How do we arrive at the conviction of the Fatherhood of God? Sin stands in the way, and conscience craves something more than a mere authoritative announcement. Sin is the forfeiture of all claim to the Divine favour. What right have we to expect that His providence will be to us a providence of love? There is but one answer: to trust a God of providence, we must believe in a God of grace. Paul puts the whole philosophy of this in a single sentence: “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Our present subject, therefore, calls for the gospel, and cannot be completed without it. “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And, “If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?” But let us ever remember that we have higher wants than those of the body. The soul needs food, and God has supplied “the bread of life”; it needs raiment, and God has given to us the robe of righteousness wrought by Christ; it needs a home, and we have “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” With these provisions, then, shall we forecast the future with fear, or with hope? Which shall it be?
O holy trust! O endless sense of rest,
Like the beloved John,
To lay my head upon the Saviour’s breast,
And thus to Journey on!
XI.
CONTENTMENT.
“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.”—Philippians iv. 11-14.
My purpose is to define and to recommend the Christian virtue of contentment. I shall endeavour to show that its acquirement is a duty, and that its possession is a joy; but I shall also have to show that as a duty it is not practicable, and that as a joy it is not attainable, except on Christian grounds. I trust that all this will be made abundantly clear by the following observations.
I. Let us glance at the character of the man whose words are now before us. There is in the words the ring of a high moral tone which is irresistibly attractive. Yet the effect they produce upon us must depend very much upon the kind of man who wrote them, and the condition or conditions of life through which he had to pass.
We should be pained by such words as these if they came from the lips of a man whom the world would consider prosperous. When the conditions of a man’s life are easy and comfortable, to make a profession of contentment would be an abuse both of language and of sentiment. Such a case is not one for content, but for devout and hearty gratitude mingled with a sense of humiliation under the thought, which ought to be present to every such man, that he deserves no more than others, though God gives him more than many others possess.
We should think sadly of these words if they came from a stoical man. Contentment is not the listlessness of indifference. It is self-conscious, and finds in itself its own joy. Indifference is loss—deterioration. It implies the blunting of sensibility. The heart that is callous to grief is closed against gladness also.
We should pity the man who uttered these words from mere weakness of character, devoid of aspiration, enthusiasm, or resolve. In his case, content would be mere good-for-nothingness. The world is full of uncomplaining men and women who do not cry, not because they are content, but because they are spiritless, and consequently because they are crushed down and hopeless.