The Weaned Child

"My soul is even as a weaned child." Psalm 131:2

I was once conversing with a very excellent aged minister, and while we were talking about our frames and feelings, he made the following confession: he said, "When I read that passage in the psalm, ‘My soul is even as a weaned child,’ I wish it were true of me, but I think I should have to make an alteration of one syllable, and then it would exactly describe me at times, ‘My soul is even as a weaning rather than a wean ed child,’ for," said he, "with the infirmities of old age, I fear I get fretful and peevish, and anxious, and when the day is over I do not feel that I have been in so calm, resigned, and trustful a frame of mind as I could desire."

I suppose, dear brethren, that frequently we have to make the same confession. We wish we were like a weaned child, but we find ourselves neglecting to walk by faith, and getting into the way of walking by the sight of our eyes, and then we get like the weaning child which is fretting and worrying, and unrestful, and who causes trouble to those round about it, and most of all, trouble to itself.

Weaning was one of the first real troubles that we met with after we came into this world, and it was at the time a very terrible one to our little hearts. We got over it somehow or other. We do not remember now what a trial it was to us, but we may take it as a type of all troubles; for if we have faith in him who was our God from our mother’s breasts, as we got over the weaning, and do not even recollect it, so we shall get over all the troubles that are to come, and shall scarcely remember them for the joy that will follow. If, indeed, Dr. Watts be correct in saying that when we get to heaven we shall "recount the labors of our feet," then, I am quite sure that we shall only do it, as he says, "with transporting joy." There, at least, we shall each one be as a weaned child. It is a very happy condition of heart which is here indicated, and I shall speak about it with a desire to promote the increase of such a state of heart among believers, with the hope that many of us may reach it, and that all of us who have reached it may continue to say still, "My soul is even as a weaned child."

I. First, let us think WHAT THE PSALMIST INTENDED BY THIS DESCRIPTION; and we will begin by noticing the context, in order to understand him, and then we will consider the metaphor in order still further to see what he literally meant. First, look at the context; and you will see that he intended that pride had been subdued in him, and driven out of him, for he commences the psalm with this, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty." We are all proud by nature, though there is not one among us that has anything to be proud of. It makes no difference what our condition is- we universally dream that we have something whereof to boast. The Lord Mayor is not a bit prouder in his gold chain than the beggar in his rags. Indeed, pride is a kind of weed that will grow on very poor soil quite as freely as in the best cultivated garden. Every man thinks more of himself than God thinks of him, for when a man is in his highest estate and at his best, he is nothing but dust, and the Lord knows his frame, and remembers that he is just that, and nothing better.

Some poor creatures, however, indulge their pride, and let it run away with them as a wild horse with its rider. They cannot be trusted with a little money but straightway they hold their heads so high that one might think the stars in danger. They cannot be trusted with a little talent but straightway their genius is omnipotent in their own opinion, and they themselves are to be treated like demi-gods. And if they are God’s servants, they cannot have a little success in the ministry or in the Sunday-school without becoming quite unpleasant to those round about them, through their boastful ways and eagerness to talk of self. Scarcely can they have enjoyment, even of the presence of God, but what they begin to make an idol of their attainments and graces, and begin to say, "My mountain, my mountain, stands firm. I, I shall never be moved." Great I grows without any watering, for the soil of nature is muddy, and the rush of pride takes to it mightily.

You need never be troubled about a man’s keeping up his opinion of himself, he will be pretty sure to do that, the force of nature usually runs in the direction of self-conceit. This pride very often leads to haughtiness, domineering ways towards others, and contempt of them, as if they were not as good as we are; and if we see any errors and mistakes in them we conclude that they are very foolish, and that we should act much better if we were in their position. If they act nobly and well, this same pride of ours leads us to pick holes in them, and to detract from their excellence; and if we cannot get up as high as they are, we try to pull them down to our own level. This is a base thing to do, but the proud man is always sordid, loftiness of looks and meanness of heart run in a leash like a couple of hounds. The humble man is the truly great man, and because God’s gentleness has made him great he is sure to be kept lowly before the Lord by the Holy Spirit. The proud man is really little; no more, he is really nothing even in the things wherein he boasts himself.

David could say, "My heart is not haughty." His brother, Eliab, said that he was proud when he went down to carry his father’s present to his soldier brothers, but it was not so. His heart was content to be with the sheep- he was quite willing to follow the "ewes great with young." When he was in Saul’s court they thought him ambitious, but he was not so, he was quite satisfied to be a servant there, to fight the battles of Israel. The place of captain over a wandering band was forced upon him, he would sooner have dwelt at home. And when he was king he did not exalt himself. Absalom when he was aspiring to the kingdom was a far greater man to look at than his father David, for David walked in lowliness of spirit before the Lord. Whatever faults he had, he certainly had not the fault of vanity, or of being intoxicated in spirit with what God had done for him.

Now, it is a great blessing when the Spirit of God keeps us from being haughty and our looks from being lofty. We shall never be as a weaned child until it gets to that, for a weaned child thinks nothing of itself. It is but a little babe; whatever consciousness it has at all about the matter, it is not conscious of any strength or any wisdom, it is dependent entirely upon its mother’s care; and blessed is that man who is brought to lie very low in his own spirit before the Lord, resting on the bosom of infinite love. After all, brethren, we are nobodies, and we have come of a line of nobodies. The proudest peer of the realm may trace his pedigree as far as ever he likes, but he ought to remember that if his blood is blue, it must be very unhealthy to have such blood in one’s veins. The common ruddy blood of the peasant is, after all, far healthier.

Big as men may account themselves to be on account of their ancestors, we all trace our line up to a gardener, who lost his place through stealing his Master’s fruit, and that is the farthest we can possibly go. Adam covers us all with disgrace, and under that disgrace we should all sit humbly down. Look into your own heart, and if you dare to be proud, you have never seen your heart at all. It is a mass of pollution- it is a den of filthiness. Apart from divine grace, your heart is a seething mass of putrefaction, and if God’s eternal Spirit were not to hold it in check, but to let your nature have its way, envyings, lustings, murders, and every foul thing would come flying forth in your daily life. A sinner and yet proud! It is monstrous.

As for children of God, how can they be proud ? I fear we are all too much so; but what have we to be proud of ? What have we that we have not received ? Bow then can we boast ? Are we dressed in the robe of Christ’s righteousness ? We did not put a thread into it; it was all given us by the charity of Jesus. Are our garments white? We have washed them in the blood of the Lamb. Are we new creatures? We have been created anew by omnipotent power, or we should still be as we were. Are we holding on our way? It is God that enables us to persevere, or we should long ago have gone back. Have we been kept from the great transgression? Who has kept us ? We certainly have not kept ourselves. There is nothing that we have of which we can say, "I did this and it is all my own," except our faults and our sins, and over these we ought to blush.

Yet, brethren, when the Lord favors us, especially in early life — though I do not know but what it is almost as much so with us who have got a little farther on- if you get a full sail and a favoring breeze, and the vessel scuds along before the wind, there is need of a great deal of ballast, or else there will soon be a tale to tell of a vessel that was upset and a sailor who was too venturesome, and was never heard of more. We have need continually to be kept lowly before God, for pride is the besetting sin of mankind. Oh, that God would give us to be as David was — not haughty, neither our eyes lofty. This is the first help towards being as a weaned child.

And next he tells us that he was not ambitious — "Neither do I exercise myself in great matters." He was a shepherd; he did not want to go and fight Goliath, and when he did do it, it was because his nation needed him. He said, "Is there not a cause?" Else he had kept in the background still. When he went into the hold in the cave of Adullam, he never lifted a hand to become king. He might have smitten his enemy several times, and with one stroke have ended the warfare and seized the throne, but he would not lift a hand against the Lord’s anointed, for, like a weaned child, he was not ambitious. He was willing to go where God would put him, but he was not seeking after great things. Now, dear brethren, we shall never be as a weaned child if we have got high notions of what we ought to be, and large desires for self. If we are great men in our own esteem, of course we ought to have great things for ourselves; but if we know ourselves, and are brought into a true condition of mind, we shall avoid those "vaulting ambitions which overleap themselves."

For instance, we shall not be hankering after great possessions. "Having food and raiment" we shall be "therewith content." If God adds to our store of the comforts of life, we shall be grateful. We shall be diligent in business, but we shall not be greedy and miserly. "While others stretch their arms, like seas, to grasp in all the shore," we shall be content with far less things, for we know that greed after earthly riches brings with it slackness of desire as to true riches. The more hungry a man is after this world, the less he pines after the treasures of the world to come. We shall not be covetous, if we are like a weaned child.

Neither shall we sigh for position and influence; whoever heard of a weaned child doing that? Let it lie in its parent’s bosom and it is content, and so shall we be in the bosom of our God. Yet some Christian men seem as if they could not pull unless they are the fore horses of the team. They cannot work with others, but must have the chief place, contrary to the word of the apostle who says, "My brethren, be you not many masters, lest you receive the greater condemnation." Blessed is that servant who is quite content with that position which his master appoints him — glad to unloose the latchet of his Lord’s shoes — glad to wash the saints’ feet — glad to engage in sweeping a crossing for the king’s servants. Let us do anything for Jesus, counting it the highest honor even to be a door-mat inside the church of God, if we might be such a thing as that, for the saints even to remove the filthiness from themselves upon us, so long as we may but be of some use to them, and bring some glory to God.

You remember the word of Jeremiah to Baruch. Baruch had been writing the roll for the prophet, and straightway Baruch thought he was somebody. He had been writing the word of the Lord, had he not? But the prophet said to him, "Do you seek you great things for yourself? Seek them not." And so says the mind of the Spirit to us all. Do not desire to occupy positions of eminence and prominence, but let your soul be as a weaned child — not exercising itself in great matters. Very often we seek after great approbation. We want to do great deeds that people will talk about, and especially some famous work which everybody will admire. This is human nature, for the love of approbation is rooted in us. As the old rhyme puts it —
"The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure;
The modest shun it but to make it sure."

But that man has arrived at the right position who has become "careless, himself a dying man, of dying man’s esteem," who judges what is right before God, and does it caring neither for public nor private opinion in the matter, to whom it is no more concern what people may say of an action which his conscience commends than what tune the north wind whistles as it blows over the Alps. He who is the slave of man’s opinions is a slave indeed. I would sooner go to some barbarous clime where yet the slave-whip would fall upon my shoulders, and the cruel fetter would chain me to the floor, than live in dread of such a thing as I myself, and tremble with fear of offending this man and the other by doing what I believe to be right. He who fears God needs fear no one else; but he who reaches that point has undergone a painful weaning, and had it not been for that he would not be able to say, "My soul is even as a weaned child."

Frequently, too, we exercise ourselves in great matters by having a high ambition to do something very wonderful in the church. This is why so very little is done. The great destroyer of good works is the ambition to do great works. A little thing can be done by a Christian brother well; but if it strikes him, "I will have a society to do it, and a committee, and a secretary, and a president, and a vice-president," (it being well known that nothing can be done until you get a committee, and a president, and all that kind of thing), the brother soon hampers himself, and his work ends in resolutions and reports, and nothing more. But the brother who says, "Here is a district which nobody visits; I will do what I can in it" — he is probably the man who will get another to help him; and another, and the work will be done. The young man who is quite content to begin with preaching in a little room in a village to a dozen is the man who will win souls. The other brother, who does not mean preaching until he can preach to five thousand, never will do anything, he never can.

I read of a king who always wanted to take the second step first, but he was not a Solomon; there are many such about, not kings but common people, who do not want to do the first thing, the thing they can do, the thing which God calls them to do, the thing they ought to do, but they must do something great. Oh, dear brother, if your soul ever gets to be as it ought, you will feel, "The least thing that I can do, I shall be glad to do. The very poorest and lowest form of Christian service, as men think it, is better than I deserve." It is a great honor to be allowed to unloose the ratchets of my Lord’s shoes.

A young man who had a small charge once, and only about two hundred hearers, complained to an old minister that he wished he could move somewhere else; but the old one said, "Do not be in a hurry, brother. The responsibility of two hundred souls is quite heavy a load enough for most of us to carry." And so it is. We need not be so eager to load ourselves with more. He is the best draftsman, not who draws the largest but the most perfect circle; if the circle is perfect nobody finds fault with it because it is not large. Fill your sphere, brother, and be content with it. If God shall move you to another, be glad to be moved; if he move you to a smaller, be as willing to go to a less prominent place as to one that is more so. Have no will about it. Be a weaned child that has given up fretting, and crying, and worrying, and leaves its mother to do just what seems good in her sight. When we are thoroughly weaned it is well with us — pride is gone, and ambition is gone too. We shall want much nursing by one who is wiser and gentler than the best mother before we shall be quite weaned of these two dearly beloved sins.

Next, David tells us he was not intrusive — "Neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me." I have seen many men always vexed and troubled because they would exercise themselves in things too high for them. These things too high for them have been many; I will mention only a few. They have expected to comprehend everything, and have never been satisfied because many truths are far above and out of their reach, especially they have expected to know all the deep things of God — the doctrine of election, and how predestination coincides with the free agency of man, and how God orders everything, and yet man is responsible — just as responsible as if there had been no foreknowledge and no foreordination. It is folly to hope to know these "things too high for us."

Here is a little child that has just come off its mother’s knee and it expects to understand a book on trigonometry, and cries because it cannot; and here is another little child that has been down to the sea, and it is fretting and kicking in its nurse’s arms because it cannot get the Atlantic into the hollow of its hand. Well, it will have to kick, that will be the end of it; but it is fretting itself for nothing, without any real use or need for its crying, because a little child’s palm cannot hold an ocean. Yet a child might sooner hold the Atlantic and Pacific in its two hands, without spilling a drop, than you and I will ever be able to hold all revealed truth within the compass of our narrow minds. We cannot know everything, and we cannot understand even half what we know. I have given up wanting to understand. As far as I can, I am content with believing all that I see in God’s word.

People say, "But he contradicts himself." I dare say I do, but I never contradict God to my knowledge, nor yet the Bible. If I do, may my Lord forgive me. Do not believe me for a minute if I speak contrary to God’s word, in order to appear consistent. The sin of being inconsistent with my poor fallible self does not trouble me a tithe as much as the dread of being inconsistent with what I find in God’s word. Some want to shape the Scriptures to their creed, and they get a very nice square creed too, and trim the Bible most dexterously: it is wonderful how they do it, but I would rather have a crooked creed and a straight Bible, than I would try to twist the Bible round to suit what I believe.

"Neither do I exercise myself," says the psalmist, "with things too high for me," and I think we do well to keep very much in that line. "Oh, but really one ought to be acquainted with all the phases of modern doubt." Yes, and how many hours in a day ought a man to give to that kind of thing? Twenty-five out of the twenty-four would hardly be sufficient, for the phases of modern thought are innumerable, and every fool who sets up for a philosopher sets up a new scheme; and I am to spend my time in going about to knock his card-houses over. Not I! I have something else to do; and so has every Christian minister. He has real doubts to deal with, which vex true hearts; he has anxieties to relieve in converted souls, and in minds that are pining after the truth and the right; he has these to meet, without everlastingly tilting at windmills, and running all over the country to put down every scarecrow which learned simpletons may set up. We shall soon defile ourselves if we work day after day in the common sewers of scepticism. Brethren, there is a certain highway of truth in which you and I, like wayfaring men, feel ourselves safe, let us travel thereon.

There are some things that we do know, because we have experienced them, — some doctrines which nobody can beat out of us, because we have tasted them and handled them. Well, if we can go further, well and good; but to my mind, we are foolish to go further and fare worse. If a man has reached the Land’s End, and some great genius should tell him to walk on farther than Old England reaches and ridicule him because he will not go a step in advance into the fog which conceals an awful plunge, I think, upon the whole, he may be content to put up with the ridicule. Put your foot down, brother, and see whether there is anything under it — whether there is a good text or two underneath — whether there is a little personal experience underneath, and, if you do not find it, let the advanced thinkers go alone; you had better keep on the rock.

"Prove all things" — do not run after their novelties until you have proved them; and what you have proved hold fast. Be conservative in God’s truth, and radical too, by keeping to the root of the matter. Hold fast what you know, and live mainly upon the simplicities of the gospel, for, after all, the food of the soul does not lie in controversial points: it lies in points which we will never have controverted, for "without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh." There is the food of the soul where there is no controversy in any devout Christian spirit. Exercise yourself, then, in the plainer matters, and do not imbibe the notion that you must read all the quarterlies, and master "The Contemporary Review," and the like, or else you will be a nobody; be content to be just such a nobody as a weaned child is, and say, "I exercise not myself in great matters or in things too high for me."

Next Part The Weaned Child 2

Back to Charles Spurgeon