Article December 23, 1905 Issue

"I have learned"

ELINOR F. EDWARDS.

What a depth of meaning is disclosed in this simple statement of Paul's "I have learned." It is as if his entire Christian experience were summed up in these three significant words. After years of toil, privation, and hardships, of conflict within and without, he is able to say, "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

In the light of Christian Science it seems strange that this passage should ever have been used as an argument in favor of submission to circumstances, for such is evidently far from the writer's meaning. Paul was neither a fatalist nor a moral coward. His experience is an object-lesson in overcoming evil, through the understanding of the power and presence of God. "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good," is his encouraging counsel to the Roman Christians. Paul practically says that in whatever state he found himself he always learned from it, not to be content with that state or in it, but to find in every experience, however distressing, an opportunity to prove the supremacy of God, good. It is as if he said: I have learned that God is equal to the occasion, whatever the occasion may be, and therewith I am content. To Paul, stripes, imprisonment, distresses, calamities, tumults, and perils without number, were but so many opportunities to strengthen his faith in the unfailing goodness of God and His power to deliver those whose trust is in Him. Through all his tumultuous history he was learning the one supreme lesson, that "there is no power but of God;" therefore he could say. I have learned to be content anywhere and everywhere, because there is no place or condition where this power is not adequate and available.

In the Twentieth Century Testament this verse reads, "For, however I am placed, I, at least, have learnt to be independent of circumstances.... Nothing is beyond my power in the strength of Him who makes me strong." All that Paul suffered in gaining this independence he counted as light affliction, because of the understanding of God which he gained with each experience.

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