^ Miss Nightingale, on this and her later visits to the Crimea, saw and heard of many deeds of heroism which she loved to tell. " I remember," she wrote, " a sergeant, who was on picket, the rest of the picket killed, and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his way picked up a wounded man, and brought him in on his shoulders to the hues, where he fell down insensible. "When, after many hours, he recovered his
256 SAVING AND INSTRUCTING GRACE
senses, I believe after trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade, ' Is he alive ? ' ' Comrade, indeed ! yes, he's alive, it is the General.' At that moment the General, though badly wounded, appeared at the bedside. ' Oh, General, it's you, is it, I brought in ? I'm so glad I didn't know your honour, but if I'd known it was you, I'd have saved you all the same.' This is the triie soldier's spirit." ^
11.
Instkucting Grace.
"Instructing us, to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world."
1. The grace of God not only saves us but also trains us. This is a lifelong work, a work that will be concluded only when grace ends in glory. Now, obviously, if this work is to be done as it should be done, the soul must, first of all, be in a position to receive teaching. The last person that we should regard as open to instruction is one whose mind is so taken up and preoccupied with considerations relating to his own personal safety that he can scarcely be expected to afford a thought to any other subject. For purposes of instruction you need that the mind of the person to be instructed should be at leisure. As long as our mind is occupied, it is scarcely conceivable that we should be in a position to bestow that amount of atte'ntion upon the instruction communicated to us which might render the lesson of any considerable service. If grace is really to undertake our training, and to teach us such lessons as only grace can teach, surely she must first of all put us at our ease, so to speak — still our inward anxieties, calm the tumultuous misgivings which fill our hearts; and until grace has done this for us, how can she instruct us ?
^ Go into yonder prison, and set that wretched felon in the condemned cell to undertake some literary work, if he is a literary man. Put the pen into his hand, place the ink and the paper before him. He flings down the pen in disgust. How can he set to work to write a history or to compose a romance, ^ Sir Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, i. 257.
TITUS II. II, 12 257
however talented or gifted he may be by nature, so long as the hangman's rope is over his head, and the prospect of a coming execution staring him in the face ? Obviously the man's thoughts are all in another direction — the question of his own personal safety preoccupies his mind. Give him that pen and paper to write letters which he thinks may influence persons in high quarters with a view to obtaining a reprieve, and his pen will move quickly enough. I can understand his filling up reams of paper on that subject, but not on any other.^
2. There is plenty of first-rate teaching in the world, without Jesus Christ and His grace. If men and nations go to the devil their own wicked, wilful way, it is not for want of teaching. But to try and cure the world's evils by teaching, in that narrow sense of the expression, is something like trying to put a fire out by reading the Riot Act to the flames. You want fire engines, and not paper proclamations, in order to stay their devouring course. But it is to be noticed that the expression here, in the original, means a great deal more than that kind of teaching. It means correcting, or chastening. It is the same word that is employed, for instance, in the well-known phrase, "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," and when Christ from Heaven says, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." It implies the notion of correction, generally by pain, at all events of discipline, of something done, and not merely something said, of a process brought to bear on the sensitive nature. And such a work of correcting and chastening is a worthy work for " the grace that appears."
Jesus Christ comes to us and brings the external means of communicating instruction in the record of His life in this Book. And He comes to us, also, doing what no other teacher can do, for He passes into our spirits, and communicates not only instruction but the Spirit which teaches them in whom it abides, and guides them with gentle illumination into "all truth" concerning God, Christ, and themselves, which it is needful for them to know.
^ " The grace of God, that bringeth salvation to all men, hath appeared disciplining us," for this purpose, that " the things which are impossible with men are possible with God." Christ and His