Tf Similar contrasts might be instanced among the states and nations of our own time ; in China, for example, and England ; one standing motionless for long ages, and becoming an effete civilization, absolutely hopeless as regards the promise of a regenerated future ; the other emptied from vessel to vessel, four times conquered, three times deluged with civil war, converted, reformed and reformed in religion, and finally emerging, after more than one change of dynasty, into a state of law, liberty, intelligence, and genuinely Christian manhood, to be one of the foremost and mightiest nations of the world.1
3. Discipline is essential, if we are to be effectually loosened from our own evils, and prepared to do the will and work of God, and indeed it seems to be a law in every sort of business or trade that nothing shall stand on its lees. The very scheme of life appears to be itself a grand decanting process, where change follows change, and all are emptied from vessel to vessel. Here and there a man, like Moab, stands upon his lees, and commonly with the same result. Fire, flood, famine, sickness in all forms and guises,
1 H. Bushnell, The New Life (1860), 293.
JEREMIAH xlviii. n 151
wait upon us, seen or unseen, and we run the gauntlet through them, calling it life. And the design appears to be to turn us hither and thither, allowing us no chance to stagnate in any sort of benefit or security.
(1) Our chequered experiences have a wonderful power of cleansing our view and revealing us to ourselves. Too often we are ignorant of the plague of our own hearts until, under some such afflictive visitation, we are led to examine ourselves, and to say with Job, " Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me." The evil may have been of long standing, and yet, because of its blunting influence on the conscience, we may have been unaware of its existence until the fiery trial brought it into view. Sudden emergency is a sure opener of a man's eyes to his own defects. He may contrive to get on, in seasons of prosperity and outward calm, without becoming conscious of the weak points of his char- acter ; but let him be thrown, all at once, upon his own resources by the coming upon him of some crushing calamity, and he will then find out whether he has that within him which can stand the strain that has been put upon him. It was a shrewd remark of Andrew Fuller that " a man has only as much religion as he can command in the day of trial " ; and if he have no religion at all, his trouble will make that manifest to him.
T[ Just as the strain of the storm tells where the ship is weakest, and stirs up the mariner to have it strengthened there, so the pressure of trial reveals the defects of character which still adhere to the Christian. One affliction may disclose an infirmity of temper; another may discover a weakness of faith; a third may make it evident that the power of some old habit is not yet entirely broken ; and thus, from this constant revelation to him of the evils that still remain in him, he is led, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, to the attainment of a higher measure of holiness than otherwise he could have reached. Paradoxical as it may appear, the occurrence of a railway accident now and then has led to most of the improvements in railway travelling, because it has directed attention to the weak places and evoked immediate effort to prevent the recurrence of the evil. Now much in the same way our spiritual " breaks-down " under the unsettlements of God's providence make manifest to us the deficiencies of our souls.1
(2) A radical change in our circumstances is sometimes
1 W. M. Taylor, The Limitations of Life, 363.
152 THE DISCIPLINE OF CHANGE
necessary to break down our self-will. Sin is but another name for self-direction. We cast off the will of God in it, and set up for a way and for objects of our own. We devise plans to serve ourselves, and we mean to carry them straight through to their result. Whatever crosses us, or turns us aside, or in any way forbids us to do or succeed just as we like, becomes our annoyance. And these kinds of annoyance are so many and subtle and various that the very world seems to be contrived to baffle us. In one view it is. It would not be good for us, having cast off the will of God, and set up our own will, to let us get on smoothly and never feel any friction or collision with the will cast off. There- fore God manages to turn us about, beat us back, empty us from vessel to vessel, and make us feel that our bad will is hedged about, after all, by His almighty purposes. Sometimes we seem to bend, sometimes to break. Be it one or the other, we lost a part of our stiffness. By and by, to avoid breaking, we consent to bend, and so at last become more flexible to God, falling into a habit of letting go, then of consent, then of contrition. The coarse and bitter flavour of our self-will is reduced in this manner, and gradually fined away. If we could stand on our lees, in continual peace and serenity, if success were made secure, subject to no change or surprise, what, on the other hand, should we do more certainly than stay by our evil mind, and take it as a matter of course that our will is to be done ; the very thing above all others of which we most need to be cured ?