency and were not matters of heart conviction, and thus put himself under the influence of those whose religious purposes were wholly opposed to his own. He filled his palaces with women whose presence indeed was a great indication of Oriental affluence, but whose presence was a menace to clear vision of integrity, and was a woeful example to the nation. He grew blinder and blinder to fine perceptions, not alone of what was good in taste, but of what was right in principle.

He became so broad in his religious sympathies that he seemed to forget that there can be but one living and true G.o.d. He even went after "Ashtoreth, the G.o.ddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcar, the abomination of the Amonites." And as a last blind act of folly, he even raised within sight of G.o.d's holy temple "an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Moloch, the abomination of the children of Ammon, in the hill that is before Jerusalem." What men like Daniel would not do, what men like Shadrach would not do, what martyrs in after days, asked to say the simple word "Caesar" and throw a grain of corn on an heathen altar, would not do, though death awaited them, Solomon did. He gave up the fine distinction between the true and the untrue, between G.o.d and idolatry, between divine principle and human expediency. And with this loss of the best wisdom came loss of manliness, loss of peace, and loss of the favor of G.o.d. Wealth, power, luxury, praise, glory, were still about him, but he had made the most serious of all serious mistakes. Later he recognized his mistake. We hope that he repented, genuinely repented, of his mistake, and before his death turned back to G.o.d and the best wisdom. But whether he died repentant or unrepentant Solomon is the man who is forever the example of unparalleled wisdom and of ruinous folly--of ruinous folly because his wisdom failed to retain the element of the discerning mind.