The Crown of Thorns [11]
if life itself --life as a whole --seems to us but a series of disappointments, is not this the very conviction we need to work out from it, through our own experience? Do we not need to learn that this life itself is not sufficient, and holds no blessing that will fill us completely, and with which we may forever rest? The baffled hopes of our mortal state; --what are they but vain strivings of the human soul, out of the path of its highest good? The wandering bird, driven against the branches, and beaten by the storm, flutters at last to the clear opening, by which it mounts above the cloud, and finds its way to its home. This life is not ordained in vain; --it is constituted for a grand purpose, if through its lessons of experience we become convinced that this life is not all. In the outset of our existence here, and merely from the teaching of others, we cannot comprehend the great realities of existence.
How the things that have grown familiar to our eyes, and the lessons that have sounded trite upon our ears, become fresh and wonderful, as life turns into experience! How this very lesson of disappointment lets us in to the deep meanings of Scripture, for instance! The Christ of our youth, -- a personage standing mild and beautiful upon the Gospel-page, - - a being to admire and love; how be develops to our later thought! how solemnly tender, how greatly real, he becomes to us, when we cling to him in the agony of our sorrow, and he goes down to walk with us on the waters of the sea of death! As traditional sentiment, --as a wholesome subject for school-composition, --we have spoken and written of the weariness of the world-worn heart, and the frailty of earthly things. But, O! when our hearts have actually become worn, and tried; when we begin to learn that the things of this life are evanescent, --are dropping away from us, and we slipping from them, -- what inspiration of reality comes to us in the oft-heard invitation, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"! What a depth of meaning flowing from the eternal world, in the precept we have read so carelessly, -- "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal"! Thus the best results of life come from the defeats and the limitations that are involved with it.
And, in all this, observe how disappointment is the instrument of higher blessings. See how thus life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield. And so the attitude of the disciples, after the crucifixion, illustrates many experiences of our earthly lot. Those incidents which perplexed and grieved them were securing the very results they seemed to prevent. So, in our ordinary life, the things that appear most adverse to. us are often the most favorable.
I may say, indeed, that to any man who is rightly exercised by it, disappointment always brings a better result. But this statement requires that I should say, likewise, that the result of disappointment depends upon the level and quality of a man's spirit. "One thing happens alike to the wise man and the fool." But how different in texture and substance is the final result of the event! Disappointment breaks down a feeble and shallow man. There are those, again, whom it does not make better, -- in fact, whom nothing, as we can see, makes better. Everything glides easily off from them. Now, it is a noble thing to see a man rise above misfortune, - a moral Prometheus, submissive to the actual will of God, but defying fate. But there are men whose very elasticity indicates the superficiality of their nature. For it is good sometimes to be sad, -- good to have depth of being sufficient for misfortune to sink into, and, accomplish its proper work. But the man who rightly receives the lesson of disappointment, and improves by its discipline, bent as he is on some great or good work, is impelled by it only to a change of method, -- never to a change of purpose; and the disappointment effectually serves the purpose.
How the things that have grown familiar to our eyes, and the lessons that have sounded trite upon our ears, become fresh and wonderful, as life turns into experience! How this very lesson of disappointment lets us in to the deep meanings of Scripture, for instance! The Christ of our youth, -- a personage standing mild and beautiful upon the Gospel-page, - - a being to admire and love; how be develops to our later thought! how solemnly tender, how greatly real, he becomes to us, when we cling to him in the agony of our sorrow, and he goes down to walk with us on the waters of the sea of death! As traditional sentiment, --as a wholesome subject for school-composition, --we have spoken and written of the weariness of the world-worn heart, and the frailty of earthly things. But, O! when our hearts have actually become worn, and tried; when we begin to learn that the things of this life are evanescent, --are dropping away from us, and we slipping from them, -- what inspiration of reality comes to us in the oft-heard invitation, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"! What a depth of meaning flowing from the eternal world, in the precept we have read so carelessly, -- "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal"! Thus the best results of life come from the defeats and the limitations that are involved with it.
And, in all this, observe how disappointment is the instrument of higher blessings. See how thus life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield. And so the attitude of the disciples, after the crucifixion, illustrates many experiences of our earthly lot. Those incidents which perplexed and grieved them were securing the very results they seemed to prevent. So, in our ordinary life, the things that appear most adverse to. us are often the most favorable.
I may say, indeed, that to any man who is rightly exercised by it, disappointment always brings a better result. But this statement requires that I should say, likewise, that the result of disappointment depends upon the level and quality of a man's spirit. "One thing happens alike to the wise man and the fool." But how different in texture and substance is the final result of the event! Disappointment breaks down a feeble and shallow man. There are those, again, whom it does not make better, -- in fact, whom nothing, as we can see, makes better. Everything glides easily off from them. Now, it is a noble thing to see a man rise above misfortune, - a moral Prometheus, submissive to the actual will of God, but defying fate. But there are men whose very elasticity indicates the superficiality of their nature. For it is good sometimes to be sad, -- good to have depth of being sufficient for misfortune to sink into, and, accomplish its proper work. But the man who rightly receives the lesson of disappointment, and improves by its discipline, bent as he is on some great or good work, is impelled by it only to a change of method, -- never to a change of purpose; and the disappointment effectually serves the purpose.