It is impossible for us to conceive the grandeur of having an infinite and ever blessed God for our constant teacher, to apprehend ourselves as little frail creatures, going to school to limitless Knowledge, cloudless Light, and boundless Love. As our Creator, Preserver, and Savior, what multiplied lessons has he to teach us, through his providence, his word, his Spirit, and how often we have to learn the same lessons over and over again, from every angle of vision, in varying degrees of light and shade, in multiplied forms of joy and sorrow, in manifold relations of society and solitude.

The word “disciple” signifies a learner, and to be a true disciple covers the entire range of religious life, from its infancy to glorification. There are three kinds of knowledge, the physical, intellectual, and spiritual. We acquire material knowledge through our senses, coming in contact with eternal objects. We obtain intellectual knowledge by the exercise of reason, perception, memory and judgment. We learn spiritual things through the operation of revealed truth and the agency of the inner spiritual being, the conscience, the affections and the will.

Spiritual knowledge is of two kinds, that which is revealed by instantaneous flashes of the Spirit upon our spiritual understanding, and that which we learn by oft repeated experiences of the action of God’s discipline and truth upon our spiritual faculties. The Scriptures speak of a great many things as being revealed to us, as “having Christ revealed in us,” and “having the arm of the Lord revealed to us.” They speak of other things as having to learn them, as “learning the meek and lowly heart of Jesus,” “learning in whatever state we are therewith to be content.”

Laban “learned that God blessed him for Jacob’s sake.” The revelations of the Holy Ghost to us are flashed directly upon our spiritual intuitions, and are always instantaneous, and are independent of the action of our five senses, and far beyond our slow process of reasoning; they are pre-eminently supernatural.

But in learning spiritual lessons, there is the gentle interblending of our spiritual intuitions with the action of our intellectual faculties, of memory, judgment, comparison, and analysis. This action of our mental powers of divine things accounts for the slowness of our learning, and for the necessity of having the same lessons to go over and over again, until the whole mind has been spiritualized, and brought under the sweet and luminous control of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is what Paul refers to by having our “thoughts and imaginations” such as the building of air castles, curiosity, excursive reasonings, and such like, “brought in perfect subjection to Christ.” The learning of these things is a very different thing from the instantaneous works of regeneration and sanctification, and is reached by repeated interior crucifixions, and by divine habits of mental prayer, and the recollection of the divine presence. The general rule of learning spiritual lessons is by contrasts, the bringing together of opposite extremes; as, we are told, the movement of the delicate machinery in a watch is produced by putting it first into a freezing and then a burning temperature, and then back and forth, until the machinery sweetly behaves itself in either extreme of temperature. This thought of learning by abrupt and sharply defined extremes is the very one Paul mentions, when he learned how to be abased, and how to abound, how to suffer hunger, and how to be filled, how to sleep on a bed of down in a palace, and on a hard board in a barbarian’s hut; and by these sharp contrasts he learned to die equally to both, and the delicate mechanism of his spiritual life kept unvarying time in all zones and temperatures. This thought of spiritual contrast is the key by which we can unlock nearly all the lessons of the spiritual life.

When Christ is going to teach us a lesson of the riches of his inner nature, or of the enormous wealth of his imparted life to us, he will lead us around through a desert place, and by a combination of inward and outward circumstances show us our utter poverty and destitution of nature, until in our innermost being we feel poor and pinched, and pale and pauperfied. Then there will soon open to us such a mine of spiritual wealth, bright, glittering thought, sparkling gems of holy desire, soft and sweet attractions of pure love, a smooth glassy flow of peace, glowing expansions of hope, exquisite magnetisms in the divine personalities, until it seems we are walking through mines of gold and rubies, and feel so rich in God that we want to give away millions of blessings to the starving souls around us.

When we are to learn some great lesson of faith, it will be preceded by having our little faith tested to its uttermost. God will allow Satan to throw a strange darkness around the mind, and for a time his black wings will shut out the sun, moon and stars, and along with this a great many things in our outward circumstances will miscarry, our most solid expectations will fail to materialize; God’s great, broad, bright promises seem to have an indistinct and awkward appearance, while regiments of difficulties, like armed cavalry, charge down upon us. Amid this storm in the outward phenomena, and the dull gloom upon the mental faculties, faith will act like a little ship in a heavy sea. It groans in every fiber, and slowly climbs the waves, it careens away over, as if it would surely capsize. A mast may snap, and a few ropes get broken.

Then we consent to make death reckonings, and reach the point of “though he slay me” yet I will not doubt his love. In a short time we find the billows smoothing down, the cloud lifts, the wind changes and it seems that every power within us takes on a believing frame. Faith seems to spread itself out in a bright, victorious extravagance through all the soul. We can then not only believe all the written promises, but also the secretly whispered ones which the Holy Ghost pronounces in the depths of our spirits. We seem so full of faith that we wonder why it should ever have groaned and struggled so in the storm.

In taking deeper degrees in humility the soul is led through horrible temptations, and disgusting mortifications. In one sense it is dangerous to pray for the very deepest humility, unless the soul is strong enough for extraordinary trials and mortifications of various kinds.

It is related that George Whitefield, on his way to America was led to pray the Lord to fill him with great humility of spirit. In a few days he was seized with most vile and terrible temptations, which greatly agitated the mental appetences, and convulsed his sensibilities, till he was almost on the verge of despair; and before they passed away he loathed himself, and looked upon himself as the most detestable wretch on earth, and all other people seemed good and heavenly compared with himself. But he learned his lesson, and came through with the consciousness of his utter littleness and frailty, which is the very essence of perfect humility. This is the curriculum through which the very lowliest minded saints have passed.

What shall I say of learning the lesson of love, bright faced, large eyed, mild featured, sweet voiced, soft toned, gentle spirited, long suffering, non-combative, summer breathing, boundless love? That love which constitutes the essence of heaven, the quality of religion, and the focalizing of all the graces in one must not only be imparted to us by a supernatural act of the Holy Ghost, but wrought out into every part of our life. And this requires the learning of love’s lesson over and over, deeper and deeper.

When the Holy Spirit opens a new chapter of love in our nature he permits our affections to be sorely taxed, with things which are just the opposite of love. He permits most cruel misunderstandings, unexplainable coldness, harsh treatment, the seeming or real loss of old friendships, heartless and uncalled for betrayals of tender heart confidences; sometimes actual and severe cruelties upon the body, or estate, or reputation. All sorts of unlovely and painful things occur, to test what love we have, to make us see whether we have the pure, gentle, unlimited charity of Christ, that we thought we had.

Love is a sweet mantle of pure linen, and if there be any cotton or woolen threads mixed up with it they will scorch and burn in the fiery furnace of love’s testings, and when our charity for all mankind is going through the flame, we can tell by the smell of burnt wool whether our love is all pure linen or not. Mere human love is wool, God’s love is asbestos linen, and utterly indestructible. The more it is burned, the broader and sweeter it gets. Just after passing through some long and terrific strain upon pure love, it comes out into a broad ocean of mildness and tenderness inexpressible; it is then vast enough to mantle the world round and round with its compassionate, sympathizing, forgiving and pitying folds.

There is another peculiar lesson in the spiritual life, which I may call periodical enlargement. There will come seasons when everything in our life seems put in a narrow place. Our experience, our view of things, our interior play of spirit, our outward circumstances, socially or financially, our avocations and industries, the utility of our gifts, all seem cramped, and as the days and weeks go by, we seem to be pushing through an ever narrowing place, till we feel in a number of ways so cramped, as St. Paul says, “pressed beyond measure,” until we have the feeling of being literally tied hand and foot, straight-laced and gagged. But when this phenomenon of experience reaches its extremity, suddenly the cords that bound us are snapped, or quietly untied, and we find the whole atmosphere of things changed. Without any effort, we find ourselves in a wide place, all our inner restraint expands into the sweetest liberty, gloomy circumstances put on bright faces, forgotten friends unexpectedly turn up, our industries and financial matters move as if oiled, social things assume their old-fashioned cheerfulness, the sky is blue, and it seems so easy to live and grow and fulfil our mission.

All these various lessons, and a great many more, have to be learned over and over again. The initial Christian learns them in faint degrees, and the purified and perfect believer goes through them many times, and from many standpoints, until he becomes familiar with the methods of his heavenly Teacher, and can tell at the beginning of each lesson what the glorious outcome will be.