Children are motivated not just to do what they see others do, but to do those things well. They are not afraid to do what they cannot yet do well, but they are not blind to the mismatches between their own performance and that of the experts they see around them. So, they start right off doing, but then, as they repeat what they did, they work at improving. We adults have a strong tendency to correct children, to point out their mistakes, in the belief that we are helping them learn.
We are causing the child to feel judged, and therefore anxious, thereby taking away some of his or her fearlessness about trying this or any other new activity. We may be causing the child to turn away from the very activity that we wanted to support. Only the child knows when he or she is ready to attend to mistakes and make corrections.
They are continually trying to improve what they do, on their own schedules, in their own ways. He writes p This, he says, is why children may learn better by watching somewhat older children than by watching adults. As one example, he describes p how young boys naturally and efficiently improved their softball skills by observing somewhat older and more experienced boys, who were better than they but not so much better as to be out of reach. This observation fits very well with findings from my research on the value of age-mixed play see here and here. A number of psychologists, I included, have written about the cognitive value of fantasy, how it underlies the highest form of human thinking, hypothetical reasoning e.
In his discussion of fantasy, Holt criticizes the view, held by Maria Montessori and some of her followers, that fantasy should be discouraged in children because it is escape from reality. Holt, in contrast, writes p Through such fantasy he can learn a lot about trucks and even something about driving one as he makes his toy truck imitate what real trucks do. Holt points out that children playing fantasy games usually choose roles that exist in the adult world around them.
They pretend to be mommies or daddies, truck drivers, train conductors, pilots, doctors, teachers, police officers, or the like. In their play they model, as close as they can, their understanding of what adults in those roles do. I have learned from anthropologists that such fantasy is normal for children everywhere. For example, young hunter-gatherer boys imagine themselves to be courageous big game hunters as they stalk butterflies or small rodents and try to hit them with their small arrows.
They are practicing what it feels like to be a hunter, and they are also developing real hunting skills. That is so much more exciting than, say, engaging in target practice. As children interact with the world their minds are continually active. They are trying to make sense of things. Holt points out, as have others including, most famously, Piaget , that children are truly scientists, developing hunches hypotheses and then testing those hunches and accepting, modifying, or rejecting them based on experience.
Children often use mental models that they developed from previous activities to help them make sense of new activities. Holt gives a wonderful example of a boy who loved trains and knew a lot about them. When this boy began to get interested in reading he noticed that a printed sentence is like a train, with a front end and a back end, going in a certain direction. Among other things, it helped him transfer his love of trains into a love of reading.
But the model had to come from the boy himself. If a teacher had imposed it on him, it would probably have come across to him as artificial and would have subverted his own attempt to make sense of sentences. And if a teacher tried to use this analogy between a sentence and a train in teaching children who had no particular interest in trains, that would be just silly. When Holt wrote the first edition of How Children Learn published in , he was still trying to figure out how to become a better teacher. Here, for example, is one of his insertions p Children naturally resist being taught because it undermines their independence and their confidence in their own abilities to figure things out and to ask for help, themselves, when they need it.
Only the child has access to all of this, which is why children learn best when they are allowed complete control of their own learning. Or, as the child would say, when they are allowed complete control of their own doing. And now, what are your thoughts? Peter Gray is the author of the book Free to Learn: Sign in Get started.
The Mission publishes stories, videos, and podcasts that make smart people smarter. They charm away his grief when the sufferer thus bows before the throne, accepts the punishment of his iniquity, and ascribes righteousness to his Maker. Man is the creature of appetite and passion; and though the creature of reflection and conscience, he often complains of the severity of God's judgments. What have I done to deserve a blow like this? Come now, and let us reason together.
Let such a one honestly attend to his own convictions, and inquire whether he is truly awake to a just sense of his obligations as God's creature. His conscience may not be so enlightened and sensitive as to lead him to feel the burden of his sins and the full weight of a self-condemning spirit.
He may never have honestly made the divine law the rule of his duty, nor seen how broad it is. He may have congratulated himself on a decent exterior, not thinking that "man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. What though you do not condemn yourself for your immorality, have you no reason to reproach yourself for your ungodliness? You may have overlooked your high privileges, and lost sight of those ends of divine love in the many and discriminating favors of a kind and gracious Providence towards you from your youth up.
When you contrast God's treatment of you, with your treatment of him, you may not feel so guiltless. You have been the child of his providence, the object of his care and bounty, and what return have you made to him who has thus loaded you with his benefits? Have you valued communion with him, and sought to enjoy his presence, or found in him and from him that peace and those joys which the world cannot give? Have you ever taken an honest retrospect of your own moral history?
Whence is it, if you are not marvelously ignorant of your own character, that you thus flatter yourself that your own unworthiness and ill-desert are not so great as those whose sufferings are less than your own? With such a state of mind as is often cherished by people in affliction, it is no marvel they complain of the rod. They do not feel that they deserve it. Oh it is a dark state of mind— dead, torpid, unfeeling state; sensitive to bereavement and sorrow, but insensitive to unworthiness and ill-desert. The burden of sin is of all burdens the heaviest; but there is a state of mind that makes light of sin, even when the heart stoops and bleeds under the burden of sorrow.
O son, O daughter of sorrow, look into your own heart, look into your closet and into your Bible, and then ask conscience whether your afflictions are not deserved. Good men are not always faultless in this matter, but are sometimes like a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. But now you have become cruel unto me; with your strong hand you oppose yourself against me.
The children of God are not rebels. Even under the severest afflictions they have the consciousness of their sinful character, and of their indebtedness to his forbearing mercy; and the thought cools the febrile agitation of their heart, and bids it be still. He has led me, and brought me into darkness, and not into light. He turns his hand against me all the day; he has made my chain heavy. He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He has filled me with bitterness, and made me drunken with wormwood.
He has broken my teeth with gravel stones; he has covered me with ashes. He quailed beneath beneath the rod. But did his pensive harp echo no cheering strain? Listen while God his Maker gave him "songs in the night. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. There is the song of joy from the midst of the furnace. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
And when he subjoins, "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth; he puts his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope;" and then adds, "For the Lord will not cast off forever, for though he causes grief, yet will he have compassion, according to the multitude of his mercies;" and at last affirms the great and precious truth, "for he does not afflict wittingly, nor grieve the children of men"— it is the strength of heaven, making him strong in weakness; it is the smile of heaven, chasing all gloom from his solitude and depression; it is the faithfulness of heaven, leaving upon the receding cloud "a rainbow round about the throne.
Few thoughts have a more salutary influence upon the afflicted than a sense of their own unworthiness and ill-desert, especially when they contrast their afflictions with the abounding mercies of a munificent Providence. Think of your ill-desert; count your trials, and set them side by side with your enjoyments; and then ask yourself if you have nothing left to be thankful for. She gazed intently upon him; the tears fell upon the face of the corpse as she bent over it; and then, retiring a single step as she still gazed upon him, she exclaimed, 'There lies my only son, my only earthly comfort and earthly support.
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But there lies the will of God, and I am satisfied. Afflictions are sent as a test of this great trait of the Christian character. Rightly employed, they serve not only to bring out that character, but to produce and cultivate a satisfied state of mind. It does not consist in a stoical insensibility to trials ; far from it.
Natural affections were given us that we might weep ourselves, and weep with those who weep. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. It does not consist in having no will of our own; but in that chastened and subdued spirit which consents that the will of God should be done rather than our own will. There is no greater conquest over a supremely selfish heart than this. Many a man submits to God's will because he cannot help it; but 'forced submission' is a contradiction.
There is no acquiescence when he rebels as long as he can, and yields only because he must yield, and because God is stronger than he. There are those also who flatter themselves that they have a submissive spirit, when they have nothing to submit to. They are satisfied with the dispensations of Providence, because everything smiles about them, and all their wishes are gratified. There is no submission in this, and no subjugation of our will to the will of God, but rather a self-complacency, and a proud gratification of our own desires.
Who ever thought of submitting to that which is good? There may be thankfulness for it; there ought to be; but there is no place for submission. It is only when the plan of divine Providence countervails our own desires, arrangements, and hopes, and the bitter cup is put into our hands, that we can say, "Not my will, but Yours be done. The only difficulty in exercising a submissive spirit is, that men naturally love themselves more than God.
When the carnal mind that is enmity against God is subdued, and they love God more than themselves and more than all others, this very love to him, if in due exercise, will give the preference to his will above their own. If our wishes and our will are not so dear to us as God's, we shall have no desire to oppose his will in anything.
Where there is no submission to God's will, afflictions give rise to morbid insensibility, discontent, murmuring, rebellion. Where it does exist, they prove its reality and its value. When the rod of God is upon our habitation, and we can say, "It is the Lord; let him do what seems him good;" when the bitter cup passes round, and we can say, "The cup which my Father gives me, shall I not drink it?
One such thought, one such holy emotion, one such act of sweet submission to the divine will, called into exercise and cultivated by trials, is worth all the bereavements it costs. It will live and grow and be perpetuated when this world and its idols and idolatrous attachments have passed away. When Shimei cursed David , he could say, "Let him curse, for the Lord has bidden him. They had no distrust of God.
Unlike the troubled sea, their minds were tranquil. It was enough to be able to say, "The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice. It is of itself bright evidence of the reality of spiritual character. It is a foretaste of the river of life which flows from under the throne of God and the Lamb. It is a blessed state of mind, and tinges with "its silver lining" the dark cloud of adversity. Why then should the children of sorrow inwardly murmur or outwardly complain?
God has taken your beloved one. And will you quarrel with God? Do you well to be angry? Oh bid this tumultuous heart be still. Has the God only wise acted hastily in this matter? Is it difficult for you to believe that perfect rectitude cannot do wrong, that infinite wisdom cannot err, and that infinite goodness never acts unkindly? If the Sovereign Dispenser were ignorant and unwise, if he were unreasonable and unjust, or if he were merely indifferent to the sufferer's well-being, there might be ground for complaint.
But there is no such God in the universe. A being of such attributes is no God. We all feel our bereavements, and sometimes so keenly that our confidence in God is shaken, and breaks away from its strong foundations. This is all wrong. True piety is confiding, and gives its voice for God even when he "dwells in the thick darkness.
God is a Rock; his work is perfect. These painful dispensations, as we have already seen, are designed to unfold his true character. In view of them, we may well say with the apostle, "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God.
How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! We shall know more hereafter, and see more clearly how bright his wisdom and goodness shine in these dark dispensations.
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We cannot grasp infinity. It is asking too much of infinite Wisdom, that he should condescend to our littleness and abjectness, and see everything as we see it. Poor blind creatures of a day, to desire that we and ours should be in our own hands rather than in his! His hand reaches through all these checkered scenes of our earthly existence. It reaches to the chambers of sickness and the bed of death; it reaches down to the grave, and up from the grave through all the successive generations of men, and all the relations they bear to him and to one another, and to the eternity where he dwells.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for us. What if he had not sent these trials upon you and yours? What if he had let you alone? Are you sure your trials would have been fewer or lighter, and your condition every way better than it now is? I say, are you sure of this?
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Are you sure the time will never come when you will see that it was better for you that you have been visited with the very trials at which you mourn so bitterly? Are you sure the departed one would have been as well cared for as it now is, and that you could have done as well by that beloved child as God has done? It was rightly the object of your tenderest love and most cheering hopes.
Are you sure that love would not have been grieved, and those hopes disappointed? Do you know that, foreseeing the dark shadows upon its pathway, love greater than yours, and purer, has not taken it from the evil to come, and housed it from the storm? Could you say, if it had lived, that "the days of its mourning are ended;" that it shall sin no more and weep no more? Could you have introduced it into "the general assembly and church of the first-born," where the spirits of just men are made perfect, where angels are its guardians and teachers, where "the glory of God enlightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof?
Why, why look so intently into the grave, and never beyond it? The departed are not there. It is but the mouldering clay tenement that slumbers. The intelligent, moral, and immortal one is numbered among the millions of those ransomed ones, out of whose mouth God has perfected praise. In one form or another, all sin is idolatry. It ignores the Supreme Good; and sets up some created good in his place; forsaking the Fountain of living waters, and hewing out to itself cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water.
Apostate man all the world over does this. Though formed with capacities which nothing but God can fill, he has lost his relish for the Unseen and Eternal, and seeks his highest good in the seen and temporal. This love of the creature, no longer kept in its proper place by the predominating love of the Creator, becomes an idolatrous attachment. And it is a ruinous attachment. It is the ruin of nations, the ruin of worldly men, and but for interposing grace, it would be the ruin of Christians. Nor is there anything that has a stronger tendency to weaken and break off this idolatrous attachment than afflictive dispensations.
It is altogether too favorable an opinion of human nature to suppose that men are apt to grow better under the smiles of prosperity. History teaches nothing more emphatically than that unmingled prosperity is one of the chief sources of national and individual degeneracy. The Most High once said to the nation of Israel, "I spoke unto you in your prosperity, and you said, I will not hear; this has been your manner from your youth.
It is an instructive and affecting record, that "when he slew them, then they sought him; and they returned and inquired early after God; and they remembered that God was their Rock, and the high God their Redeemer. The nations that once figured so prominently on the page of history, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, and their far-famed cities, where emperors and statesmen and philosophers and bards and merchants and bankers filled the world with fame and folly, were swept away from the pinnacle of their wealth, and from the pomp of their power.
We could not live in a world so morally corrupt as this, were it not restrained and held in awe by the divine judgments. The church of God would not be safe.
There would be no protection to liberty and law, no domestic and no public security, no Sabbath and no sanctuary, were it not for those "terrible things in righteousness" by which the God of our salvation has so often arisen to plead and maintain his own cause. The overthrow of Sodom and the cities of the plain, the plagues of Egypt, the destruction of the ancient and idolatrous Canaanites, the breaking up of the Hebrew state and monarchy, and the dispersion of the Jews, stand forth before the world not more certainly as judgments upon the enemies of truth and righteousness, than as blessings to the people of God.
It is right that God should execute judgments. The world needs them. Public and punitive dispensations consult high interests, and terminate in the glory of his great name. As with nations, so it is with individuals. They need to be taught, that in seeking their highest good on earth, they are seeking it where it is not to be found. The supreme love of the creature is the ruin of the soul.
Not many years since, a military officer in our land exclaimed on his bed of death, "The world— the world has ruined me! One of the most distinguished and successful preachers of the gospel in this land once said, "Until men have taken an everlasting leave of the world, and shut themselves up in a convent, or in hell, the love of the world is the principal way in which they stray from God— the principal affection which takes the place of love to him.
It is the great road to perdition; or if the gate of hell is shut by the grace of God, it is the great road to darkness, temptation, and distress. The psalmist understood the gracious design of affliction when he wrote the one hundred and nineteenth psalm. Before I was afflicted, I went astray; but now have I kept your word.
A principal element of this day of grace is, that it is a state of trial.
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Under this gracious arrangement everything is bringing the character of men to the test. Instruction tries it; prosperity tries it; adversity tries it. And for the most part, the great question to be decided is, whether God's creatures love the world more than him. This probationary process goes on with different and opposite results. Some there are who become worse under affliction. God said of a portion of his revolting people, "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone. And I have withheld the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest; yet have you not returned unto me, says the Lord.
I have smitten you with blasting and mildew; I have sent among you the pestilence, after the manner of Egypt; your young men have I slain with the sword; yet have you not returned unto me, says the Lord. I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet have you not returned unto me, says the Lord. But while some become worse under afflictions, some become better. Afflictions awaken the conscience of the most obdurate, restrain the wicked in their sinful courses, and in defiance of their own purposes and arrangements, arrest and detain and stop them in their downward career.
Many is the man who has been kept from falling, who, without them, would have sunk deep into the eternal pit. Afflictions not only often reclaim men from courses of wickedness in which they have long indulged, but not infrequently produce the physical incapacity for pursuing them. Many a man has been laid upon a bed of sickness, or has lost a limb, or become blind or deaf or palsied, that he might be kept from wickedness which it was in his heart to perpetrate.
Could the religious history of the people of God be narrated in detail, how many of them, do you think, would attribute their first religious impressions to some sad and solemn call of divine Providence? The arrow that first pierced many an adamantine heart would be traced to disappointments they little thought of— to the poverty they dreaded, to reproach and shame, or to the grave of those they loved. God accomplishes his purposes of mercy in his own way. The purpose comprises the means as well as the end; severed from the means, there is no purpose.
Affliction is often essential to the accomplishment of God's gracious design. Multitudes never would have become Christians but for pain and bereavement and losses; and after they became Christians, never would their backsliding have been healed but for the severity of their trials. But for these paternal chastisements, they would have wandered beyond the hope of recovery. God thought of them when they did not think of him, and restored their souls and led them in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. I have seen the benefit of afflictions, and have often wondered at the wisdom and the benevolent and gracious design which ordered and directed them.
The giddy have become thoughtful, because God smote their idols. The worldling has lost his interest in the things of time, because the hand of God has touched him. The man of congenial temperament, and social habits, and instructive and pleasant converse, loses his relish for society, and is shrouded in gloom and dumb with silence, because his heart and his hopes lie buried in the grave. Nor is this all. His conscience has been disturbed with inward pangs; and while the arrows of the Almighty stuck fast in him and were drinking up his spirit, God has turned his mourning into joy and his sad lamentations into praise.
Such is the history of many a thoughtless sinner. That young widow's heart had never found its rest in God, unless it had first been buried in her husband's grave. That daughter of mirth turned from her idols to the living God, not until she called to mind the last counsels and the parting kiss of a sainted mother, and learned that God "had chosen her in the furnace of affliction.
Disciplined and discouraged by tribulation, it has found the God of heaven its refuge and strength, and reposed in him without whom the whole circle of human joys is vanity. Sorrow has driven them from the world to God. It has shown them the embittered streams, and led them to the pure Fountain. It has shown them their weakness, and taught them to take hold of him "who gives power to the faint, and to them that have no might he increases strength. The agitated and trembling heart has found a refuge from the storm, a strength to the needy in his distress, "a shadow from the heat when the blast of the terrible ones is as the storm against the wall.
When sorrow comes on such an errand, the house of mourning reads the lesson that there is something to rest upon besides this perishing world, and something more sacred than the attachments which terminate on earth. The soul then forgets its misery, and remembers it as the waters that pass away. She takes her harp from the willows, and sings, "Be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains— for the Lord has comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.
Sorrow preaches as no pulpit ever preached. If "he who converts a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins," this forbidding messenger of mercy will have crowns of rejoicing not a few in the day of the Lord Jesus. If in taking away all the mourner has loved on earth, it has given him all that is more loved in heaven; if it has robbed him of time, to give him eternity; if it falsifies the expectations of the world, and verifies purer and brighter hopes; if when the soul had lost its way, and knew not how to return to its great object and end and chief good, sorrow comes commissioned from a world of joy "to seek and save that which is lost," it has a salutary and deserves a welcome mission.
The children of God have much to struggle with. Their vocation, high and holy as it is, has a militaristic aspect. It is a protracted conflict, in which they find it necessary not only to act on the defensive, but to be the aggressors. It is not only true, as has been already intimated, that the love of the world is the ruin of worldly men, it is the besetting sin of Christians. The best of men love the world far more than they ought. Nor are they always sensible of its depressing and secularizing power. It eclipses their faith, and limits and obscures their spiritual vision.
It allures their affections from God, confuses their contemplations of the realities of eternity, and is not infrequently so entwined about their heartstrings, that they have lost the life and soul of religion, and for a time appear in no way different from other men. In miserable and criminal concurrence with these outward exposures, there are strong tendencies, from "the sin that dwells in them," not only to insensible aberrations from the straight and narrow way, but to conscious and obvious backsliding.
The enemy is subtle, and the conflict severe. God does not mean that his own children should always remain thus undistinguished from the world that lies in wickedness. We know that "all are not Israel who are of Israel. And though it belongs not to men to sever the just from the unjust, and although they may grow together until the harvest, the difference between them is often disclosed before the harvest sets in.
If any of those who profess to be the friends of God and followers of his Son are false to their profession, he is very apt to make their unfaithfulness and hypocrisy appear, and to place them in circumstances in which their deception shall vanish like shadows before the sun, and their deceitful profession shall stand out before the church and the world. Nor is it less true that the same dispensations of his providence which detect and bring out the hypocrisy of those who have a name that they live and are dead, disclose and discover the sincerity and truthfulness of those who have more than the form of godliness.
An intimate acquaintance with the biography of good men, among other wonders of his grace, shows that the Father of mercies usually places his true friends in circumstances which prove their Christian integrity, and invigorate and burnish their graces. By early covenant he gave them to his Son, and not one of them shall be lost, nor allowed to remain undistinguished from his recognized foes. The promise is explicit— "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes.
He has a cure for their spiritual declension and their outward backsliding. He casts them into the furnace— he tries them as silver is tried. If the dross is massive and unyielding, he heats the furnace seven times more than it is used to be heated, until the mass melts away and is consumed. This he himself declares to be his object in these afflictive dispensations.
They return to him from whom they have revolted; their graces are stronger and brighter, and shine in all the beauties of holiness. There is a meaning in their afflictions, and the more emphatic as there is a reality and depth in them when they thus give brightness to their spiritual armor, and crown their conflicts with progressive victories.
The burning arrows of temptation are ordinarily showered upon the soul of the believer during the seasons of thoughtless prosperity. These fiery darts do not often fly in the valley of Baca—desolation and sorrow quench them. Such is sorrow's mission, and such is the voice of experience, and it is but an echo from the divine oracles. Count it all joy when you fall into diverse trials; knowing this, that the trial of your faith works patience; but let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
Now no chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruits of righteousness to those who are exercised thereby. It is not often that a truly Christian mind long languishes under the gloom of sorrow. Dejected it may be; but there is an exhilarating power in the truths on which God has caused him to hope.
Languish it may; but there are graces within, which, like plants of righteousness shrouded in darkness, are perpetually tending towards the light, and eventually emerge into the sunlight of spiritual joy. Not only do these spiritual consolations break up the settled gloom, but bring with them a deeper and stronger consciousness of adoption into the family of God.
The mourner feels that the chastening is from the faithful hand of paternal love. Under the cheerful sunshine of prosperity, many a good man has been so absorbed and gratified in the objects of time and sense, that he had little or no religious enjoyment. His joys were elsewhere. He could not say with the rejoicing thousands of Israel, "Let those who love your name be joyful in you; shout for joy, all you that are upright in heart.
Let Israel rejoice in him that made him; let the children of Zion be joyful in their King, and glory in the Holy One of Israel. They sought him, but they could not find him. They "went forward, but he was not there; backward, but they could not see him; on the right hand where he does work, but he hid himself from them; on the left hand, but they did not behold him. Now, since the waves of sorrow began to roll over them, they find that God alone is their refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
He is now their satisfying portion; and though everything else is fading and dying around them, they can say with the psalmist, "The Lord lives; and blessed be my rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted. God may be seen and enjoyed everywhere; but it is in the dark passages of our pilgrimage , in the depths of disappointed and fond expectations, on the bed of languishing, and in the death-chambers of those we love, that the light of his countenance most cheers us.
They were days of fearful solemnity and sanguinary persecution when the apostle Paul wrote his rich epistle to the Christians in Rome. Nothing but the sharpest trials gave rise to such thoughts as these— "Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Who does not see the hallowed influence of abounding trials upon his abounding faith and heaven-imparted love?
Who can read the eighth chapter of this epistle without perceiving that such noble thoughts and unwavering confidence were not the offspring of a tranquil age? What writer, except one from the cliffs of the overhanging storm, or the submerged cavern, or the lions den, or the "mountain of the leopards," ever uttered the triumphant language, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thoughts and emotions cheaply purchased by his participation with the sufferings of his suffering Lord. How far above the 'sorrows of nature' are the 'consolations of grace'. How far superior to the depressions of nature is the triumph of faith. Afflictions are not useless when grace becomes victorious.
It is a beautiful remark of Pascal's, in a letter occasioned by the death of his father, "There is no consolation but in truth. All trial is sweet in Jesus Christ. He suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering. See in the magnitude of our woes the greatness of our blessings, and let the excess of our grief be the measure of our joy. We love to have the providence of God smile upon us, and we often murmur when it frowns, even though we have so often found that it is safer for us that it should not always smile. It is recorded of ancient Israel, that "God gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls.
When God frowns upon us, we should be less anxious for exemption from the suffering, than for grace to endure it. Better, unspeakably better is it to enjoy the Divine presence and the light of his countenance, without our idols, than to have our idols without his favor. Oh, what wanderers would we be, if God did not sometimes hedge up our way with thorns. Surely it is not for lack of love to his people that he severely chastises them. David could say, "My soul cleaves unto the dust; quicken me, according to your word.
That sweet Christian poet William Cowper could "sing of mercies and of judgments," and in strains such as angels use, and rarely in sweeter tones than when he indited the hymn, "O for a closer walk with God. So shall my walk be close with God, Calm and serene my frame; So purer light shall mark the road That leads me to the Lamb. I have seen, I have felt the Christian graces wither under the burning sun of prosperity; and I have seen them "revive as the corn, and grow as the vine," when these scorching rays were intercepted by clouds. The love that prefers God to creatures; the penitence and humility that have learned to "go softly," because they have "heard the rod and him who has appointed it;" the peace that tranquilizes; the fear that fills the soul with holy reverence; the hope that looks for brighter days; the joy that "glories in tribulation," looms up under the darkest skies.
From the deepest valley of humiliation, the 'eye of faith' discovers streaks of light from the mountain of God's holiness; and though dark clouds hang over it, streams of mercy flow down through their selected and grief-worn channels, filling the soul from all the fullness of God.
Well does the Father of mercies say to each of his mourners, "My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. For whom the Lord loves he corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights. Blind unbelief naturally errs in its interpretations of his providence. Amid my list of blessings infinite, Stands this the foremost, that my heart has bled.
For all I bless you; most for the severe. Sorrow finds no relief from the mere teachings of human reason. The lessons of pagan philosophy, even from some of the most accomplished minds the world has known, do but make it the more bitter. A celebrated orator and statesman, who flourished more than a century before the Christian era, furnishes us an instructive illustration of this thought— Marcus Cicero was from an ancient and noble family in Italy, of superior talents and culture, of military as well as academic training, scarcely less distinguished for his philosophy than his eloquence, and rose to the highest dignities of the state with no other recommendation than his personal merits.
No man in Rome enjoyed a higher degree of popular favor, and no one was more deservedly hailed as "the father and deliverer of his country. Pagan biography may be safely challenged to furnish a purer, brighter character than that of Cicero, or a more undeserved overthrow of earthly hopes, and sudden fall from the eminence of popular favor, wealth, and power, to the depths of poverty, dependence, dishonor, and death. It may be instructive to inquire what were the resources and what the refuge of such a man in the season of adversity. He had no Bible for his teacher, and no God to go to.
He was familiar with the teachings of the schools, and all the questions which relate to the academic philosophy. He himself had written a treatise in which he discusses the opinions of the sages of antiquity respecting the chief good and chief end of man; and also large treatises devoted to the consideration of topics most essential to human happiness. And now, in the hour of trial, what is his solace, and whence his consolation?
His first severe affliction was his banishment from Rome. His enemies were triumphant, and in one respect he was like the king of Israel when driven from Jerusalem. He loved Rome, and would gladly have thrown some guardian shield around her. But alas, "The heathen in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone. It was a dark hour; they were overwhelming sorrows that invaded him; but his only refuge was a marble statue in the temple of Jupiter! Such is paganism; such are the consolations of natural religion; such was the hope of the noblest man in Rome— without the Bible.
A lacerating bereavement awaited him on his return to Rome, in the death of that remarkable and accomplished woman, his daughter Tullia. His grief was inconsolable, and his lamentations most bitter. He had no comforter. Mind and body seemed to be sinking under the burden.
Vain was all his philosophy to fortify himself against this overwhelming disaster. Philosophers came from all parts to comfort him; but they could not convince him that pain and misfortune and death, are no evils. They could not wipe away his tears, nor lighten his burden.
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He thought and read, but found nothing to relieve his despondency. Caesar wrote to him an affectionate letter of condolence; Brutus wrote another, "so friendly and affectionate that it greatly moved him;" Servius Sulpicius also wrote another, "which is thought to be a masterpiece of the consolatory kind," and which closes with the thought, that it is "unbecoming the character and dignity of such a man as Cicero to be thus inconsolable, and that he who had borne prosperity so nobly, should bear adversity with the same moderation.
But philosophy had no drops of consolation to pour into his bitter cup. He retired to a little island on the Latian shore, there, amid woods and groves, to bury himself in solitude and tears. He lost all his cheerfulness. His biographer informs us that this treatise was much read by the primitive fathers, especially Lactantius.
Yet strange to say, his main consolation and the main object of the treatise was to vindicate the propriety of paying divine honors to the dead; to urge the erection of a temple to her memory, as one "now admitted into the assembly of the gods;" to gratify his fond affection, and to permit his grief to evaporate at the shrine of the departed. Such is the state of mind in Christian lands where the truths of God have no access.
I have dwelt upon it, because I do not know that human reason, unenlightened by the gospel, can prescribe any better cure for the sorrow-stricken mind. We turn from it all to the thought of the psalmist, "You have magnified Your Word above all your name. It not merely provides ample securities for the peace of the guilty , but abundant consolations for the comfort of the miserable. Men feel the burden of their sorrows; they struggle with it; they groan under the yoke, but find no relief. They cannot avoid it; it is upon them. They cannot combat it; it is stronger than they.
The insufficiency of natural religion is never more apparent than to the consciousness of a sufferer. A survey of the earth on which we dwell discovers so much suffering, that for all that human philosophy can teach us, it appears to be inconsistent with that infinite wisdom and goodness which direct and control the affairs of men. We see 'the spoiler' everywhere; invading the habitations of the best of men as well as the worst; blighting their hopes, resting like a heavy cloud upon the fairest portion of man's earthly heritage, multiplying his trophies in the tears of the living and amid the silence of the dead, and sometimes thrusting in his sickle as though the harvest of the earth were fully ripe.
And we cannot help inquiring, Why is this? Why, under the control of unerring wisdom and infinite goodness and almighty power—is this vast aggregate of human suffering allowed thus to accumulate? Why, rather, does it exist at all; and why should humanity groan under it a single hour? A thinking pagan like Seneca or Cicero would naturally propose this question to himself—but he would in vain seek for a solution of the problem.
His philosophy is a synopsis of doubts, of suppositions, of theories, of vague conjectures, and at the same time of deep and powerful reasoning. Yet none of its conclusions bring peace and consolation to the miserable. It is a sorrowful philosophy, a melancholy philosophy—profoundly melancholy, and profoundly sad. To a struggling sufferer, depressed and broken-hearted, the teachings of natural religion are like the scathing winds of autumn and the cold breath of winter. They chill the soul, and drive it back into its own dark and hopeless dungeon.
There is no Sun of righteousness there, with healing in its wings. The highest intellectual and moral culture of pagan lands is a stranger to the source and author, the aim and end, of human woes. It does not meet the exigencies of the mourner; it has no mission to "bind up the broken-hearted.
Amid such shadows as these the light of the gospel shines with fresh brilliancy. There heart-comforting truths are revealed, and heart-comforting scenes portrayed. As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds by Christ. But to the poor, O Lord, you are a refuge from the storm. To the needy in distress, you are a shelter from the rain and the heat. Though the fig-tree does not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine; the field shall yield no food, the flocks shall be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls; yet will I rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation.
Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for your rod and your staff they comfort me. Why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope in God; for I shall yet praise him who is the health of my countenance, and my God. Here is Bible consolation. There is not one of these precious declarations but is as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, and as rivers of water in a dry place.
Martyrs have hugged their fetters, and clanked their chains, and saluted their executioners with affectionate endearments, because light and immortality are brought to light in the gospel. The promises of God, Oh they are like the dew of heaven upon the arid and exhausted heart of the mourner; they are like the breath of heaven, and redolent with its love; they are the life of the soul, transforming its sorrows into joys. I have often thought of those touching appellations which are given to the Great Supreme, especially in the relation he sustains to the sons and daughters of sorrow.
He is revealed in the New Testament as the Comforter, and as though there were no other. Under his wise and gracious administration, suffering becomes the parent of joy— the wife loses her husband, that she may have God for her portion and guide; the parent loses his child, that he may have God for his Father; the rich lose their wealth, that the living God may be their portion; the ambitious and aspiring lose their honors, that He may be "their glory, and the lifter up of their head.
When the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson was called to follow a beloved wife to the grave, though no preacher of the gospel, he wrote her funeral-sermon. Among many excellent thoughts in this discourse, he says, "To afford adequate consolation to the last hour, to cheer the gloomy passage through the valley of the shadow of death, and to ease that anxiety to which beings anticipation of their own dissolution, and conscious of their own danger, must be necessarily exposed, is the privilege only of the Christian religion.
To bring life and immortality to light, to give such proofs of our future existence as may influence the most narrow mind and fill the most capacious intellect, to open prospects beyond the grave in which thought may expatiate without obstruction, and to supply a refuge and support to the mind amid all the miseries of decaying nature, is the peculiar excellence of the gospel of Christ. Without this heavenly instructor, he who feels himself sinking under the weight of years, or melting away by the slow waste of lingering disease, has no other remedy than obdurate patience, a gloomy resignation to that which cannot be avoided.
In Christian lands the mission of sorrow and the mission of the gospel stand abreast. Christian ministers, like their divine Lord, are ministers of mercy. Their observation and their testimony come to us from the chambers of sickness and the house of mourning. And what are they? I have seen it melt down the most obdurate into tenderness and contrition. I have seen it cheer up the broken-hearted, and bring the tear of gladness into eyes swollen with grief. I have seen it produce and maintain serenity under evils which drive the worldling mad. I have seen it reconcile the sufferer to his cross, and send the song of praise from lips quivering with agony.
I have seen it enable the most affectionate relatives to part in death; not without emotion, but without repining, and with a cordial surrender of all they held most dear, to the disposal of their heavenly Father. I have seen the fading eye brighten at the promise of Jesus, 'Where I am, there shall my servant be. Affliction is also the best expositor of God's word. No small part of it is especially addressed to the children of sorrow. To a sufferer languishing on the couch of debility and pain— to a mourner depressed and desolate under crushing bereavements, there are no themes of contemplation so well timed and welcome, nor any so fitted to heal the heart already bruised, to tenderness— as these precious counsels of heavenly love.
It is the voice of heaven, even though it comes on the cold night air, or the bloody battlefield, or the engulfing ocean, or the poisoned atmosphere. It is like the angel messenger in the Garden. The children of sorrow are sensitive; their minds are easily arrested by God's truth; they read it, they hear it, they turn it over in their thoughts as they are not used to do in the days of cheerfulness and mirth. Martin Luther says "he never understood the book of Psalms until he was in trouble. We more than believe it; we know it, we feel it; it is in-wrought in our experience. We listen with gratified earnestness and grateful emotion to its promises, as though they were something new.
Who but the child of sorrow ever appreciated the beauty and force of such cheering words as the following— "When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue fails for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. The mourner wearies in his search; his tongue fails for thirst, until he finds rivers opened even on the sandy and barren places of his pilgrimage, and enjoys in the desert, the cedar and the myrtle and the fig-tree and the pine and the palm tree together.
How many millions of God's afflicted ones have hailed the light of that comprehensive and cheering promise— "But now, O Israel, the Lord who created you says— Do not be afraid, for I have ransomed you. I have called you by name; you are mine. When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown! When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you.
Oh, it is like the moon "walking in her brightness" through a night of storms. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord's favor has come, and with it, the day of God's anger against their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair.
For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for his own glory. There is no book like the Bible in the time of trial. Once planted in the soul, it shall bring forth fruit. One lesson truly learned from it, and that would not have been otherwise learned, is worth all our tears. It was no undue estimate of it that led one of old to say, "Unless your law had been my delight, I should have perished in my affliction.
Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me; yet your commandments are my delight. The bright and permanent realities of God's truth are alone able to cheer him. In every view this book of God is a most wonderful book. To an afflicted man it occupies a place which no other can occupy. Only infinite wisdom and infinite love could have made it what it is. Human wisdom has no part in it. It shines by its own light, is hallowed by its own sanctity, embalmed in its own love. It is sorrow's "silent comforter. There is a voice from that new-made grave saying to those who mourn— prize these messages of heavenly wisdom and tenderness.
They come from the "spirit-land. Fly from gloom and sadness to God's word. Fly from the darts of the fowler to his word; and though you will find there everything to instruct and much to reprove you, you will there find that "all things work together for good to those who love God, and are the called according to his purpose.
Are there those who are suffering from poverty? They are the afflicted. Poverty, dependence, and mortification are a bitter cup to the proud and selfish heart. To be cast upon the cold charities of this heartless world, is to be a man of sorrows.