The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1893-05-24
TAUGHT BY EXPERIENCE.
The Late Phillips Brooks on the Way by
Which God Leads Us.

Law hiiltps brOOks on tne way by
Which God Leads Us.
1t is truth which we have all learned
from some experience through which
we have been led, that any great ex-
perience, seriously and greatly met and
passed through, makes the man who
has passed through it always afterward
a purer medium through which the
highest truth may shine on other men,
Have you not seen it? Here is some
man whom you have known long. You
have seemed to have reached the end of
all that it is possible for you to get
from him, all that it is possible for him
to do for you. Nothing has come
through him from behind to
you. You have seen him. You
have seen a sort of CLINT or glim-
mer of reflection of Gods light
upon the surface of His life, as the sun
might be reflected on plate of steel
Bnt nothing of God or Gods truth has
come through Him to you as the sun
shines through lens of glass, pouring
its increased intensity upon the wood
it sets in flame.
Bnt some day you meet that man,
and he lis altered. Tenderer, warmer,
richer, he seems to be full of truths and
revelations which he easily pours out
to you. Now you not merely see him;
yon see through him to things behind.
As You talk with him, as you look into
his face, you see with new surprising
'clearness what God is, what man is,
what IA great thing it is to live, what
great thing it is to die, how mysterious
and pathetic are sorrow and happiness,
and fear and hope. You can not begin
TO tell the change by merely thinking
that the man has learned some new
facts, and is telling them to you, as
book might tell them from its printed
page The very substance of the man is
Altered, so thai he stands between the
eternal truths and you no longer as a
screen, which shuts them from your
sight, but as an atmosphere through
which they come to you all radiant,
You ask what has come to him, and
you hear If you are near enough for
him to tell you his most sacred history
passed through an overwhelming sor-
row. He has stood upon the brink of
some tremendous danger. He has spent
~ day and a night in the deep of some
bewildering doubt. He has been over
mastered by some sudden joy. 1t may
hare been one of these or another
The result has been in such a change OF
the very substance of the nature, that
whereas before it was all thick and
muddy, so that whatever light fell up
on it was either cast aside or else alb
sorbed into it and lost, now it makes
truth first visible, and then clear anC
convincing to the fellow-men who SET
truth through it.
And when you try to analyze thi:
change, do you not find that it consists
in an impregnation of the nature which
he has had this new experience will
two forceS-one a love for truth, thu
other a love for man? and it is in tht
perfect combination of these two il
any life that the clarifying of that life
into power of transmission and If
radiation truly lies. What man goe
worthiiy through sorrow and does no
come out hating shams and pretences
hungering for truth; and also full @
sympathy for his fellow-man whose ca
pacity for suffering has been revealed
to him by his own. 1t is the perfec
blending Of those two constituents il
the new nature of your tried and pa
tient friend have given him this won
drous power OF showing God and trutl
20 you.
What man goes bravely and faithful
ly through doubt, and does not brin,
out soul to which truth seems to b
infinitely precious, and the human sou
the most mysterious, sacred thing i
the world Out of the union of thos
two persuasions has come the prophet
ship of this life which now you can no
look at without seeing the infinite be
hind it made clear by it.
Surely. if he can believe this the
the way in which God lets His childre
encounter great and sometimes terri
BILE, experiences is not entirely inc,
plicable. Surely if these souls whic
now are deep in sorrow, or are hein
cast up and down and back and forth i
doubt, are being thus annealed an
purified that they may come to be re
vealers, mediators between God an
their fellow men, then into our wonde
at the existence of doubt and sorro'
in Gods world there comes little ra
of light. Who would not bear an!
thing that could refine his life into fl
ness for such privilege as that?