Knowing How by Phillips Brooks

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 29, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 21.

Knowing How.

By Phillips Brooks

"I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound." Phil. 4:12.

The moral uses of adversity monopolize our thought. But it is also true that the man who has wealth and does not flee from it, but uses it well, does more nobly than the ascetic in his cell. It is not mine to tell men of riches to throw their riches away, but to tell them of their privileges and responsibilities. Beyond the duty of being anything is the higher duty of knowing how to be anything. No man has a right to be anything unless he has a knowledge of how to be that thing. When Paul says, 'I know how to abound,' he is thinking of anything which makes life pleasant and ample—of money, of scholarships, of friendship, of great spiritual hopes and experiences. Paul did not have all of these, and yet he had the knowledge how to use them. The power by which he could rob abundance of its dangers was the knowledge of the true perfection of a soul in serving Christ. All men do not know how to be rich. The generous, sympathetic, active, kind, rich man knows how to be rich. He has taken possession of his money. What is more pitiable than the blunderer who holds his wealth and knows not how to use it? In the college of life every one should learn how to live. The grand lesson to be learned is how to glorify God with what we have. Sometimes a rich man feels that if he could only get rid of his money he would become a stronger and better man. It is the old story of the man in the tropics thinking he could be a good man at the North Pole. The outcry of the poor is not against rich men, but rich men who do not know how to be rich. The pride, vulgarity, cruelty, and selfishness of wealth make the poor man's heart ache and his blood boil. Oh, that all rich men and women in this land knew this truth and used it!

There is also needed a knowledge of how to know truth. Here is a scholar who can give you any information, and yet you feel no enrichment. He has no deep convictions, no faith. He has grown less human. He values his knowledge as a botanist his specimens, and not as a gardener his plants. The highest knowledge comes by reverence and devotedness to God. It is sad if there comes no time when the soul feels itself living in great spiritual abundance—sacred days when the joy is too deep for songs. There is the danger of self-satisfaction, or reactionary fear and distrust. If peace and heavenly vision come to you, make them your own by the doing of some great, hard duty in their strength. Duty is the only tabernacle which a man can make his home in the transfiguration mount. We cannot attain in one short life to all abundance, but by coming to God we can attain to the knowledge of how to abound. No lot is too rich for the soul which enters into it with the fear of God and the love of man.—Rev. Phillips Brooks.