The College of Needful Knocks
The Bumps That Bump Into Us
BUT occasionally all of us get bumps that we do not bump into. They bump into us. They are the guideboard knocks that point us to the higher pathway.
You were bumped yesterday or years ago. Maybe the wound has not yet healed. Maybe you think it never will heal. You wondered why you were bumped. Some of you in this audience are just now wondering why.
You were doing right--doing just the best you knew how--and yet some blow came crushing upon you and gave you cruel pain.
It broke your heart. You have had your heart broken. I have had my heart broken more times than I care to talk about now. Your home was darkened, your plans were wrecked, you thought you had nothing more to live for.
I am like you. I have had more trouble than anybody else. I have never known anyone who had not had more trouble than anyone else.
But I am discovering that life only gets good after we have been killed a few times. Each death is a larger birth.
We all must learn, if we have not already learned, that these blows are lessons in The College of Needful Knocks. They point upward to a higher path than we have been traveling.
In other words, we are raw material. You know what raw material is--material that needs more Needful Knocks to make it more useful and valuable.
The clothing we wear, the food we eat, the house we live in, all have to have the Needful Knocks to become useful. And so does humanity need the same preparation for greater usefulness.
I should like to know every person in this audience. But the ones I should most appreciate knowing are the ones who have known the most of these knocks--who have faced the great crises of life and have been tried in the crucibles of affliction. For I am learning that these lives are the gold tried in the fire.
The Sorrows of the Piano See the piano on this stage? Good evening, Mr. Piano. I am glad to see you. You are so shiny, beautiful, valuable and full of music, if properly treated.
Do you know how you got upon this stage, Mr. Piano? You were bumped here. This is no reflection upon the janitor. You became a piano by the Needful Knocks.
I can see you back in your callow beginnings, when you were just a tree--a tall, green tree. You were green! Only green things grow.
Did you get the meaning of that, children? I hope you are green.
There you stood in the forest, a perfectly good, green young tree.
You got your lessons, combed your hair, went to Sunday school and were the best young tree you could be.
That is why you were bumped--because you were good! There came a man into the woods with an ax, and he looked for the best trees there to bump. He bumped you--hit you with the ax! How it hurt you!
And how unjust it was! He kept on hitting you. "The operation was just terrible." Finally you fell, crushed, broken, bleeding.
It is a very sad story. They took you all bumped and bleeding to the sawmill and they bumped and ripped you more. They cut you in pieces and hammered you day by day.
They did not bump the little, crooked, dissipated, cigaret-stunted trees. They were not worth bumping.
But shake, Mr. Piano. That is why you are on this stage. You were bumped here. All the beauty, harmony and value were bumped into you.
The Sufferings of the Red Mud One day I was up the Missabe road about a hundred miles north of Duluth, Minnesota, and came to a hole in the ground. It was a big hole--about a half-mile of hole. There were steam-shovels at work throwing out of that hole what I thought was red mud.
"Kind sir, why are they throwing that red mud out of that hole?" I asked a native.
"That hain't red mud. That's iron ore, an' it's the best iron ore in the world."
"What is it worth?"
"It hain't worth nothin' here; that's why they're movin' it away."
There's red mud around every community that "hain't worth nothin'" until you move it--send it to college or somewhere.
Not very long after this, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I saw some of this same red mud. It had been moved over the Great Lakes and the rails to what they call a blast furnace, the technological name of which being The College of Needful Knocks for Red Mud.
I watched this red mud matriculate into a great hopper with limestone, charcoal and other textbooks. Then they corked it up and school began. They roasted it. It is a great thing to be roasted.
When it was done roasting they stopped. Have you noticed that they always stop when anything is done roasting? If we are yet getting roasted, perhaps we are not done!
Then they pulled the plug out of the bottom of the college and held promotion exercises. The red mud squirted out into the sand. It was not red mud now, because it had been roasted. It was a freshman-- pig iron, worth more than red mud, because it had been roasted.
Some of the pig iron went into another department, a big teakettle, where it was again roasted, and now it came out a sophomore--steel, worth more than pig iron.
Some of the sophomore steel went up into another grade where it was roasted yet again and rolled thin into a junior. Some of that went on up and up, at every step getting more pounding and roasting and affliction.