The same lesson over and over again! It often seems as though I were still at the very beginning — no conscious progress — but the same thing repeated perpetually. Surely it is one’s dullness, stupidity, and slowness to learn, that makes all this necessary. Shame to the pupil! but praise to the faithful, loving, patient Master who goes on so unweariedly training and instructing us “line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, precept upon precept”—and thus He leads us on step by step in His school.
“He taught them as they were able to bear it” — and “Who teacheth like him?” Oh! to learn deeply and perfectly from Him and for Him, so as to bring praise instead of reproach to our blessed Teacher. Very often I am reminded of that anecdote, told somewhere (under the head of “No Royal Road to Music”) of the celebrated Italian Singer Caffarelli — who after laboring on and on for six years over the same eternal pages — ceaseless exercises on the diatonic and chromatic scales — was astonished, when entering on the seventh year (when he still supposed himself to be in the elements), by Porpera, his master, saying to him, “Go, Caffarelli, my son, you have nothing more to learn—you are the first singer in Italy — nay, more, the first singer in the world.”
Is it thus that our capacities are being developed? Is this the meaning of those oft-repeated exercises on those perpetual scales? Is it thus we are learning to sing? If so, may we not rejoice in all those exercises to which we are called to sit down, day after day, year after year? Assuredly we may. It is well worth working for six years at the scales to be told, at the opening of the seventh year, that we know how to sing. We are all at our scales, in some shape or form. Let us be patient, and we shall, very soon, reap the precious fruits.