APPRECIATION BORN OF EXPERIENCE.
By Ruth Gardner
There is nothing so convincing as a practical personal experience. The child may be taught abstractly that two and two make four; but until he has experimented, and found that result by actually putting two things with two things, it is a very vague concept of his mind. You tell the baby that the fire will burn him, that he must not touch it. But baby has observed the fire a great deal from his own standpoint. The fire is pretty and bright. It cooks nice food for baby. It crackles and roars to amuse him, and he can see no harm in it. He must prove it by that most inquisitive of the senses, touch. In an unguarded moment he puts the matter to the proof. O, the pain and astonishment of that revelation! Convinced and thoroughly punished, he takes refuge in mother's arms, to be cured as only the mother knows how to cure the body and the heart-wounds of her child, and to point the sufferer to Jesus, who only can heal the sin-wounded spirit. Baby has had an experience that has convinced him that mama is wise, that her word is true, and that he is deservedly punished for his disobedience. We are all children in the great experiment station of this world. For our guidance and safety, we have the plain, clear warnings of our Father's faithful Word. Yet He, all-wise, fore-knowing that we would not hearken, has placed us here on experimental ground, and given us a little lease of time to prove these things for ourselves—to come into actual contact with sin and feel the sting of death, that we may know to abhor and shun it forever, and to prize the precious life we forfeited when we gave it opportunity to fulfil the purposes of the enemy. Knowing that we would certainly do this very thing, and that He had all-power to restore all the ruined lives that our experiment would cost us, having prepared the remedy in the greatest sacrifice that love could make—the offering of the sinless One for the transgressors of God's law—knowing all the consequences and preparing the way of escape from our own self-ruin, yet does His great Father heart mourn, as, looking down the prophetic years, He sees His children struggling in the toils of the enemy, wounded, and bruised, and broken by running against the sharp corners of the broken law; and in these sorrowful words He takes up His lamentation for them: “O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” What bitter pangs of sorrow we would be spared if we could only take our Father at His word without the test of proof. Happy indeed is he, who, trusting the truth and the wisdom of God, is willing to follow where he can not understand, knowing that all is well. But here stands the great deceiver, waiting for every young soul. Casting a rosy glamour over their eyes, he can almost make white look black, and black white—right look wrong, and wrong right. We can not believe that there is any harm or wrong in that beautiful siren-faced Sin, who promises us such pleasure and freedom, till we are snared and taken, and the serpent's tooth has entered our very soul. It was not necessary for our first parents to “know good and evil.” They were happy and blessed in knowing only the good, and the enlightenment brought only shame and misery into their lives and the lives of all their children; but they could not appreciate that happiness until they lost it, and learned, by cold contrast, to prize the blessings, the favor, and the purity they had lost. It is only by contrast of opposites that we learn to appreciate the difference between good and evil. Darkness is dispelled by the rising light, and we are glad the darkness is gone. The extremes of heat and cold make us appreciate a comfortable medium. The hardships of winter give an added welcome to the coming of spring. There is no one who appreciates freedom as he who has been a prisoner; no one appreciates life and health as he who has just come back from the very gate of death. We learn to prize our blessings by losing them, and to appreciate the good and pure and beautiful by contrasting them with the evil. And that is just what we are here, in this world of sin and sickness and sorrow, for. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” commands the Word. “For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God,” pleads the Word. But we can not believe that that scripture could possibly apply to our hero. He is so good and noble and true. The command is too hard. It is the story of Eve’s temptation again, trusting the word of another against the plain testimony of the Word of our God. She can not believe that the serpent lurks in so fair and godlike a form, so God, foreseeing all the bitter lesson before her, lets her go on and prove by actual experience the truth of that unfailing Word. Nothing else will do. So she rears her castle in the air—a wondrous fabric, built of fondest hopes and beautiful dream-pictures of an ideal home, and a strong arm and a loyal heart to lean upon. Thus she rears her dream-temple, and enshrines her idol there. A romantic halo, rainbow-tinted and glorious, rests upon it. Yet because of that warning voice, her heart is not at peace. The Spirit of God strives to save her; but she must prove this rosy wine, so full of promise, and drink the cup to the very dregs. She stills the voice of conscience by promising that she will be faithful to her religion whatever comes, and launches her fairy bark, freighted with precious hopes, on an unknown sea. Ah, trusting heart! if you had not made that vow of allegiance to God and His truth, you might have been serving your hero-god yet, under the mask and veneer of society, politeness, and good fellowship. But self-love brooks no rival, and acknowledges no higher allegiance than the little self-centered kingdom wherein he rules absolute monarch. All hearts must bow at the popular shrine, and she who would stand true to a higher allegiance must be cast into the fiery furnace of criticism, scathing denunciation, and social ostracism. Need I say that her castle fell, having no other foundation than the vows of a selfish4human heart? Years later, her beautiful dream-hopes blighted, the rainbow of promise gone, her idol shattered, or—worse—turned into a hideous inquisitorial, persecuting despot, she turns to the One whose name is “Faithful and True,” casting her wounded and broken spirit at His feet, acknowledging the truth of the warning (2 Cor. 6:14–18) she could not have believed if an angel from heaven had told her. But now it is wrought into the very fibers of her being. She has proved that God’s Word is verity and truth, and her heart can say amen to all the rest without the actual proof-test.