Misread Passages of Scriptures

by James Baldwin Brown

II. The writer of this book asks us to consider how much that has the most important bearing on the results of our activity is hopelessly beyond the control of our hand.

No doubt this is a truism: but it is the meaning and force of these truisms which most easily escape us; custom is the blind of truth. No matter what it may be to which we put our hands, we are dealing with elements which only partially subject themselves to our control, or rather reveal to us the secret by which they may be bent to our use. Always there is a large variable element in the problem of our activities; and on this variable element, which we have no means of calculating, depends all that is most precious and vital in our results. Husbandry here is the great witness for, and key to, higher things. Certain bases are fixed and unalterable; else our work would be a pure lottery. Much on which its fruits depend is variable; else our work would be purely mechanical. God gives us a large measure of assurance, that we may work bravely and put our hearts into our labour, as those who have a right to hope that they will carry the sheaves of their harvest home; but He crosses our toil with a zone of uncertainties, that we may be faithful workmen, trusting and praying as well as working, and may be kept in holy and blessed dependence on Him who can lift us above all servile care for immediate results. Consider—

1. The awful force and inevitable certainty of the processes of Nature, the unfailing “order of Nature” which furnishes forth the field of our toils. That order God guarantees. The assurance is thus expressed: “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Gen. viii. 22). That word of promise which has nursed the trembling hope of man into strong certainty—for he is as sure that the sun will rise on the morrow as he is of his own existence—lies at the foundation of all his steady activity as a workman in this lower world. The joyful outgoings of the morning and evening, and the succession of the seasons, are given to him as the constant elements in his husbandry. These are assured to him by the voice that called them into being and the hand which sustains their motions. God tells him that he may count absolutely on this order. And what guarantee, when we come to think of it, have we of that order, but such as a firm belief in an intelligent Ruler of the universe, who sympathises with the hopes and blesses the toils of His children, affords? Then further,—

2. There is the absolutely certain sequence of physical causes and effects, or antecedents and consequents, which we call laws of nature, which vary not one hair’s breadth from their ordained order in obedience to the mandates of our will, but which, by observing and mastering the principle of that order, we can use for the accomplishment of our ends. These are our tools to work with. A thousand subtle laws are concerned in every process of the husbandman’s toils. On a large scale and in the long run the question of his success depends absolutely on his comprehension and observance of those laws. The progress of man’s knowledge of nature is really a progress in the mastery of the variable element in the problem of his labour. A thousand accidents, which baffle the ignorant and careless husbandman, obey the control of the intelligent and strenuous. The order is rigid. There is an awful sternness in its certainty; but it grows benign to him who has mastered its secret. It obeys him as a servant, it helps him as a friend; and the certainty with which he can calculate its action is one essential element of its friendliness. If he could not weigh the materials and measure the forces which are constantly around him, if he could not count on their known relations and actions with the same calm certainty with which he expects the sunrise to light him to his daily toils, his life would be one of miserable dependence; he would live the serf of nature, and not her king. It is the unalterable fixity of relations and forces which God has given him the power to discover and to employ, which constitutes the royalty of his rule over nature; if that be destroyed or shaken, his crown rolls in the dust. The constancy of the relations and forces of the universe, their impassibility to the force which man’s will can bring to bear upon them, of which his husbandry gives him full experience, is an essential element, perhaps we might say the essential element, in that higher culture which they offer to his spirit; it is this which makes the life of even the workman something higher than a lottery, and the toils of earth an education for the works and the joys of heaven.

3. The writer of this book, while he sees this grand, calm, and constant order very clearly, and appreciates its ministry to man, has a dark, sad vision of the uncertainties which cross it—the strength and magnitude of the variable element in nature and in life, which perplexes and baffles the strenuous workman, keeps him constantly on the tenter-hooks of anxiety, and not seldom rends his heart with anguish, and lays his fairest and proudest achievements in ruins in the dust. A certain order is there, all men can see it. Yes, men say,—and especially orientals, in whose climate the destructive agencies often run riot; but there is a dire disorder, and the disorder triumphs. Who knows the pathway of the storms, the earthquakes, the lava floods, the drought, and the deluge? who knows and rules their times? The fairest homesteads are made desolate in a moment; verdant beauty as of Eden vanishes, and blasting and burning as of Sodom reigns in its room. There are malign powers in the universe which seem to watch all beauty and increase, that they may make it their prey. Do not men in all ages tremble as they rejoice in prosperity? Do not the proverbs of all nations warn us that trouble in such moments is near? There is a hand unseen which deals destruction to our harvests and homesteads, in the moment when they smile on us most gaily; and we are powerless to resist it; we can but sit like Job on the dunghill of our ruined fortunes and bemoan ourselves, and it may be curse the day which sent us forth to till such a treacherous seed-field as this. The dearest things, the things which we love most tenderly, the possession of which is our life, may be struck down in a moment, the delight of our eyes laid low at a stroke; we may plead and pray, we may wrestle with God in a frenzy of supplication: the hand which grasps our treasure is pitiless; pass a few days, we shall be standing tearless and defiant by the grave of our beloved. Pagans exclaim against their gods as treacherous, and refuse them service. Catholics revenge themselves by cashiering their saint. Nay, the same brutal instinct may be found in Protestant England: I have heard of a farmer, whose harvest was all ruined, sticking a rotten sheaf in the hedge and leaving it there, to make, as he said, God Almighty ashamed. We shudder at the blasphemy; but it is only a coarse expression of the anguish of the helpless in the hand of a power which seems inexorable and merciless, which crosses their most settled purposes, destroys ruthlessly their most precious harvests, and murders all their brightest joys. “If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good” (ver. 3-6). There is a power at work behind the veil which may at any moment cross our purpose by some unexpected stroke, which gives to us no account of its methods, and which allows no court of appeal from its decrees. The tree falls, and who can foresee when it may fall? And when it falls, it cares not what it crushes, and the wrecks of it strew our fairest fields, and bury our golden harvests in the dust.

III. What then? There being this law of calamity at work, defying all calculation and all defence, what is the true policy of life?

There are mainly two policies of life; the stoic and the Christian. The Stoic says,—Everything is beyond my control, but myself. There is a kingdom whose sceptre can never be wrested from my hand. Things are certain enemies of my peace. I will make myself independent of things. I will reduce my relations with things outside me to a minimum. I am surer of a crust than of a banquet; so I will train myself to care only for a crust; a crust of food, a crust of wealth, a crust of friendship will be enough for me. I will fold the cloak of my manhood around me, and shake myself free of all dependence on fickle fortune and mortal friends.

The Christian says,—Everything is beyond my control, but myself. So far, he and the Stoic are at one. But he reflects that what is beyond HIS control is not beyond all control. This law of calamity obeys the rule of One who has given the most solemn and awful pledge that He loves me as a friend and treats me as a child. He would not have me adopt the demeanour and policy of an outcast in a storm, but of a child at home. I will throw my nature open to the sunlight. I will make myself as rich as possible in all good and beautiful possessions, and in troops of friends. It is the will of Him who rules my life that I should be so; He made me with all these affections and sympathies; He made me to feel life a blessing. I will work and be glad, and live and love according to His will; and trust, not my own hardness, but my Father’s mercy, to spare me over-much pain, and to make life in some due measure a joy. Here are the two policies. How does the text decide? “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” “If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth: and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” “In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” The argument is, God who made you to toil, to till the ground, and to till the more difficult and perilous seed-field of domestic, social, and political life, made the world thus. Both your vocation as a workman, and the field of your labour, with the conditions of that labour, are ordained by Him. There must then be an essential harmony. One wise and intelligent Being as the author of the whole system; and this law of calamity is not at war with your vocation, but is also its minister, and in deep and far-reaching ways is working with you to your ends. It is not, according to the dark pagan theory, the work of a malign spirit, strong enough to break in and make the homesteads and the lives which God has made His charge, a wreck. “I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these things.” It is all the work of one hand, and that a wise and loving one. Work on, work bravely, work gaily; storms may sweep your fields and shadows may darken your homes; but no calamity, inward or outward, is unto death. The storm and blight of this year will swell the bulk of next year’s harvests; and the deeper cares and sorrows of our spiritual husbandry but load us with an increase which the years lay up in the garners of eternity. Practically, the husbandman finds it to be so. Making the fullest allowance for all the crosses, the storms, the blights, the violence of Nature and of man, the balance is still amply on the side of the faithful workman. Year by year man’s tillage advances; the wilderness and the solitary place is made glad by his toil, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. This means that a wise and loving Hand holds all the disturbing forces under control, and fixes their bounds where they instruct and stimulate, but never on a grand scale scare and paralyse mankind. The losses and the crosses of the croupier of the gaming table are borne with profound patience, for there is a certain chance in his favour which must inevitably in the long run fill his coffers with gain. How calmly, now joyously, should we work on through our storms and sorrows, who have, not a margin of security guaranteed by the theory of probabilities, but the certainty of an abundant and glorious harvest, if we are faithful and patient, guaranteed by the living God.

And do not pervert the teaching of the Scripture by narrowing its scope. It does not say,—Work, for the work is good for you; results are nothing. It says rather,—Work, for God is working with you, and results are His care. The Lord does not say,—Take no thought for the morrow, for these cares of food and clothes and health are sordid; despise them, and think exclusively of higher things. Quite other, and infinitely more wise and tender, is His teaching,—Do not be distracted by cares, “for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things,” and how He furnishes those who trust Him let the birds and the lilies declare. “Cast thy bread upon the waters,” for there is One watching it who will bring it back after many days. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.” “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless”—doubtless because the Lord of the harvest assures it—“come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

Three practical principles, which indicate the Christian policy of life, I gather from the text:—