Part 9 (1/2)
Fourth Week, Seventh Day
The sad perversions of religious faith are not a matter for foreign missions only. At home, too, we find people who seem to be rather worse than better because they are religious. Just as power in any other form may be abused, so may religious faith. Some in the name of religion become censorious and intolerant, some superst.i.tious, some slaves to morbid fears; and ignorance, self-conceit, pride, and worldly ambition when driven and enforced by a religious motive are infinitely worse than they would have been without it. Toward this fact two att.i.tudes are possible. One is to throw over religion on account of its abuses; which is as reasonable as to deny all the blessings of electricity because in ignorant hands it is a dangerous power. The other is to take religious faith more seriously than ever, to see how great a force for weal or woe it always is in human life, and to strive in ourselves and in others for a high, intelligent, and worthy understanding and use of it. For religion can mean what Amiel said of it: ”There is but one thing needful--to possess G.o.d. Religion is not a method: it is a life--a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with G.o.d, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.” From our study of the perversions and travesties of faith, we turn therefore in the weekly comment to consider faith's vital meanings. So Paul, writing to the Galatians, rejoices in religion as a gloriously transforming power in life.
=But I say, Walk by the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the l.u.s.t of the flesh. For the flesh l.u.s.teth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would. But if ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I forewarn you even as I did forewarn you, that they who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of G.o.d. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the pa.s.sions and the l.u.s.ts thereof.--Gal. 5:16-23.=
_Thou, O G.o.d, hast exalted us so that no longer we walk with p.r.o.ne head among the animals that perish. Thou hast ordained us as Thine own children, and hast planted within us that spiritual life which ever seeks, as the flame, to rise upward and mingle with Thee. Every exaltation, every pure sentiment, all urgency of true affection, and all yearning after things higher and n.o.bler, are testimonies of the divinity that is in us. These are the threads by which Thou art drawing us away from sense, away from the earth, away from things coa.r.s.e and unspiritual, and toward the ineffable. We rejoice that we have in us the witness of the Spirit, the indwelling of G.o.d. For, although we are temples defiled, though we are unworthy of such a Guest, and though we perpetually grieve Thee, and drive Thee from us, so that Thou canst not do the mighty work that Thou wouldst within us, yet we rejoice to believe that Thou dost linger near us. Even upon the outside, Thou standest knocking at the door until Thy locks are wet with the night dews, and dost persuade us with the everlasting importunity of love, and draw us upward, whether with or without our own knowledge. Thou art evermore striving to imbue us with Thyself, and to give us that divine nature which shall triumph over time and sense and matter; and we pray that we may have an enlightened understanding of this Thy work in us and upon us, and work together with Thee. Amen._--Henry Ward Beecher.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
One might be tempted by the last chapter to suppose that, if he could accept the proposition that G.o.d is personal, he would be well upon his way toward Christianity. But in theory at least Plato accepted this proposition four hundred years before Christ, when he said: ”G.o.d is never in any way unrighteous--He is perfect righteousness; and he of us who is most righteous is most like Him.” He, too, used personality as a symbol of G.o.d. When, however, one compares Plato with Jesus, how incalculably greater is the religious meaning of our Lord! There is something more in the Master's experience and thought than the belief that G.o.d is personal. Evidently our quest must be followed further than the last chapter carried us.
In Scripture two kinds of faith in the personal G.o.d are clearly indicated. On the one side stand verses such as this: ”Thou believest that G.o.d is one; thou doest well; the demons also believe and shudder”
(James 2:19). On the other, one finds through both the Testaments witness and appeal for a kind of faith that plainly differs from the first: ”O my G.o.d, in thee have I trusted” (Psalm 25:2). It is not difficult to guess the terms in which many would describe this difference. In the first, so the familiar explanation runs, we are dealing with the _mind's_ faith in G.o.d; the man's intellect a.s.sents to the belief that G.o.d is and that He is one. In the second we are dealing with the _heart's_ faith in G.o.d; the whole man is here involved in an adoring trust that finds in reliance upon G.o.d life's stimulus and joy.
This distinction between the faith of the intellect and of the heart is valid, but it does not go to the pith of the truth. When a professor in the cla.s.s-room, discussing conflicting theories of life's origin, concludes that theism is the reasonable interpretation of the universe, the listener understands that the lecturer believes in G.o.d's existence. But if the professor could be followed home and overheard in a private prayer, like Fenelon's: ”Lord, I know not what I ought to ask of Thee; Thou only knowest what I need; Thou lovest me better than I know how to love myself. O Father! give to Thy child that which he himself knows not how to ask,” something incalculably more than the cla.s.sroom talk disclosed would be revealed about the meaning of the teacher's faith. And as the cla.s.sroom lecture and the private prayer stand so contrasted, the gist of the difference is plain. In the one, faith was directed toward a _theory_; in the other faith laid hold upon a _Person_. That the intellect was more involved in the first and the emotions in the second is incidental to the main matter, that _two differing objects were in view_. Toward these two objects we continually are exercising faith--_ideas and people, propositions and persons_.
Now faith in a proposition we conveniently may call belief; and faith in a person, trust. We believe that gravitation and the conservation of energy universally apply, that democracy will prove better than absolutism, and that prison systems can be radically reformed; these and innumerable other propositions that cannot be demonstrated we confidently believe. But in quite another way we daily are exercising faith; _we have faith in our friends_. How profound a change comes over the quality and value of faith when it thus finds its objective in a person! Our beliefs in propositions are of basic import and without them we could not well exist, but it is by trust in persons that we live indeed. Belief in monogamy, for all its importance, is a cold abstraction, and few could be found to die for it. Men do not lay down their lives for abstract theories, any more than they would suffer martyrdom, as Chesterton remarked, for the Meridian of Greenwich. But when monogamy is translated from theory into personal experience, when belief in the idea becomes trust in a life-long comrade of whom one may sing:
”What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes,”
faith has taken a form for which men do live and die in glad surrender. Although the same word, faith, be applied to both, trust in persons reaches deeper than belief in propositions and supplies a warmth and power that belief cannot attain.
In religion these two aspects of faith continually are found and both are indispensable. Trust in a person, for example, presupposes belief in his existence and fidelity. ”He that cometh to G.o.d must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that seek after him”
(Heb. 11:6). Trust cannot exist without belief, but when one seeks the inner glory of the religious life that has overflowed in prayer and hymn, supplied motive for service and power for character, he finds it not in belief, but in the vital relations.h.i.+ps involved in trusting a Person. Men often have discussed their particular beliefs with cool deliberation, have stated them in formal creeds, have changed them with access of new knowledge and experience. But _trust_, the inner reliance of the soul on G.o.d and glad self-surrender to his will, has persisted through many changes, clothing itself with beliefs like garments and casting them aside when old. Trust has made rituals and churches and unmade them when they were ineffectual, it has been the life behind the theory, the experience behind the explanation; and its proper voice has been not creed and controversy, but psalm and song and sacrifice. Men have felt in describing this inward friends.h.i.+p that their best words were but the ”vocal gestures of the dumb,” able to indicate but unable to express their thoughts. _For while belief is theology, trust is religion._
II
This central position of trust in the Christian life is evident when one considers that in its presence or absence lies the chief point of difference between a religious and an irreligious man. The peculiarity of religion is not that it has beliefs; everybody has them. As we have seen, Huxley, who called himself an agnostic, said that he thoroughly believed the universe to be rational, than which only a few greater ventures of faith can be imagined. A man may not want to have beliefs.
He may say that knowledge is wool, warm to clothe oneself withal, that belief is cotton, and that he will not mingle them. But for all that he still does have beliefs and he cannot help it.
When, therefore, a Christian and an atheist converse they can match belief with belief. ”I believe,” says one, ”in G.o.d the Father”; and ”I believe,” says the other, ”in the eternal physical universe, without spiritual origin or moral purpose.” Says the Christian, ”I believe in the immortality of persons,” and the atheist replies, ”I believe that the spirit dies with the body as sound ceases when the bell's swinging iron grows still.” Says the Christian, ”I believe in the ultimate triumph of righteousness”; and the atheist replies, ”I believe that all man's aspiration after good is but the endless sailing of a s.h.i.+p that never shall arrive.” So the two may play battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k, but if, so having paired beliefs, they part with no more said, they have missed the real point of their difference. The irreligious man can match the Christian's belief with his own, but one thing he cannot match--the Christian's trust. _He has nothing that remotely corresponds with that._
The Christian always has this case to plead with an unbelieving man: Do not suppose that the difference between us is exhausted in a conflict of contrasting propositions. Great indeed is the divergence there! But the issue of all such difference lies in another realm.
When you face life's abysmal mysteries that your eyes can no more pierce than mine, you have no one to trust. When misfortunes fall that send men to their graves, as Sydney Smith said, with souls scarred like a soldier's body, you have no one to trust. When you face the last mystery of all and whether going say farewell to those who stay, or staying bid farewell to those who go, you have no one to trust. You can match my belief with your belief, but for one thing you have no counterpart. ”Jehovah is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1).
You cannot match that! ”My heart hath trusted in him, and I am helped”
(Psalm 28:7). You cannot match that! ”Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25); ”We have our hope set on the living G.o.d” (I Tim. 4:10); ”Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). That trust you cannot match!
III
In the light of this distinction between belief and trust some mistaken types of faith can be easily described. There, for example, is the _faith of formal creedalism_. We cannot have trust without some belief, but we may unhappily have belief without any trust. Now a man who believes the doctrines that underly the Christian life but who does not vitally trust the Person whom those doctrines present, has missed the heart out of faith's meaning. He is like one who cherishes a letter of introduction to a great personality, but has never used it; he has the formal credentials, but not the transforming experience. It follows that we cannot estimate a man merely by knowing his beliefs. I believe in all the Christian truths, says one; and the curious question rises, how did these beliefs of his come into his possession? They may have been handed to him by his forbears like a set of family jewels, a static and external heritage, which now he keeps in some ecclesiastical safe-deposit vault and on state days, at Christmas or at Easter, goes to see. Still he may claim that they are his beliefs; he may even quarrel about their genuineness, not because he ever uses them but because they are his. He may repeat the creed with the same unquestioning a.s.sent that he gives to the conventional cut of his clothes. His beliefs are not the natural utterance and explanation of his inner life with G.o.d and man, but are put on as they were handed to him, like the fas.h.i.+ons of his coats. So easy is it to be formally orthodox!
Over against such conventional believers one thinks of other folk whom he has known. They have no such stereotyped, clear-cut beliefs. They are very puzzled about life. It seems to them abysmally mysterious.
And when they speak they talk with a modesty the formal creedalist has never felt: My beliefs are most uncertain. Confused by many voices shouting conflicting opinions about truths which I once accepted without thinking, I cannot easily define my thoughts. But I do trust G.o.d. That a.s.sent of the mind which I cannot give to propositions, I can give to him. Life is full of mystery, but I do not really think that the mystery is darkness at its heart. My faith has yet its standing ground in this, that the world's activities are not like the convulsions of an epileptic, unconscious and purposeless. There is a Mind behind the universe, and a good purpose in it.
”Yet in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that G.o.d is good.”
Say as one may that such an att.i.tude is far from adequate, yet as compared with the merely formal acceptance of inherited opinions how incomparably superior its religious value is!
The people of placid, stiff beliefs are not the successors of the real saints. When one reads George Matheson's books of devotion, for example, or sings his hymn ”O Love, that wilt not let me go,” or learns of his great work in his church in Edinburgh, one might suppose that he never had a doubt. Yet listen to his own confession: ”At one time with a great thrill of horror, I found myself an absolute atheist. After being ordained at Innellan, I believed nothing; neither G.o.d nor immortality. I tendered my resignation to the Presbytery, but to their honor they would not accept it, even though an Highland Presbytery. They said I was a young man and would change. I have changed.” One need only read such books of his as ”Can the Old Faith Live with the New?” to see through what a searching discipline of strenuous thought he pa.s.sed in the regaining of his faith. But if one would know what held his religious life secure while he was working out his beliefs from confusion to clarity, one must turn to Matheson's poem: