Peculiar favor is pledged to them. G.o.d will provide for the ruggedness of their way. They will have a divine blessing which would not be theirs but for the roughness and ruggedness. The Hebrew parallelism gives the same promise, without figure, in the remaining words of the same verse: "As thy days so shall thy strength be." Be sure, if your path is rougher than mine, you will get more help than I will. There is a most delicate connection between earth"s needs and heaven"s grace.
Days of struggle get more grace than calm, quiet days. When night comes stars shine out which never would have appeared had not the sun gone down. Sorrow draws comfort that never would have come in joy.
For the rough roads there are iron shoes.
There is yet another suggestion in this old-time promise. The divine blessing for every experience is folded up in the experience itself, and will not be received in advance. The iron shoes would not be given until the rough roads were reached. There was no need for them until then, and besides, the iron to make them was treasured in the rugged hills and could not be gotten until the hills were reached.
A great many people worry about the future. They vex themselves by anxious questioning as to how they are going to get through certain antic.i.p.ated experiences. We had better learn once for all that there are in the Bible no promises of provision for needs while the needs are yet future. G.o.d does not put strength into our arms to-day for the battles of to-morrow; but when the conflict is actually upon us, the strength comes. "As thy days so shall thy strength be."
Some people are forever unwisely testing themselves by questions like these: "Could I endure sore bereavement? Have I grace enough to bow in submission to G.o.d, if he were to take away my dearest treasure? Or could I meet death without fear?" Such questions are unwise, because there is no promise of grace to meet trial when there is no trial to be met. There is no a.s.surance of strength to bear great burdens when there are no great burdens to be borne. Help to endure temptation is not promised when there are no temptations to be endured. Grace for dying is nowhere promised while death is yet far off and while one"s duty is to live.
"Of all the tender guards which Jesus drew About our frail humanity, to stay The pressure and the jostle that alway Are ready to disturb, what"er we do, And mar the work our hands would carry through, None more than this environs us each day With kindly wardenship--"Therefore, I say, Take no thought for the morrow." Yet we pay The wisdom scanty heed, and impotent To bear the burden of the imperious Now, a.s.sume, the future"s exigence unsent.
G.o.d grants no overplus of power: "tis shed Like morning manna. Yet we dare to bow And ask, "Give us to-day our _morrow"s_ bread.""
There is a story of shipwreck which yields an ill.u.s.tration that comes in just here. Crew and pa.s.sengers had to leave the broken vessel and take to the boats. The sea was rough, and great care in rowing and steering was necessary in order to guard the heavily-laden boats, not from the ordinary waves, which they rode over easily, but from the great cross-seas. Night was approaching, and the hearts of all sank as they asked what they should do in the darkness when they would no longer be able to see these terrible waves. To their great joy, however, when it grew dark they discovered that they were in phosph.o.r.escent waters and that each dangerous wave rolled up crested with light which made it as clearly visible as if it were mid-day.
So it is that life"s dreaded experiences, when we meet them, carry in themselves the light which takes away the peril and the terror. The night of sorrow comes with its own lamp of comfort. The hour of weakness brings its own secret of strength. By the brink of the bitter fountain itself grows the tree whose branch will heal the waters. The wilderness with its hunger and no harvest has daily manna. In dark Gethsemane, where the load is more than mortal heart can bear, an angel appears, ministering strength that gives victory. When we come to the hard, rough, steep path we find iron for shoes. The iron will be in the very hills over which we shall have to climb.
So we see that the matter of shoes is very important. We are pilgrims here and we cannot walk barefoot on this world"s rugged roads. Are our feet shod for the journey?
"How can I get shoes, and where?" one asks. Do you remember about Christ"s feet, that they were pierced with nails? Why was it? That we might have shoes to wear on our feet, and that they might not be cut and torn on the way.
Christ"s dear feet were wounded and sore with long journeys over thorns and stones, and were pierced through with cruel nails, that our feet might be shod for earth"s rough roads, and might at last enter the gates of pearl and walk on heaven"s gold-paved streets.
Dropping all figure, the whole lesson is that we cannot get along on our life"s pilgrimage without Christ; but having Christ we shall be ready for anything that may come to us along the days and years.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SHUTTING OF DOORS.
"Never delay To do the duty which the hour brings, Whatever it be in great or smaller things; For who doth know What he shall do the coming day?"
The shutting of a door is a little thing and yet it may have infinite meaning. It may fix a destiny for weal or for woe. When G.o.d shut the door of the ark the sound of its closing was the knell of exclusion to those who were without, but it was the token of security to the little company of trusting ones who were within. When the door was shut upon the bridegroom and his friends who had gone into the festal hall, thus sheltering them from the night"s darkness and danger, and shutting them in with joy and gladness, there were those outside to whose hearts the closing of that door smote despair and woe. To them it meant hopeless exclusion from all the privileges of those who were within and exposure to all the sufferings and perils from which those favored ones were protected.
Here we have hints of what may come from the closing of a door. Life is full of ill.u.s.trations. We are continually coming up to doors which stand open for a little while and then are shut. An artist has tried to teach this in a picture. Father Time is there with inverted hour-gla.s.s. A young man is lying at his ease on a luxurious couch, while beside him is a table spread with rich fruits and viands.
Pa.s.sing by him toward an open door are certain figures which represent opportunities; they come to invite the young man to n.o.bleness, to manliness, to usefulness, to worth. First is a rugged, sun-browned form, carrying a flail. This is labor. He invites the youth to toil.
He has already pa.s.sed far by unheeded. Next is a philosopher, with open book, inviting the young man to thought and study, that he may master the secrets in the mystic volume. But this opportunity, too, is disregarded. The youth has no desire for learning. Close behind the philosopher comes a woman with bowed form, carrying a child. Her dress betokens widowhood and poverty. Her hand is stretched out appealingly.
She craves charity. Looking closely at the picture we see that the young man holds money in his hand. But he is clasping it tightly, and the poor widow"s pleading is in vain. Still another figure pa.s.ses, endeavoring to lure and woo him from his idle ease. It is the form of a beautiful woman, who seeks by love to awaken in him n.o.ble purposes, worthy of his powers, and to inspire him for ambitious efforts. One by one these opportunities have pa.s.sed, with their calls and invitations, only to be unheeded. At last he is arousing to seize them, but it is too late; they are vanishing from sight and the door is closing.
This is a true picture of what is going on all the time in this world.
Opportunities come to every young person, offering beautiful things, rich blessings, brilliant hopes. Too often, however, these offers and solicitations are rejected and one by one pa.s.s by, to return no more.
Door after door is shut, and at last men stand at the end of their days, with beggared lives, having missed all that they might have gotten of enrichment and good from the pa.s.sing days.
Take home. A true Christian home, with its love and prayer and all its gentle influences, is almost heaven to a child. The fragrance of the love of Christ fills all the household life. Holiness is in the very atmosphere. The benedictions of affection make every day tender with its impressiveness. In all life there come no other such opportunities for receiving lovely things into the life, and learning beautiful lessons, as in the days of childhood and youth that are spent in a home of Christian love. Yet how often are all these influences resisted and rejected. Then by and by the door is shut. The heart that made the home is still in death. The gentle hand that wrought such blessing is cold. Many a man in mid-life would give all he has to creep back for one hour to the old sacred place, to hear again his mother"s voice in counsel or in prayer, to feel once more the gentle touch of her hand and to have her sweet comfort. But it is too late. The door is shut.
Take education. Many young people fail to realize what golden opportunities come to them in their school-days. Too often they make little of the privileges they then enjoy. They sometimes waste in idleness the hours they ought to spend in diligent study and helpful reading. They might, if they would, fit themselves for high and honorable places in after years; but they let the days pa.s.s with their opportunities. By and by they hear the school door shut. Then, all through their years they move with halting step, with dwarfed life, with powers undeveloped, unable to accept the higher places that might have been theirs if they had been prepared for them, failing often in duties and responsibilities--all because in youth they wasted their school-days and did not seize the opportunities that then came to them for preparation. Napoleon, when visiting his old school, said to the pupils, "Boys, remember that every hour wasted at school means a chance of misfortune in future life." Thousands of failures along the years of manhood and womanhood attest the truth of this monition.
Friendship is another opportunity that offers great blessing. Before every young person stand two kinds of friends, ever reaching out a beckoning hand. The one cla.s.s whisper of pleasures that lead to sin and debas.e.m.e.nt. They offer the young man the wine-gla.s.s, the gambling-table, the gratification of l.u.s.t and pa.s.sion. They offer the young woman flattery, gay dress, the dance, pleasures that will tarnish her womanly purity. We all know the end of such friendship.
But there is another cla.s.s of friends who stand before young people, wooing them to n.o.ble things. They may be plain, perhaps homely, almost stern in their earnestness of purpose and in the seriousness with which they talk of life. They call to toil, to diligence, to self-denial, to heroic qualities of character, to purity, to usefulness, to "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are lovely." It is impossible to overstate the value of the blessings that true, wise, and worthy friendship offers to the young. It seeks to incite and stimulate them to their best in character and achievement. It would lift them up to lofty attainment, to splendid victoriousness. The young people to whom comes the offer of such friendship are most highly favored.
But how often do we see the blessing rejected for the solicitation of mere idle pleasures that bring no true good, that entangle the life in all manner of complications, that lead into the ways of temptation, and that too often end in disaster and sorrow.
There is a time for the choosing of friends, and when that time is pa.s.sed and the choice has been made, the door is shut. Then it is too late to go back. There are many people in mid-life, bound now in the chains of evil companionships, who would give all they have for the sweet delights and pure pleasures of friendship which once might have been theirs, which in youth reached out to them in vain white hands of importunity and blessing. But it is too late; the door is shut.
So it is with the opportunities of doing good to others, comforting, helping, cheering, lightening burdens, giving gladness and joy. We stand continually before open doors which we do not enter. Ofttimes we shrink with timid feeling from the sweet ministry, holding back the sympathetic word or restraining ourselves from the doing of the gentle kindness, thinking our proffer of love might be unwelcome. Or we do not perceive the opportunity to give a blessing. This is true very often, especially in the closer and more tender intimacies of life. We do not recognize the heart-hunger in our loved ones, and we walk with them day by day, failing to help them in the thousand ways in which we might help them, until they are gone from us and the door is shut.
Then all we can do is to bear the pain of regret, having only the hope that in some way in the life beyond, we may be able to pay--though so late--love"s debt.
"How will it be When you at last in heaven we see-- Dear souls, whose footsteps in lost days Made musical earth"s toil-worn ways, While we not half the loneliness That bound you to our side could guess?
Where angels know your footfall we Are fain to be.
"We never knew-- So heedlessly we walked with you-- The drops we jostled from your cup, That spilt, could not be gathered up; We might have given you foam and glow From our own beaker"s overflow; Ah! what we might have been to you We never knew.
"We might have lent Such strength, such comfort and content To you, out of our ample store; We might have hastened on before To lift the shadows from your way, Darkened, ere noon, to twilight"s gray; With earth"s chilled air love"s warm heart-scent We might have blent.
"Dear, wistful eyes, Ye haunt us with your kind surprise, Your tender wonder that a heart Should thus be left alone, apart, So loving, so misunderstood By us, in our self-centred mood: Alas! in vain to you arise Our longing cries.
"Oh, will you wait For us beyond the shining gate?
Though lovely gifts behind you left, We want yourselves; we are bereft.
From your new mansion glorious Will you lean out to look for us?
Shut is the far-off, shining gate-- Are we too late?"
These are but ill.u.s.trations. The same is true in all phases of life.
Every day doors are opened for us which we do not enter. For a little time they stand open with bidding and welcome, and then they are closed, to be opened no more forever. To every one of us along our years there come opportunities, which, if accepted and improved, would fit us for worthy character, and for n.o.ble, useful living, and lead us in due time to places of honor and blessing. But how many of us there are who reject these opportunities and lose the good they brought for us from G.o.d! Then one by one the doors are shut, cutting off the proffered favors while we go on unblessed.
There is another closing of doors which is even sadder than any of those which have been suggested. There is a shutting of our own heart"s door upon G.o.d himself. He stands at our gate and knocks and there are many who never open to him at all, and many more who open the door but slightly. The latter, while they may receive blessing, yet miss the fulness of divine revealing which would flood their souls with love; the former miss altogether the sweetest benediction of life.
"He that shuts Love out in turn shall be Shut out from Love, and on his threshhold lie Howling in outer darkness. Nor for this Was common clay made from the common earth, Moulded by G.o.d and tempered with the tears Of angels to the perfect shape of man."
This sad sound of closing doors, as it falls day after day upon our soul"s ears, proclaims to us continually that something which was ours, which was sent to us from G.o.d, and for which we shall have to answer in judgment, is ours no longer, is shut away forever from our grasp. It is a sad picture--the five virgins standing at midnight before a closed door through which they might have entered to great joy and honor, but which to all their wild importunity will open no more. It is sad, yet many of us are likewise standing before closed doors, doors that once stood open to us, but into which we entered not, languidly loitering outside until the sound of the shutting fell upon our ear as the knell of hopeless exclusion:--
"Too late! Too late! Ye cannot enter now!"
Of course the past is irreparable and irrevocable, and it may seem idle to vex ourselves in thinking about doors now closed, that no tears, no prayers, no loud knockings, can ever open again. Yes; yet the future remains. The years that are gone we cannot get back again, but new years are yet before us. They too will have their open doors. Shall we not learn wisdom as we look back upon the irrevocable past and make sure that in the future we shall not permit G.o.d"s doors of opportunity to shut in our faces?