Vesper Talks to Girls

by Laura A. Knott

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.”

“Thou, therefore, endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

The letter from which these sentences are taken, the second Epistle to Timothy, is supposed to be the last letter Paul ever wrote. It was written under peculiarly solemn circumstances and contains the deep, heartfelt advice of an old man to a young man whom he loves as his own child. It is a sad letter, because Paul is in prison and he knows that his end is near. He believes that he will soon be put to death, and we know that his premonition proved true. In the last letter which he was ever to pen he speaks of the things which he most desires for his beloved Timothy. I think we shall be impressed with the fact that he omits the gifts that most people wish for those whom they love, and asks for some others upon which the world has not been prone to set high value.

Fathers toil that they may give their children wealth and all that it will buy. They slave in offices, wear out their health, and give up most of the refining and elevating influences of life. And the children squander as fast as they can the money that has come to them so easily, in ways that only do them harm; in ways that take energy and will and purpose out of them; or rather, that never give these virtues an opportunity to develop. A few years ago much attention was directed to an epigrammatic remark of Mr. Roosevelt’s in regard to the American multi-millionaire, “whose son is a fool and whose daughter a foreign princess.” The gratification of every want without effort on the part of the individual must breed selfishness and a whole train of attendant evils. Indeed, many young people whose parents are far from wealthy grow up with utterly selfish ideas about money and little knowledge of its true use and value.

I might speak of many more things which indulgent parents often wish for their children, but perhaps they may all be summed up in one phrase—easy lives. They want no rough winds to blow on their beloved ones; for them no dusty roads, or stony paths, or rugged heights to climb. They must walk in sunshine on beds of flowers. For the children of others the toil, the hardship, the suffering; for their own a life of luxurious ease.

But what gift or blessing does St. Paul ask for the young man so dear to him? An easy, luxurious life? How the great apostle would have scorned such a thought! Instead he asks that the youth may learn how to endure hardness.

“Hardness” in our lives is not likely to be mainly physical hardship, perhaps not that at all, though this kind of endurance was one of the elements that contributed to St. Paul’s greatness. He tells us that he had been beaten with rods, that he had been stoned, had suffered shipwreck, cold, hunger, and nakedness. Nothing daunted him, no obstacle was to him insurmountable, he feared naught, even death itself. The greatness of his work is due to his remarkable physical endurance as well as to his superb moral courage. In comparison with him how weak and useless must even the best of us seem to ourselves! Though we may never be called upon to endure dangers or privations, can we not see what a splendid thing it is, this independence of physical comfort, this fearlessness, this dependence upon inward resources rather than upon outward support? And yet how many people we know whose day is spoiled if the morning meal is not to their taste, whose spirits sink with cloudy weather, whose physical comfort or discomfort largely governs disposition and conduct! Surely a quality which it is worth the while of young people to cultivate is physical “hardness”—ability to endure discomfort, indifference to luxury and ease, independence of outward conditions.

But for most of us there is another kind of “enduring hardness” which is even more important. It is learning to do without the things we cannot or ought not to have, whatever they may be, and to derive happiness from the things which we can have. It is learning to do as a matter of course the difficult and the disagreeable things that ought to be done. There is not one of us who does not long for some unattainable thing. Yet if it is not for us, we should turn to what we have, or can have, and make the best of that.

Suppose that circumstances refuse to allow you to surround yourself with the friends you love best or to live after the manner that would most please you,—and this will happen to many after school days are over,—what is there left but to make the very most of the friends whose companionship you have and to find the best in the circumstances which surround you? And if you cannot choose the kind of life you dream would be best for you, in the place where you feel that you could be happiest, remember that success or failure in life for you will depend upon your power to adapt yourself to your environment and to draw forth, from every inevitable combination of circumstances, new material for growth. This is, in a very high sense, “enduring hardness.” Suppose you have been making cherished plans for the future and all at once they are torn to shreds. What then? Can you pick up the threads of your life, change the pattern, but still weave something beautiful with them? And can you do it—not with cold and stoic fortitude, but cheerfully and serenely? If so, that is “enduring hardness” in the same spirit in which St. Paul endured it.

It is well for us sometimes to imagine ourselves stripped of all these external props to happiness, such as money, position, and influential friends, and to ask ourselves what kind of a life we could make without them. It is then that we find out what we are really worth. We all believe—though we usually act as if we did not believe it—that to build up a strong and noble character is the chief end and aim of life. But how seldom, unless forced by circumstance, do we give ourselves the opportunity of acquiring those virtues which more than any others make for high character! Nothing is so good for the development of character as struggle, suffering, hardness.