Strength Out of Weakness.

STRENGTH OUT OF WEAKNESS. BY Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D.D.

"My strength is made perfect in weakness." — II. Corinthians xii. 9.

Along with other new forces brought in bj the Gospel, spiritualizing society and regenerating humanity, there came an original doctrine of what makes weakness and strength. Up to that time, man was accounted strong in proportion as he was able to overmaster the persons and things about him. Matching his own resources against the elements, or against the capacities of other men, his power was measured by his ability to maintain his superiority in these quarrels or rivalries. Till the death of Christ, the strong man was the man strong with his sinews and his hands, or, at best, with the cunning and calculation of his brain. He was first who could strike down most enemies, gather most wealth, march longest at the head of his army, pile the most perfect pyramid, or most fascinate an Athenian assembly by the subtle charm of eloquent speech.

Corresponding to this heathenish estimate of what makes up " strength " was the view taken of bodily 1

" weakness." It was either to be simply deplored as a calamity, or despised as a shame. ITo spiritual illumination, shining through, transfigured the sick face ; no submission of faith dignified the poor frame prostrate with pain. The men, and even the women, looked on

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disease with a kind of dry disgust. Some of tlie best of them proposed to kill off the old people as unserviceable to the State. Yirtue consisted in keeping up the animal vigor as long as possible, and when it failed, all that the most faithful friendship could do was to draw back in helpless embarrassment, just where Christian sympathy is most eager to press forward and reach out its merciful hands. It was imbecility gazing at infirmity in despair. Instead of hospitals for disorder and retreats for the disabled, you have only the Greek tragedies chanting in superb poetry their melancholly wail at human suffering, or Latin comedies laughing at it. We see the apostle of Christ standing in the presence of such a proud civiliza> tion as that, and quietly saying to it, " When I am weak, 2

then am I strong." And we cannot wonder that to the mere children of nature then, as to men and women of the mere natural reason still, such a saying was a riddle, with hardly a clue to its meaning.

The meaning is that in order to get very near to God, or to let the glorious attractions of almighty love and light lay hold of us, and lift us up, — we must be somehow impoverished first, belittled, disappointed, baffled, weakened. Whereas we had imagined we were strong in proportion as we could make our own way, it turns out, quite to the contrary, that we are really strong in proportion as we are conscious of needing and receiving help from above us, as we feel dependent on the Divine Man, and keep our hearts open to His inward-working power. Whereas we thought, with those old pagans, that we should be strong by pride, it proves that pride is just the feeblest thing in us, and that we must be emptied clean of it before we can be sure of any real lionor, — because pride separates us effectually from the fountain of inward life. Whereas a growing fortune, or a lucra-

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234 STRENGTH OUT OF WEAKNESS.

tive business, seemed to be a means of safety, it turns out that this depends altogether on tlie man who holds it, and the spirit in which he uses it ; and that unless he can do without it, or give it away, when God calls him, he is as weak as that very promising young man, — promising, but only promising, — who came to Jesus complacent, but went away mortified ; — a moral failure. Whereas a robust body and sharp senses looked like strength, the true powers of a glorious manhood are quite as apt to be manifest in men of broken health or slender constitutions. At any rate, by the Christian plan of life, we must begiu with penitence, or sorrow for the past ; and what is that but a confession of weakness ? We must become as little children, in feeling, the Saviour says ; and what is childhood but dependence ? We must take up a cross ; and that is a taking dowij of the selfish part. We must believe ; and faith is an acknowledgment that we are not sufficient to ourselves. So this new kingdom begins in this wonderful way. " When I am weak, then am I strong." Obstacles, sicknesses, losses, defeats of our plans, the breakings up of our securities, are God's opportunities; and He knows how to use 4

them. We watch the course of our lives, and we see that what is best has generally come by self-subjection. And at last our experience answers to this mystical account given of the heroes of the Bible, — " Out of weakness they were made strong."

St. Paul finds it necessary for once to vindicate his apostleship, and in order to that, a rare thing with him, to vindicate himself. After alluding to certain extraordinary revelations which had lifted him into the third heaven, and would naturally tempt him to religious vanity, he emphatically discards any such presumption, and goes on to say that he counts it a signal blessing

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that he has always been kept down and saved from selfconfidence by bodily disadvantages. "What this " thorn in the flesh " was he does not mention ; the Corinthians he was writing to knew : — a weak voice, possibly, — weak eyes, more likely, — for he several times alludes to his eyes pathetically; and if they were permanently hurt by 5

the intense light at Damascus, he might very well say of them, "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus : — let no man trouble me." (Jewish traditions refer it to convulsions.) At any rate it prevented his presence being admired, limited his powers as an orator, and quenched the hopes of public ambition. He felt it the more because by temperament he evidently relished great natural vigor. He knew, too, with his "like passions," that the men he preached to had a habit of sneering at physical disfigurements. Of course they would take occasion from his infirmity to disparage his ministry and discredit his message. And so he reached this trium^i of self-humiliation, — our special Lenten grace, — only by a tremendous struggle. He carried it, as his devout spirit took everything, into his prayers. Probably he put his petition on the ground that his deformity abridged his usefulness as a preacher. So we all pray when we are not quite clear whether we are thinking more of God's glory or of our own comfort : in other words, whether it is simple faith or a disgusted self-will that prompts the supplication. As with Peter, and with Christ, the tempter came three times. Three times Paul besought the Lord that the vexation might depart from him. For some mysterious purpose it was 6

God's plan that it should remain. But then there rang in his ears an answer to that supplication which thrilled his soul more profoundly, and awoke in him a far more comforting assurance that he was answered, than if a

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miracle had instantly healed every disordered fibre in his frame. The Lord said, " My grace is sufficient for thee." This trial must continue and try thee still ; to take it away would be to imperil the purity of that human vessel which I am refining to carry the treasure of eternal life to the gentile world, but My imparted grace shall continue too, and never fail. Be that sufficient for thee. Let the thorn still sting the flesh. It will not weaken, nay, it will stimulate and redouble the real power.

Now if this had been a sentence spoken for efiect, it would be a paradox in rhetoric, and nothing more. Coming from the lips of our Lord, it declares a principle of all Christian life and growth. On the one side we see feebleness, trembling, ignorance, perplexity, a dying 7

body, earthen vessels : — on the other side, strength, courage, the demonstration of the Spirit, the excellency of the power, the immortal life of Christ. In that contrast, made a personal experience in our Christian discipline, lie the trial of character, the ministry of ^temptation, the shame and splendor of the cross, and the victory of faith which overcometh the world.

Something like this we are continually seeing, as the common working of God's Spirit, in the characters of men. Not one in fifty of those who have their hearts made alive and earnest for Christian service are led that way by increased prosperity ; by high health ; by having their own way ; by any personal advantages whatever. Most of us must have seen man after man, yes, score of men after score of men, and it is a sad sight enough, who have once taken up a Christian's work, and vowed themselves to Christ at His altar, grow negligent of religious duty, and gradually relax all the exercises of a good soldier of the Cross, just in proportion as they flourished in business, rose in office, took what might be called an

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easy place in the world, or became "strong" in the world's sense. Accordingly we are just in the best way of being made secure when we are cast on rough conditions. Poor boys from the country, with their whole wordly estate swinging in a small satchel at their side, are the strong-handed builders of institutions, roads, cities, ships, and become masters of all the grand enterprises of the world. David was a great deal stronger when he was a stripling with a ruddy face, coming up from the brook with a few stones for his sling, or when he was a hunted exile, flying from one rocky hiding-place to another, or when he was on his knees pouring out of a broken heart the fifty-first psalm, than when he sat in purple on his throne, and in the fulness of his table forgot his Maker, and had to tremble before the prophet. How many there are who first take firmly hold of the everlasting Hand, when they have felt all around them in the dark and could find no other hand ! A man of business on the full current of success, a fortune at his command, and a multitude dependent on him, looks strong no doubt to himself, and to other men. But some day he goes home from his office with a strange weakness 9

in his frame ; he creeps up to his chamber with it ; he lies on his bed and is faint under it ; his business goes on well enough without him ; and weeks after, when his flesh and his will and his pride are all worn down, he tells you, with an accent that has such a sound of reality in it as you have heard in nothing he ever said before, that all his past career has been a superficial and miserable mistake, because obedience to Christ, and self-surrender to His holy will, were not in him. In his weakness he is for the first time strong. A woman moves in brilliant circles, admired, accomplished, obeyed : for there is a certain sway that seems like power. But changes of

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fortune shut her up in a narrow estate ; they unclasp her jewels ; set her to tending fretful invalids, teaching dull children, or dragging a feeble frame through the drudgeries of some hard lot; all the radiant visions vanished. But there has risen, meantime, another vision : the open way of life, and the light that is on the Face of the crucified. A voice has been heard saying, 10

" Thou art mine ; forgiven ; redeemed ; My daughter ; I am with thee in thy poverty, made poor Myself for thy sake; My grace is sufiicient for thee; no man shall pluck thee out of My hand." And now her day of power has come, and with power, perfect peace.

Familiar instances, — you say. Yes, very familiar. Look where we will, the proofs will multiply upon us that here is a great law of the Divine discipline with men, — not wholly confined indeed to spiritual things, but most brightly manifest there and yielding its most blessed fruits there. By some means or other passion, pride, self-will, — the "strong men armed" that keep this world's house, — must be turned out before the King of Glory can come in. We might, no doubt, if we would, let God's goodness lead us to repentance ; we might, if we would, grow straight up and go straight on in the path of the justified. But, humiliating as it is, most of us have to be scourged into our rest. The sunshine of the Lord's love is not let in on many eyes till the walls of the house we trusted are shaken apart. As an old English poet wrote,

"The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 11

Lets in new light through ciiinks that time has made."

You see St. Paul before his conversion, with his commanding intellect and iron will swinging his sword from city to city to strike down Christian disciples, every-

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thing else in him powerful but charity : and yet it is only when he is sitting in darkness, or led about by another's hand, sightless, helpless, that his passions grow cool, his heart's flesh comes like the flesh of a little child, and the power of Christ rises in his soul. Blindness, solitude, humility, these stern hands fashion him into that" brave and irresistible leader of the Church whom all the swords and dungeons between Syria and Spain cannot terrify or silence. Elijah must hunger; John the Baptist must eat locusts and wild honey in the desert; the twelve must leave their homes and their property; St. Peter must weep bitterly — before they can be mighty witnesses, standing before kings. Nay more : the King himself, in the beautiful language 12

of the Yisitation Office, " went not up to joy, but first He suffered pain." Our infirmities are the springs of our victories, — and hence, that we might be made conquerors through Him, He took our infirmities upon Him.

Perhaps something in us prompts us to answer, " This is a very strange order of things. Why should it be so ? "Why should not the full health and vigor of all parts of our nature go on and ripen harmoniously together? Health is certainly the normal state of man. Property is useful. Why should we have to be spoilt in one part of us to strengthen another part ? Something must be the matter."

Exactly so ; something is the matter, and that something is the bitter cause of all the misery, the pain, the disappointment, the emptiness and aching of heart in the children of men. It is the sin that doth so easily beset us. God's loving order was disturbed because a hateful human disorder came in, and has never gone out. Therefore the way to life must be just what it is: — through suffering to peace ; through a wilderness to the

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land of olive gardens ; through fort^^Lenten days to a resurrection jubilee day ; through loneliness, self-disgust, and emptiness into the city of the living God, and fulness of joy.

Remember, strength will be poured into our breasts from God, provided only the bar that keeps it out is taken down. God is always love. If ye, human parents, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more the Heavenly Father ! Only one thing is wanting, that the two bolts, — self-will and self-indulgence, — be weakened till they give way. Weaken them, my friends ; weaken them in every way, — by self-reproach, by discipline, by taking up a cross, by fasting, by doing duties that you dislike to do, by disinterested work for other men, and the blessed energy of the Spirit will flow in. In your weakness God's strength will be made perfect. And then you will know, with St. Paul, what it is to glory in tribulations. Then you will learn to entertain sickness and sorrow in your houses as the royal ambassadors of the King of Peace. At first Paul called his thorn 14

a messenger of Satan buffeting him. After he found out why it came, he called it a gift, a love token, a sign of heavenly favor from his Master. If Satan's angels are sometimes clothed as angels of light, why not God's angels in shadows ? If it keeps you humble, the thorn is finally woven into the crown of rejoicing. O blessed infirmities, blemishes, ugliness, pain, poor success, mortified ambition, ye are prophets and heralds of salvation ; ye are our securities from deeper and more lasting shame ! "We ought to learn some anthems to sing your honors as pledges of our heavenly deliverance. To accept bodily pain, or an insignificant reputation, or a ruined plan, even after having prayed against it, as the veiled minister of mercy, and heartily to give thanks for the scourge, — this is to have

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Christ formed hy faith within. It opens the interpretation of that wonderful saying : — " Always bearing about in tlie body tlie dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

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In a prayer repeated since last Sunday, all through this week, the Church makes us bold enough to ask for "abstinence," that "the flesh may be subdued to the spirit." The ground we have gone over brings us to the basis of all this penitence and self-denial. It lies in our nature and constitution as well as in the Scriptures.

Finally, you may turn to society at large. Look at a whole city, in the full tide of commercial prosperity and social indulgence. Abundance shall run down all the streets like rivers of water. Every scene of entertainment, from the glittering play-house to the lowest haunt of dissipation, shall be nightly thronged and illuminated. The men shall build palaces as playthings, and the women string diamonds as beads. The talk of the town shall be of the last night's brilliancy and jewelry, raiment and banquet. Night itself shall be turned into day, not for vigils of prayer or praises of the Great Benefactor, — if that were done the whole .population would lauirh aloud at the fanaticism, — but it shall be done night after night for frivolity, for dancing and eating and drinking, for this world's god, and no lip shall sneer at it. There shall be wealth enough for all this ; and every new form of ostentation, and every new avenue 16

of traffic, and every addition to the trappings of a material estate that wealth could provide, shall heighten the pomp. Now, would this be the strong city ? What are the attributes of strength? Self-command, courage, filth, endurance, moderation : these are the signs of A?;m^?i strength. Has it these? God alone, the Ahnighty, is the source of strength ; and that city alone is strong

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of which it can be said that " God is in the midst of her." Can it be said of that city ? Character is strength, and there is no character there. It is weakness at the foundation, weakness in the superstructure, weakness at tlie gates ; weakness in the cliambers ; weakness at the heart. You have read history ; and you know whether Tyre and Babylon and Rome just before they fell were strong.

Turn from that spectacle to another. By some Provi17

dence, the city is humbled. Its face is sober and thoughtful. Manners are simple ; dress is plain ; industry is more plentiful than entertainment; luxuries are not seen, but charities are abundant ; its sanctuaries are thronged ; its nights are still ; its people are walking with God ; its children's indulgence is restrained. Wisdom is the ornament of grace about its neck. There are household prayers in all the houses. Righteousness is its law ; and God is its king. Here is strength : " Clean hands and a pure heart." Strong as well as happy is that people whose God is the Lord.

Man is not strongest when his head is full of dreams and calculations of gain, his heart full of promotion and admiration, his hand full of this world's gifts, and his month full of meat and wine. He is strong when he rules his spirit; strong when he works, and consecrates his work to God ; strong when he is on his knees ; strong wlien he forgets himself, and lives in the spirit of the apostle's declaration: "It is no more I that live, but Christ liveth in me."

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