Chapter 14: Our Equableness
Chapter 14: Our Equableness
"Continue in prayer, and watch" - Cor. 4:2.
THERE ARE MANY amongst us who are either very up, or very down. The pendulum of their life is always swinging up to its extreme height, or down to its extreme depth. They are either standing on the crest of the mountain, intoxicated with the exhilarating air, or they are lost in the deep ravine, where the sunshine hardly penetrates through the overhanging branches. They are not the happiest temperaments to live with. On the whole, give me for travelling a good level road, at a moderate elevation, and I will gladly dispense with the succession of ascents, each of which is followed by its descent.
There is another class of people who are excessively amiable and pleasant to you today; but when you meet them tomorrow they are as cold and distant as possible. These are creatures of moods and tenses. They resemble the month of March, which may be warm and beautiful, or as piercing with shafts of cold. To be friends with such people is to expose oneself to constant unrest. You never know how you will find them; and must always go into their society provided with a coat and umbrella in case of storms.
There is yet another class, who are sometimes on fire for God and the souls of men, burning with clear and ardent flame, before which other souls stand deeply rebuked. We say instinctively, Who are these which are arrayed in these dazzling garments, and whence came they? But after a few weeks the fire dies down, the enthusiasm cools. They do not pray with the same fervour; they have given up their button-holing of strangers and their entreaties to their friends; they have renounced the system of Bible-study which they took up with such zest; they are absent from the class and service into which they plunged with so much vigour. They remind one of the paper and chips which the express train catches up in its rush, but which, after eddying for a little in its wake, drop down again to silence and neglect, till the next rushes by.
On all these might be written the inscription which the dying Jacob engraved upon the life of Reuben: "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel" (Gen. xlix. 4).
Some of this comes from undue excitement and unnatural overstrain. We travel at such a speed, there must be moments of reaction, when the nervous system rebounds. We live so near the limits of our strength, that we have none to draw upon in hours of crisis, and have to make demands on our reserve which seriously tax our powers of recuperation. We do more, and attempt more, than we have power for. Moreover, we fail to allow for the great influence of our nervous system on our emotional life, or to distinguish between our emotions and our will.
There is no doubt that overstrain soon affects the nervous tissues, and these immediately register their condition on the emotions. The prophet, exhausted by the demands of Carmel, asks that he may die; the Baptist, shut up in the prison walls from the free, glad air, doubts whether Jesus be the Christ. Under the impulse of inspiring oratory and the excitement of vast crowds, we greatly resolve and greatly begin; but when these have passed, our pace diminishes till we come to a stand. We allow ourselves to be drawn in a certain direction by impulse rather than by principle; by our attraction to people rather than by the thought of how we may serve them; and then, after awhile, we lose our interest in them and look at them with a cold and critical eye.
Young people, it is of the utmost importance that you should watch against this unequableness. Do not be like feather-down floating in the air, or the flotsam or jetsam carried to and fro on the face of the tide. Guard against fickleness. There are several safeguards and preventives.
Cultivate strong habits of right-thinking and right-doing-- -Oh for trumpet tones to make all the young people of our time take heed! In after-life it is of immense help, for living highly and nobly, to have the assistance of habit. Not simply to do a right thing because you are impelled to it, but because such is your habit. Not to read your chapter for a few mornings because you have been to a consecration meeting or a convention, but because it has become your habit from childhood to do so. Not to act courteously and pleasantly because you have freshly come from the sunshine and air of some lovely environment, but because you have made it the habit of your life to be a true knight of the cross - chivalrous, courteous, self-forgetting, thoughtful of the yearnings of other souls for sympathy and help in life's rough way; and not to do your Christian service under a spasm of interest, wrought in you by the suggestion of another, or a passing pity, but because your Master Christ has laid it on you as a solemn duty to Himself.
We build up such habits by single actions, and especially in the earlier part of our lives. If only young people would take themselves in hand, and concentrate thought on the well-doing of each single act of their early years, they would find habits forming around them, strong and enduring as iron, which would greatly help them after in moments of strain and stress. Even to form such a habit as early rising, and persistently watching each morning hour, and insisting on obedience to the whirr of the alarum, will be of immense importance in after-life. What is difficult at first, becomes in time a second nature, and a permanent acquisition to the furniture of the soul.
It would be well to fix the following saying by an eminent writer, deeply in the soul:
"Sow a thought, you reap an act:
Sow an act, you reap a habit:
Sow a habit, you reap a character:
Sow a character, you reap a destiny."
Live in your standing in Christ Jesus. - Quoting from my own experience, I have found this of priceless worth. In fact, when a friend asked me recently whether I did not suffer from fits of depression, as a natural reaction from strenuous effort, I instantly reminded him that one might be very sensitive to such a nervous rebound, and yet guard against it injuring or depressing the spiritual life, first by attributing it to its right cause, and next by remembering that no depression of the nervous system can affect our standing in Jesus, which is altogether apart from ourselves, and altogether determined by what He has done and is.
You may be tired and unnerved, unable to feel as you are wont, below par, and out of sorts; all around you may be depressing and difficult; a morbid wish to be quit of it all may haunt you; a sense that God is dealing hardly with you may stay the song of your soul: but remember that you are yet his child; that in Jesus you are accepted and beloved; that your place is beside Him in the heavenlies. Rise, my heart, thou art the child of the great King; thy life is hidden with Christ in God; thine are the illimitable ages - all this is true, however thou feelest.
Find compensation in God. - If sad, find rest and peace in Him; if down and depressed, claim his joy; if glad and buoyant, seek his lowliness and meekness; "if wanting in earnestness, ask his good Spirit to quicken you; if too exuberant, ask Him to calm you; if standing high on the mount, ask that you may walk with Him in your high places; if attracted to people, ask that He may ratify the friendship, always keeping, it in Himself. If repelled, seek that you may love them with his love. Let the nature and love of God be the make-weight and compensation for all that is dark and sad or evil in yourself and your surroundings. "Why art thou cast down, oh my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God."
Exercise a strong self-restraint. - Never have mercy on yourself, or excuse any deflection from your own high ideal. Be harder on yourself than your grimmest critic. Never say that weariness or depression, or heart-sickness can excuse anything which is not perfectly lovely and of good report. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and wear his image ever. Trust the Holy Spirit to make his presence ever more real and absorbing.