If there can be any doubt of the apostle's meaning, the verses immediately following may solve it: "I know both how to be abased and how to abound; everywhere, and in all things, I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, to abound and to suffer need; I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." These several conditions he had tested by experience; and found himself able, by the grace of God, to maintain a calm and unperturbed spirit amidst all their trying vicissitudes: thoroughly assured that all were ordered or overruled by Infinite Wisdom and Love, and must therefore work together for his good. In another place he says: "Most gladly will I glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me; therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then am I strong." To be content in success and prosperity, were easy enough; but to be content in trials such as these, immeasurably surpasses the power of the unsanctified human heart. The apostle, however, bore his tribulations, not merely with patient submission and quiet fortitude, but even with exultation; rejoicing evermore; in every thing giving thanks; counting the heaviest cross his greatest blessing; with all his heart glorying in the fellowship of his Saviour's suffering; willing to live or die, because in life or death God would be magnified in his body; and when the alternative presents itself in imminent prospect, perplexed only as to which he ought to prefer: "I am in a strait betwixt two; having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better; nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful for you; and having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith, that your rejoicing may be more abundant by my coming to you again." What heroic resignation is here! what disinterested charity! what transcendent sublimity of hope! And how had the apostle attained to such experience? In what school, from what teacher, had he learned so great a lesson? Certainly not from nature, nor from any human system of morality. Ever since man went forth from the blessed garden, he has been a restless and unhappy creature, always seeking repose for his spirit in some inferior good, and ever disappointed in the end. Contentment is a lesson to be learned, and to be learned only, in the school of Christ. There St. Paul learned it, not at the feet of Gamaliel. There he learned it, under the tuition of Providence, aided by the Holy Spirit of grace, by a long and painful course of discipline--by hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness, desertion and persecution, shipwreck and dungeon, scourging and stoning, a life of perpetual conflict, and the frequent menace of death.