Part 10 (1/2)

Throughout our endeavor to deal with intellectual perplexity, this fundamental truth should not be forgotten. _The peril of religion is that vital experience shall be resolved into a formula of explanation, and that men, grasping the formula, shall suppose themselves thereby to possess the experience._ If one inquires what air is, the answer will probably be a formula stating that oxygen and nitrogen mixed in proportions of twenty-one to seventy-nine make air. But air in experience is not a formula. Air is the elixir we breathe and live thereby. Air is the magician who takes the words that our lips frame and bears them from friend to friend in daily converse. Air is the messenger who carries music to our ears and fragrance to our nostrils; it is the whisperer among the trees in June, and in March the wild dancer who shakes the bare branches for his castanets. Air is the giant who piles the surf against the rocky sh.o.r.e, and the nurse who fans the faces of the sick. One cannot put that into a formula. No more can G.o.d be put into a theology, however true. They who define him best may understand him least. G.o.d is the Unseen Friend, the Spiritual Presence, who calls us in ideals, warns us in remorse, renews us with his pardon, and comforts us with power. G.o.d is the Spirit of Righteousness in human life, whose victories we see in every moral gain, and allied with whom we have solid hopes of moral victory. G.o.d is the One who holds indeed the far stars in his hand, and yet in fellows.h.i.+p with whom each humblest son of man may find strength to do and to endure with constancy and fort.i.tude and deathless hope. And when one lives close to him, so that the inner doors swing easily on quiet hinges to let him in, he is the One who illumines life with a radiance that human wills alone cannot attain. That is G.o.d--”Blessed is the man that taketh refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).

CHAPTER V

Faith's Intellectual Difficulties

DAILY READINGS

Most people will readily grant that such a sense of personal fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d as the last week's study presented is obviously desirable. Every one who has experienced such filial life with G.o.d will bear witness to its incomparable blessing. Said Tennyson, ”I should be sorely afraid to live my life without G.o.d's presence, but to feel he is by my side just now as much as you are, that is the very joy of my heart.” But many who would admit the desirability of the experience are troubled about the reasonableness of the beliefs that underly it. They want intellectual a.s.surance about their faith. Let us in the daily readings present certain considerations which a mind so perplexed should take into account.

Fifth Week, First Day

We should let no one deny our right to bring religious belief to the test of reasonableness. Glanvill was right when in the seventeenth century he said, ”There is not anything I know which hath done more mischief to Religion than the disparaging of Reason.” In the New Testament Paul says:

=Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.--I Thess. 5:21.=

Peter says:

=Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; and in your virtue knowledge.--II Pet. 1:5.=

This might be paraphrased to read, Faith should be _worked out_ into character and _thought through_ into knowledge. As for Jesus:

=One of the scribes came, and heard them questioning together, and knowing that he had answered them well, asked him, What commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, The first is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our G.o.d, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.--Mark 12:28-30.=

In many a life which has neglected these admonitions Lowell's words have proved true: ”Nothing that keeps thought out is safe from thought.” In our resolute endeavor to think through the mystery of life, however, and to find a reasonable basis for faith, we need to remember that _the very desire to know is an indication of the reality which we seek_. The dim intuition that the world with all its diverse powers was in some sense a unity, preceded by ages the statement of nature's uniformity which modern science knows; and man's tireless desire to reach a reasonable statement of the unity was an intimation in advance that unity was there. So men do not believe in G.o.d because they have proved him; they rather strive endlessly to prove him because they cannot help being sure that he must be there.

This in itself is an intimation about reality which no thoughtful man will lightly set aside. Tennyson rightly describes the reason for man's quest after proof about G.o.d:

”If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, I heard a voice 'believe no more'

And heard an ever-breaking sh.o.r.e That tumbled in the G.o.dless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt The freezing reason's colder part, And like a man in wrath the heart Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'”

_Eternal Father, Quest of ages, long sought, oft doubted or forsook; can it be that Thou art known to us, the Law within our minds, the Life of every breath we draw, the Love that yearneth in our hearts?

Art Thou the Spirit who oft hast striven with us, and whom we greatly feared, lest yielding to His strong embrace we should become more than we dared to be?_

_An impulse toward forgiveness has sometimes stirred within us, we have felt moved to show mercy, the sacrificial life has touched our aspiration; but we were unprepared to pay the price. Was this Thyself, and have we turned from Thee? Something like this we must have done, so barren, joyless and so dead has life become. Canst Thou not visit us again?_

_We hush our thoughts to silence, we school our spirits in sincerity, and here we wait. O may we not feel once more the light upon our straining eyes, the tides of life rise again within our waiting hearts?_

_We never looked to meet Thee in the stress of thought, the toil of life, or in the call of duty; we only knew that somehow life had lost for us all meaning, dignity, and beauty. How then shall we turn back again and see with eyes that fear has filmed? How can we be born again, now grown so old in fatal habit?_

_If we could see this life of ours lived out in Thee, its common days exalted, its circ.u.mstances made a throne, its bitterness, disappointment, and failure all redeemed, then our hearts might stir again, and these trembling hands lay hold on life for evermore.

Amen._--W. E. Orchard.

Fifth Week, Second Day