_John_ iv. 10.
We usually notice in this story the great words of Jesus--perhaps the deepest and richest series of utterances that have ever fallen from human lips. Yet it is almost as striking to notice the att.i.tude of mind in which the woman remained throughout these wonderful scenes.
She seems to have been entirely oblivious of the situation, and unaware that anything great was going on.
Jesus speaks to her of the living water, and she thinks it must be some device which shall save her coming with her pitcher to the well. Then Jesus looks on her with infinite pathos and says: "If you only knew the gift of G.o.d, and who it is that is now speaking to you!" But she does not know, and shoulders her pitcher and trudges home again, reporting only that she has seen some one who appeared a wonderful fortune-teller, and never dreaming that the greatest words of human history had been spoken to her, and her alone.
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If thou knewest the gift of G.o.d!--to have had one"s opportunity in one"s hands and to have let it slip; to have had the Messiah sitting by you and not to have recognized Him; to have thought it just a commonplace day when the most sacred revelations of G.o.d were occurring,--that is about the saddest confession that any one can make.
And yet, that is what might happen to any one any day. No one can be sure when the great exigencies of life are likely to occur. He looks forward to great things to be done in some more favoring future, and, behold, the insignificant incidents of to-day are the greater things which he does not discern. He looks forward to the discovery of G.o.d in some difficult intellectual achievement, and meantime the daily task is full of revelation, and as he wakes to the morning the new day stands by him and says: "If you only knew the gift of G.o.d, and who it is that speaks to you today." And at last perhaps he begins to realize that the ordinary ways of daily life are the channels of G.o.d"s revelation, and then there
"Comes to soul and sense The feeling which is evidence
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That very near about us lies The realm of spiritual mysteries.
With smile of trust and folded hands, The pa.s.sive soul in waiting stands, To feel, as flowers the sun and dew.
The one true life its own renew."
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LXXIV
THE WEDDING GARMENT
_Matthew_ xxii. 11-14.
Here is a man who has the feast offered to him, but is not clothed to meet it. He is unprepared and is therefore cast out. He does not wear the wedding garment and therefore is not fit for the wedding feast.
This seems at first sight harsh treatment; but one soon remembers that it was the custom of an Oriental feast to offer the guest at his entrance a robe fit for the occasion. "Bring forth the best robe,"
says the father of the prodigal, "and put it on him." This man had had offered to him the opportunity of personal preparation and had refused it. He wanted to share the feast, but he wanted to share it on his own terms. He pressed into the happiness without the personal preparedness which made that happiness possible.
Every man in this way makes his own world. The habit of his life clothes him like a garment, and only he who wears the wedding garment {186} is at home at the wedding feast. The same circ.u.mstances are to one man beautiful and to another, at his side, demoralizing. You may have prosperity and it may be a source of happiness, or the same prosperity and it may be a source of peril. You may be at a college and it may be either regenerating to you, or pernicious in its influence, according as you are clothed or unclothed with the right habit of mind. G.o.d first asks for your heart and then offers you his world. The wedding feast is for him alone who has accepted the wedding garment.
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LXXV
THE ESCAPE FROM DESPONDENCY
1 _Kings_ xix. 1-13.
This is G.o.d"s word to man"s despondency; and when we strip this man"s story of its Orientalism, it is really the story of many a discouraged, despondent man of to-day. Elijah has been doing his best, but has come to a point where he is ready to give up. His enemies are too many for him. "Lord," he says, "it is enough. I have had as much as I can bear. I am alone and Baal"s prophets are four hundred and fifty men."
So he goes away into solitude, and looks about him for some clear sign that G.o.d has not deserted him. But nothing happens. The great signs of nature pa.s.s before him, the storm, the lightning, and the earthquake, but they only reflect his own stormy mood. The Lord is not in them. Then, within his heart, there speaks that voice which is at once speech and silence, and it says to him: "What doest thou here, Elijah," and behold, the man is convicted. For when he {188} reflects on it he is doing nothing at all. He is sitting under a tree, requesting that he may die. He has fled from his duty and is hiding in a cave. Then the voice says to him: "Get up and go and do your duty.
You might sit here forever and get no light on your lot. The problem of life is solved through the work of life. The way out of your despondency is in going straight on with the work now ready to your hand. Answers to great problems are not so likely to come to people in caves, as along the dusty road of duty-doing. Not to the dreamer, but to the doer come the interpretations of life. Elijah, Elijah, what doest thou here?"
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LXXVI
THE DIFFICULTIES OF UNBELIEF
_Matthew_ xxiii. 24.
We are often very much impressed by the difficulties of religious belief. It seems hard to attain any absolute, convinced faith. There are doubts and obscurities which every one feels, and these questionings are often stirred into activity by the mistaken efforts of the defenders of the faith. There is even a special department in theological teaching known as Apologetics, or the defense of faith; as though religion had to be always on the defensive, and as if the easiest att.i.tude of mind, even of the least philosophical, were the att.i.tude of denial. But did you ever consider the alternative position and the difficulties which present themselves when one undertakes absolutely and continuously to deny himself the relations of the religious life? Did you ever fairly face the conception of a logically completed unbelief, a world stripped of its ideals, with no region of spiritual hopes or of worship, a {190} world absolutely without G.o.d, a permanently faithless world? What is the difficulty here? The difficulty is that these aspects of life, though they are often hard to maintain, are harder still to abandon. Faith has its perplexities, but no sooner do you eliminate the spiritual world than you are confronted with a series of experiences, emotions, and intimations which are simply inexplicable. That was perhaps partly what Jesus had in mind when he met the Pharisees. "You find it hard to believe in me," he said. "Ah, yes, but is it not still harder altogether to refuse me?
You are quite alive to the smaller difficulties of my position, but you seem to be quite unaware of the difficulties of your own position. You busy yourself with straining out the gnat which floats on the surface of your gla.s.s, but you do not seem to observe the residuary camel."
So with his splendid satire Jesus turns the critical temper back upon itself. Difficulties enough, G.o.d knows, there are in every intellectual position, and intellectual certainty usually means the abnegation of the thinking faculty.
But many persons strain out the little difficulties and swallow the great ones. What is, {191} on the whole, the best working theory of life?--that is the only practical question. Under which view of life do the facts, on the whole, best fall? Especially, what conception of life holds the highest facts, the great irresistible spring-tides, which sometimes rise within the soul, of hope and love and desire? So Browning"s Bishop, turning on his critic, says:--
"And now what are we? unbelievers both, Calm and complete, determinately fixed To-day, to-morrow, and forever, pray?
You"ll guarantee me that? Not so, I think.
In nowise! All we"ve gained is, that belief, As unbelief before, shakes us by fits, Confounds us like its predecessor. Where"s The gain? How can we guard our unbelief, Make it bear fruit to us? The problem"s here.
Just when we are safest, there"s a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one"s death, A chorus-ending from Euripides,-- And that"s enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature"s self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again,-- * * * * * * *
What have we gained then by our unbelief But a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt.
We called the chessboard white,--we call it black."
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LXXVII
KNOWING G.o.d, AND BEING KNOWN OF HIM
_Galatians_ iv. 9.
It is very interesting to come so close to a great man as we do in this pa.s.sage, for the Apostle seems to be discovered here, correcting himself. It is as if he had written one teaching to the Galatians, and then crossed it out and written another. "You know G.o.d," he says, "or rather you are known of Him." He is asking himself why the Galatians should in a given case do their duty, and he answers: "Because they know G.o.d; they are aware of His purposes and laws, and having this rational understanding of Him they know how to act as His servants."
"But no," he goes on to say, "that is not the real impulse of their duty. What holds them to their best is rather the thought that G.o.d knows them, that He gives them their duty, and that they obey." It is like the position of a soldier under his commander. The soldier does not expect to know {193} all about the plan of the campaign, but what keeps him to his best is the knowledge that some one knows about it; that the commander overlooks the field; that each little skirmish has its place in the great design. That is what makes the soldier go down again into the smoke and dust of his duty with his timidity converted into faith.
Knowing G.o.d,--that is theology; being known of Him,--that is religion.
Both theology and religion have their influence on conduct. It is a great thing to know that one knows G.o.d. There is power in a rational creed. But, after all, the profoundest impulse for conduct is to know that beneath all your ignorance of G.o.d is His knowledge of you; that before you loved Him, He loved you, that antecedent to your response to Him was His invitation to you. Thus it is that a man looks out into each new day and asks: "What is to hold me to-day to my duty?" Well, first of all, everything I may learn ought to help me. It is all G.o.d"s truth, and, as I get a grasp on truth and stand on its firm ground, my conduct is steadier and a.s.sured. But, after all, the deeper safety lies in this other confession, that I am known of G.o.d; that I {194} am not merely an explorer, searching for truth, but guided and controlled as ever under the great taskmaster"s eye; known of Him, with my ignorance of Him held within His knowledge of me, until the time comes when at last I shall know even as also I am known.
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