University of Virginia Library

Earthly Care, a Heavenly Discipline.

Nothing is more frequently felt and spoken
of as a hindrance to the inward life of devotion,
than the “cares of life;” and even upon the
showing of our Lord himself, the cares of the
world are the thorns that choke the word, and
render it unfruitful.

And yet, if this is a necessary and inevitable
result of worldly cares, why does the providence
of God so order things that they form so large
and unavoidable a part of every human experience?
Why is the physical system of man framed
with such daily, oft-returning wants? Why has
God arranged an outward system, which is a constant
diversion from the inward—a weight on its
wheels—a burden on its wings—and then commanded
a strict and rigid inwardness and spirituality?
Why has he placed us where the things
that are seen and temporal must unavoidably have
so much of our thoughts, and time, and care, and
yet told us, “Set your affections on things above,

and not on things on the earth;” “Love not the
world, neither the things in the world?” And
why does one of our brightest examples of Christian
experience, as it should be, say, “While we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the
things which are not seen: for the things which
are seen are temporal, but the things which are
not seen are eternal?”

The Bible tells us that our whole existence here
is disciplinary; that this whole physical system,
by which our spirit is connected with all the joys
and sorrows, hopes, and fears, and wants which
form a part of it, is designed as an education to
fit the soul for its immortality. Hence, as worldly
care forms the greater part of the staple of every
human life, there must be some mode of viewing
and meeting it, which converts it from an enemy
of spirituality into a means of grace and spiritual
advancement.

Why, then, do we so often hear the lamentation,
“It seems to me as if I could advance to
the higher stages of Christian life, if it were not
for the pressure of my business, and the multitude
of my worldly cares?” Is it not God, O Christian!
who, in his providence, has laid these cares

upon thee, and who still holds them about thee,
and permits no escape from them? If God's
great undivided object is thy spiritual improvement,
is there not some misapprehension or wrong
use of these cares, if they do not tend to advance
it? Is it not even as if a scholar should say, I
could advance in science were it not for all the
time and care which lessons, and books, and lectures
require?

How, then, shall earthly care become heavenly
discipline? How shall the disposition of the
weight be altered so as to press the spirit upward
towards God, instead of downward and away?
How shall the pillar of cloud which rises between
us and Him, become one of fire, to reflect upon
us constantly the light of his countenance, and to
guide us over the sands of life's desert?

It appears to us that the great radical difficulty
lies in a wrong belief. There is not a genuine
and real belief of the presence and agency of God
in the minor events and details of life, which is
necessary to change them from secular cares into
spiritual blessings.

It is true there is much loose talk about an
overruling Providence; and yet, if fairly stated,

the belief of a great many Christians might be
thus expressed: God has organized and set in
operation certain general laws of matter and mind,
which work out the particular results of life, and
over these laws he exercises a general supervision
and care, so that all the great affairs of the world
are carried on after the counsel of his own will:
and, in a certain general sense, all things are
working together for good to those that love God.
But when some simple-minded and child-like
Christian really proceeds to refer all the smaller
events of life to God's immediate care and agency,
there is a smile of incredulity—and it is thought
that the good brother displays more Christian
feeling than sound philosophy.

But as the life of every individual is made up
of fractions and minute atoms—as those things,
which go to affect habits and character, are small
and hourly recurring, it comes to pass, that a
belief in Providence so very wide and general is
altogether inefficient for consecrating and rendering
sacred the great body of what comes in contact
with the mind in the experience of life.
Only once in years does the Christian, with this
kind of belief, hear the voice of the Lord speaking

to him. When the hand of death is laid on
his child, or the bolt strikes down the brother by
his side; then, indeed, he feels that God is drawing
near; he listens humbly for the inward voice
that shall explain the meaning and need of this
discipline. When, by some unforeseen occurrence,
the whole of his earthly property is swept
away, and he becomes a poor man, this event, in
his eyes, assumes sufficient magnitude to have
come from God, and to have a design and meaning;
but when smaller comforts are removed,
smaller losses are encountered, and the petty
every-day vexations and annoyances of life press
about him, he recognises no God, and hears no
voice, and sees no design. Hence John Newton
says, “Many Christians, who bear the loss of
a child or the destruction of all their property
with the most heroic Christian fortitude, are entirely
vanquished and overcome by the breaking
of a dish, or the blunders of a servant, and show
so unchristian a spirit, that we cannot but wonder
at them.”

So when the breath of slander, or the pressure
of human injustice, comes so heavily on a man,
as really to threaten loss of character, and destruction

of his temporal interests, he seems
forced to recognise the hand and voice of God
through the veil of human agencies, and in time-honoured
words to say—
But the smaller injustice, and fault-finding, which
meets every one more or less in the daily intercourse
of life—the overheard remark—the implied
censure—too petty perhaps to be even spoken of—
these daily-recurring sources of disquietude and
unhappiness are not referred to God's providence,
nor considered as a part of his probation and discipline.
Those thousand vexations which come
upon us through the unreasonableness, the carelessness,
the various constitutional failings or ill
adaptedness of others to our peculiarities of character,
from a very large item of the disquietudes
of life, and yet how very few look beyond the
human agent, and feel that these are trials coming
from God. Yet it is true, in many cases, that
these so-called minor vexations form the greater
part, and, in some cases, the only discipline of
life; and to those who do not view them as individually
ordered or permitted by God, and coming
upon them by design, their affliction really
“cometh of the dust,” and their trouble springs
“out of the ground;” it is sanctified and relieved
by no Divine presence and aid, but borne alone,
and in a mere human spirit, and by mere human
reliances; it acts on the mind as a constant diversion
and hindrance, instead of moral discipline.

Hence, too, arises a coldness, and generality,
and wandering of mind in prayer. The things
that are on the heart, that are distracting the
mind, that have filled the heart so full that there
is no room for anything else, are all considered
too small and undignified to come within the pale
of a prayer: and so, with a wandering mind and a
distracted heart, the Christian offers up his prayer
for things which he thinks he ought to want, and
makes no mention of those which he really does
want. He prays that God would pour out his
Spirit on the heathen, and convert the world, and
build up his kingdom everywhere, when perhaps
a whole set of little anxieties and wants and vexations
are so distracting his thoughts, that he
hardly knows what he has been saying. A faithless
servant is wasting his property, a careless or

blundering workman has spoiled a lot of goods, a
child is vexatious or unruly, a friend has made
promises and failed to keep them, an acquaintance
has made unjust or satirical remarks, some new
furniture has been damaged or ruined by carelessness
in the household; but all this trouble forms
no subject matter for prayer, though there it is
all the while lying like lead on the heart, and
keeping it down so that it has no power to expand
and take in anything else. But were God in
Christ known and regarded as the soul's familiar
Friend; were every trouble of the heart, as it
rises, breathed into His bosom; were it felt that
there is not one of the smallest of life's troubles
that has not been permitted by Him, and permitted
for specific good purpose to the soul, how
much more heart-work would there be in prayer;
how constant, how daily might it become, how it
might settle and clear the atmosphere of the soul,
how it might so dispose and lay away many anxieties
which now take up their place there, that
there might be room for the higher themes and
considerations of religion!

Many sensitive and fastidious natures are worn
away by the constant friction of what are called

little troubles. Without any great affliction, they
feel that all the flower and sweetness of their life
is faded; their eye grows dim, their cheek careworn,
and their spirit loses hope and elasticity,
and becomes bowed with premature age; and in
the midst of tangible and physical comfort, they
are restless and unhappy. The constant undercurrent
of little cares and vexations, which is
slowly wearing out the finer springs of life, is seen
by no one; scarcely ever do they speak of these
things to their nearest friends. Yet were there
a friend, of a spirit so discerning as to feel and
sympathize in all these things, how much of this
repressed electric restlessness would pass off
through such a sympathizing mind.

Yet among human friends this is all but impossible,
for minds are so diverse that what is a trial
and a care to one, is a matter of sport and amusement
to another, and all the inner world breathed
into a human ear, only excites a surprised or contemptuous
pity. To whom then shall the soul
turn—who will feel that to be affliction, which
each spirit knows to be so? If the soul shut
itself within itself, it becomes morbid; the fine
chords of the mind and nerves, by constant wear,

become jarring and discordant: hence fretfulness,
discontent, and habitual irritability steal over the
sincere Christian.

But to the Christian who really believes in the
agency of God in the smallest events of life, confides
in his love and makes his sympathy his
refuge, the thousand minute cares and perplexities
of life become each one a fine affiliating bond
between the soul and its God. Christ is known,
not by abstract definition, and by high-raised
conceptions of the soul's aspiring hours, but
known as a man knoweth his friend; he is known
by the hourly wants he supplies—known by every
care with which he momentarily sympathises,
every apprehension which relieves, every temptation
which he enables us to surmount. We learn
to know Christ as the infant child learns to know
its mother and father, by all the helplessness and
all the dependence which are incident to this
commencement of our moral existence; and as we
go on thus year by year, and find in every changing
situation, in every reverse, in every trouble,
from the lightest sorrow to those which wring our
soul from its depths, that he is equally present,
and that his gracious aid is equally adequate, our

faith seems gradually almost to change to sight,
and Christ's sympathy, his love and care, seem to
us more real than any other source of reliance;
and multiplied cares and trials are only new avenues
of acquaintance between us and Heaven.

Suppose, in some bright vision unfolding to our
view, in tranquil evening or solemn midnight, the
glorified form of some departed friend should
appear to us with the announcement, “This year
is to be to you one of special probation and discipline,
with reference to perfecting you for a heavenly
state. Weigh well and consider every incident
of your daily life, for not one is to fall out
by accident, but each one shall be a finished and
indispensable link in a bright chain that is to draw
you upward to the skies.”

With what new eyes should we now look on our
daily lot! and if we found in it not a single
change—the same old cares, the same perplexities,
the same uninteresting drudgeries still—with what
new meaning would every incident be invested,
and with what other and sublimer spirit could we
meet them! Yet, if announced by one rising
from the dead with the visible glory of a spiritual
world, this truth could be asserted no more clearly

and distinctly than Jesus Christ has stated it
already. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground
without our Father—not one of them is forgotten
by him; and we are of more value than many
sparrows—yea, even the hairs of our head are all
numbered. Not till belief in these declarations,
in their most literal sense, becomes the calm and
settled habit of the soul, is life ever redeemed
from drudgery and dreary emptiness, and made
full of interest, meaning, and Divine significance.
Not till then do its grovelling wants, its wearing
cares, its stinging vexations, become to us ministering
spirits—each one, by a silent but certain
agency, fitting us for a higher and perfect sphere.