The Cold of Snow in the Time of Harvest - Glenn Conjurske
The Cold of Snow in the Time of Harvest
by Glenn Conjurske
We read in Proverbs 25:13 “As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them that send him: for he refresheth the soul of his masters.” The cold of snow in the time of harvest is a very rare luxury, and as pleasing as rare. But no: I must rather say it was a very rare luxury. It was, when Solomon wrote, but is so no longer. Modern technology has made the cold of snow in harvest one of the commonplace things of life. The question remains, is this good or evil? Is this beneficial or detrimental? We know that the cold of snow in harvest is a most pleasing thing, as excellent as a faithful messenger. It refreshes the soul. The question is, Is it good or evil that such an excellent thing should be so commonplace?
None will deny that Paradise was filled with most excellent and most pleasing things, but neither can we deny that God deprived man of the pleasure of Paradise so soon as he became a sinner. That life of pleasure, and ease, and comfort, which was entirely suitable for sinless man, evidently became quite otherwise when he became a sinner. God did not take all the pleasures of Paradise from man when he sinned, but he curtailed them all, and marred them all with thorns and thistles and pain and sorrow. The curse which God placed upon the earth so soon as man sinned has greatly reduced his pleasures and comforts, and greatly increased his toil and pain. This is evidently as God would have it, for it is God who cursed the earth, in response to man’s sin.
But since the day that man was driven out of Paradise, he has engaged in one long course of discovery and invention, the purpose of much of it being to undo the effects of the curse under which he labors, and to return as near as he can to the comforts and pleasures of Paradise, while he remains outside it, and alienated from God as well. This is the grand end of most of modern technology. The Bible represents our pilgrimage through this world as a pilgrimage through the desert, a dry and thirsty land, while our heart and our hopes are fixed upon the land of promise, which flows with milk and honey. This is a healthy state of soul.
Providentially, within a few minutes of writing the above lines, I sat down to read, and came immediately to the following: “I feel this morning like a pilgrim and a traveller in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is. Heaven is my home—-there I trust, my weary soul will sweetly rest, after a tempestuous voyage across the ocean of life. I love to think of what I shall shortly be, when I have finished my Heavenly Father’s work on earth. How sweet the thoughts of glory, while I wander here in this waste wilderness.” This, I say, is a healthy state of soul, but technology and invention have practically turned the waste wilderness into a second Paradise, and the effect of this can hardly be wholesome.
I have given a great deal of thought to the effects of modern technology. My readers doubtless know this. I have written a number of articles on this theme. Some of my readers have rather forcefully disagreed with these, while others have expressed great appreciation for them. For the benefit of both classes, I harp on this string once more. I aim only to know the truth, and to speak it. I do not condemn modern technology in toto. Neither do I endorse it all. I believe there is both good and evil in it. I believe that the evil generally outweighs the good, though this may not be so in every case. In my meditations I have sought to learn what are the curses of modern invention, and what its blessings. I have sought to sort out its good from its evil—-to understand what are the best inventions of man, and what the worst. Among the worst are certainly guns and bombs. Among the best I place refrigeration, which gives us “the cold of snow in the time of harvest.” This appears to me to be one of the inventions of man which brings with it the most of blessing to the human race, with the least of curse attached. It brings us great pleasure and comfort, and carries with it very little of the corruption which the camera and the radio bring. The cold of snow in the time of harvest! A drink of ice-cold water on a sultry summer day! What harm can there be in this?
Yet I take nothing for granted. I labor to understand. My observations and meditations have taught me that there is generally a curse on the back of every blessing of man’s invention. I therefore must still inquire, is there no evil in “the cold of snow in the time of harvest”?
I believe there is. The evil lies in the very profusion of good. It makes common what God has made a very rare luxury. He has declined to make the cold of snow in the time of harvest the common possession of man. God knows as well as man does how very pleasing it is to have such cold in the heat of harvest, yet God has given us none of it. In those very rare instances in which he gives it, it generally brings with it more of hardship than of pleasure. Crops are damaged or destroyed. Meanwhile, we must toil through all the heat of summer, with never a taste of the cold of snow. God gives us all the snow in the winter, when we least want it—-when we would be glad to do without it. Yet we must suppose that God knows what is for the best interest of man, and knows it much better than we do. He is both good and wise. And being so, he has determined as a general rule to give us labor and toil, hardship and sorrow. These are good for us, in our present sinful state. They drive us to God, teach us our weakness and our dependence, exercise our conscience, keep us to our duty, while luxuries and pleasures appeal to all the worst propensities of our sinful nature—-make good men bad, and bad men worse. God has therefore deprived us of the Paradise that was, in order to win us to the Paradise to come. For man to make a Paradise here and now, by his technology and invention, is to work directly against the wisdom and purpose of his Creator.
The profusion of luxuries has never yet been good for sinful man. An old proverb recognizes this, and affirms, “Man can bear all things except good days.” Good days make men soft, selfish, careless, covetous. They spoil us, and modern technology has made all our days good. It gives us in great profusion what God has given as rare luxuries, or not at all.
It ought to go without saying that God knows better than man, but we fear that on this theme the emotions of men have carried away their reason. We all want Utopia on earth, and if modern technology can give it to us, then modern technology is our dearest friend. But what sort of friend is this, which gives to us what our Father denies us? Would we want our children to have such friends? Is such a friend wiser than our Father?
The truth is, there are numerous facts which conspire together to confirm the wisdom of God in the matter. Whatever the innocence of Paradise may have been, and whatever the holiness of heaven and glory may be, ease, affluence, pleasure, prosperity, and luxury are dangerous in the present sinful state of the race. The world knows this—-or once knew it—-and rehearsed the fact in numerous old adages, now, we fear, mostly forgotten. Some of those old sayings are,
When prosperity smiles, beware of its guiles.
Men can bear all things except good days.
They must be strong legs that can support prosperous days.
Felicity eats up circumspection.
Prosperous men seldom mend their faults.
The most friendly fortune trips up your heels.
He that sitteth well thinketh ill.
And if ease and luxury are dangerous to selfish and sinful man, so hardship and affliction are good for him. As soon as he passed from the state of innocence to his present sinful state, God secured that he should have plenty of hardship and affliction, and little of ease and luxury. This is the goodness of God, as well as his wisdom, for
”…who would reach heaven and glory,
Did not suffering draw them there?”
So speaks a pleasing old hymn by Gray and Towner, and most truly too. It was suffering, it was being deprived, which brought the prodigal home, and this is generally the case. For this cause we read in Luke 4:18, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor,” for they are inclined to hear it. The rich, the prosperous, in general, have no such inclination. The nearer men can bring themselves to Paradise here, the less need they feel, and the less inclination they have, to seek the Paradise to come. For this reason we read also in Scripture, “Hath not God chosen the poor of this world?” (James 2:5). Not all the poor, of course, but the poor as contrasted to the rich. Nor is the election of God arbitrary. He chooses the poor because the poor choose him, being moved thereto by their poverty and sufferings, while the rich are content without God. It is no accident that so many rich men are the prototypes of lost souls in the Bible. “The rich young ruler”—-”the rich fool”—-”a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day”—-all these are lost souls, for their ease and riches disincline them altogether from that self-denial which is the first principle of discipleship to Christ. The rich and prosperous rarely come home to God.
And when we are once brought home to God, it is hardship and want which serve best to keep our souls in a good condition. “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.” (Psalm 119:67). Whether consciously or unconsciously, we all tend to regard our outward prosperity as a mark of the approval of God, while we similarly regard affliction as a mark of his disfavor. We mend our ways when we are afflicted. We become careless when we prosper. “Prosperous men seldom mend their faults.” This is universal human experience. Who then, we ask, has the greater interest in prospering us, in filling our hands with treasures and our laps with luxuries—-God, or the devil? God, we know, cast sinners out of Paradise. Is it that same God who now labors to give that Paradise back to those sinners? Who can believe this?
What do I say, then? Is there evil in Paradise? Are the luxuries and comforts, is the pleasure and ease of Paradise evil? Surely not. There is no evil here, but danger. Yet to fill men’s hands with dangerous things, when they are almost certain to abuse them and be harmed by them, can only be regarded as evil. Who would give guns and bombs to kindergartners? Nay, who would give them to convicted felons? There are laws against this. God very largely removed those dangerous things from the hands of man, so soon as they became a danger to him. Modern technology has very largely given back to man what God deprived him of. This is certainly evil, and is certainly the work of the god of this world, and not of the God of heaven. Most of the laborers from the beginning of the world toiled through the heat of the harvest-time, and never heard of ice cubes or ice cream, and if God ever gave them such a thing, it was a great rarity. Hail stones they might have had—-and how eagerly would we take these up in the heat of summer, if we had no ice besides—-yet these are no unmixed blessing in the time of harvest.
But we observe in speaking of “the cold of snow in the time of harvest,” that one of the many blessings of the Paradise to come is this, that “neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.” (Rev. 7:16). Modern technology gives us all that here and now. We refrigerate not only our food and drinks, but our buildings also. We call it “air conditioning” where I live, but when I was travelling in the South some years ago, I observed that the signs in front of the hotels said, “REFRIGERATED.” The comfort, the ease, the luxury of Paradise is all laid in our laps here and now, and this, frankly, spoils us. It makes us soft, lazy, lukewarm, unappreciative, ungrateful, unthankful. How many of my readers ever thank God for an ice-cold drink of water on a hot day? Yet how profusely would we all thank him for this, if it remained the rare luxury which it was through most of the history of the world.
In speaking of “the cold of snow in the time of harvest,” I speak of what I regard as one of the least harmful accomplishments of modern technology. I speak of that which brings to man the most good, with the least of evil attached. Yet even here it appears plainly enough that there is danger in it. And here we speak of but one small facet of man’s accomplishments. When to “the cold of snow in the time of harvest” is added a similar profusion of comforts and luxuries of every imaginable description, who can doubt that the over-all effect of this is generally harmful? We see the wisdom of God in taking all this from man, as soon as he became a sinner, and we see the wisdom of Satan in giving it all back to him, while he remains a sinner.
Glenn Conjurske