Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1888-09-12
TIE MINISTRY OF PAIN.

For WnaC are we put lulO lile. Auu l.
your faith, courage and to courage, know.
ledge, self-control; and to self-control, pa
tience; and to patience, godliness; and to
godliness, brotherly kindness; and to
brotherly kindness, love. How shall one
do it? Can the ministes wrap these things
up in tissue paper and hand them out to
his hearers in eloquent sermons from the
pulpito Can he acquire courage for you,
or knowledge, or self-control, or patience,
or godliness, or brotherly kindness, or
love? Can you buy these articles at the
minister's ecclesiastical counter? Can you
learn them by reading? Can you obtain
them by meditation? Where can a man
get courage except on the battlefield?; We
never get courage except as danger teaches
it to US. Where will you get knowledge ?
Out of perplexity? We come to two paths
in the wood and there is, guide-hpard
there; and we climb to see it; and the
weather has washed the lettering away
and we cannot tell whether to 60 to the
rightor the left. And out ofthese perpleX-
tiles there comes the power of discrimin-
ating judgment.
How shall we learn self control? BY
being put under the pressure of temptation
and learning how to put the evil under
meath our feet and march victoriously on.
How shall we learn patience? BY bearing
the burden not by fleeing from it. How
shall we learn godlipess?. God is a pres
ent help in every time of trouble; there is
no minister that brings God so near the
human heart as this minister of grief that
we would in our folly turn from our doors.
How shall we learn brotherly kindness
Not by shutting eyes and ears to the groans
and the sorrows of humanity; not by pass
ing by like the priest and the Levite in
haste to get to the temple, but by stand
ing in life where sorrow surges and letting
the waves Whelm us also while we do our
part in the service Of the great life-saving
station. For we learn how to love by
loving, and how to trust by walking in
darkness, and how to control ourselves by
wrestling with ourselves. Out of the strug-
gle and bitter conflict of life there is
emerging always the higher and the bet
ter life.
This is what the apostle means when he
says: mo Christening for the present
seemeth ioyous, but rathef grievous." It
is not the mere truism that no chastise-
ment is Joyous, but this: The process of
man-building never is joyous, but by and
by, when it is complete, there comes fell
city in the result. This is what Christ
means when he said, "Blessed are they
that mourn; for they shall be comforted =
not consoed, but "comforted.'' There
would be no blessing in tears if the eyes
saw no better than they saw before. But
there is no such clarifat of vision as tears.
In the meadow and7the' forest there is
only the survival of the tittest; the unfit
perish. But thanks be to God, in this
higher battlefield of humanity every
man may help his fellow-man, and God is
helping all; and out of the battle there
emerges, not only those that were fttest
at the beginning and have endured it, but
those that, by his grace and by human
help and comfort, have grown fit in man
hood and womanhood through the pro-
cess Christian Union.