It would appear that the disciples were ignorant of the unbelief
that had made them weak. They fancied that they had confidence in
their Christ-given power, and they certainly had in some dull kind
of fashion expected to succeed in their attempt. But He who sees the
heart knew that there was no real living confidence in their souls;
and His words are a solemn warning to us all, of how possible it is
for us to have our faith all honeycombed by gnawing doubt while we
suspect it not, like some piece of wood apparently sound, the whole
substance of which has been eaten away by hidden worms. We may be
going on with Christian work, and may even be looking for spiritual
results. We may fancy ourselves faithful stewards of the gospel, and
all the while there may be an utter absence of the one thing which
makes our words more than so much wind whistling through an archway.
The shorn Samson went out 'to shake himself as at other times,' and
knew not that the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him. Who
among us is not exposed to the assaults of that pestilence that
walketh in darkness? and, alas! who among us can say that he has
repelled the contagion? Subtly it creeps over us all, the stealthy
intangible vapour, unfelt till it has quenched the lamp which alone
lights the darkness of the mine, and clogged to suffocation the
labouring lungs.
I will not now speak of the general sources of danger to our faith,
which are always in operation with a retarding force as constant as
friction, as certain as the gravitation which pulls the pendulum to
rest at its lowest point. But I may very briefly particularise two
of the enemies of that faith, which have a special bearing on our
missionary work, and may be illustrated from the narrative before
us.
First, all our activity in spreading the Gospel, whether by personal
effort or by our gifts, like every form of outward action, tends to
become mechanical, and to lose its connection with the motive which
originated it. Of course it is also true, on the other side, that
all outward action also tends to strengthen the motive from which it
flows. But our Christian work will not do so, unless it be carefully
watched, and pains be taken to keep it from slipping off its
original foundation, and so altering its whole character. We may
very easily become so occupied with the mere external occupation as
to be quite unconscious that it has ceased to be faithful work, and
has become routine, dull mechanism, or the result of confidence, not
in Christ, whose power once flowed through us, but in ourselves the
doers. So these disciples may have thought, 'We can cast out this
devil, for we have done the like already,' and have forgotten that
it was not they, but Christ in them, who had done it.
How widely this foe to our faith operates amid the multiplied
activities of this busy age, one trembles to think. We see all
around us a Church toiling with unexampled expenditure of wealth,
and effort, and time. It is difficult to repress the suspicion that
the work is out of proportion to the life. Ah, brethren, how much of
all this energy of effort, so admirable in many respects, will He
whose fan is in His hand accept as true service--how much of it will
be wheat for the garner, how much chaff for the fire? It is not for
us to divide between the two, but it is for us to remember that it
is not impossible to make of our labours the most dangerous enemy to
the depth of our still life hidden with Christ in God, and that
every deed of apparent service which is not the real issue of living
faith is powerless for good to others, and heavy with hurt to
ourselves. Brethren and fathers in the ministry! how many of us know
what it is to talk and toil away our early devotion; and all at once
to discover that for years perhaps we have been preaching and
labouring from mere habit and routine, like corpses galvanised into
some ghastly and transient caricature of life. Christian men and
women, beware lest this great enterprise of missions, which our
fathers began from the holiest motives and in the simplest faith,
should in our hand be wrenched away from its only true basis, and be
done with languid expectation and more languid desires of success,
from no higher motive than that we found it in existence, and have
become accustomed to carry it on. If that be our reason, then we
harm ourselves, and mask from our own sight our own unbelief. If
that be the case the work may go on for a while, like a clock
ticking with fainter and fainter beats for a minute after it has run
down; but it will soon cease, and neither heaven nor earth will be
much the poorer for its ending.
Again, the atmosphere of scornful disbelief which surrounded the
disciples made their faith falter. It was too weak to sustain itself
in the face of the consciousness that not a man in all that crowd
believed in their power; and it melted away before the contempt of
the scribes and the incredulous curiosity of the bystanders, without
any reason except the subtle influence which the opinions and
characters of those around us have on us all.
And, brethren, are not we in danger to-day of losing the firmness of
our grasp on Christ, as our Saviour and the world's, from a
precisely similar cause? We live in an atmosphere of hesitancy and
doubt, of scornful rejection of His claims, of contemptuous
disbelief in anything which a scalpel cannot cut. We cannot but be
conscious that to hold by Jesus Christ as the Incarnate God, the
supernatural Beginning of a new life, the sole Hope of the world, is
to expose ourselves to the contempt of so-called advanced and
liberal thinkers, and to be out of harmony with the prevailing set
of opinions. The current of educated thought runs strongly against
such beliefs, and I suppose that every thoughtful man among us feels
that a great danger to our faith to-day comes from the force with
which that current swings us round, and threatens to make some of us
drag our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces on the
sands. For one man who is led by the sheer force of reason to yield
to the intellectual grounds on which modern unbelief reposes, there
are twenty who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They
find that their early convictions have evaporated, they know not
how; only that once the fleece was wet with dew and now it is dry.
For unbelief has a contagious energy wholly independent of reason,
no less than has faith, and affects multitudes who know nothing of
its grounds, as the iceberg chills the summer air for leagues, and
makes the sailors shiver long before they see its barren peaks.
Therefore, brethren, let us all take heed to ourselves, lest we
suffer our grasp of our dear Lord's hand to relax for no better
reason than because so many have left His side. To us all His
pleading love, which knows how much we are moulded by the example of
others, is saying, in view of the fashion of unbelief, 'Will ye also
go away?' Let us answer, with a clasp that clings the tighter for
our danger of being sucked in by the strong current, 'Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' We cannot help
seeing that the creeping paralysis of hesitancy and doubt about even
the power of Christ's name is stealing over portions of the Church,
and stiffening the arm of its activity. Lips that once spoke with
full confidence the words that cast out devils, mutter them now
languidly with half-belief. Hearts that were once full of sympathy
with the great purpose for which Christ died are growing cold to the
work of preaching the Gospel to the heathen, because they are
growing to doubt whether, after all, there is any Gospel at all.
This icy breath, dear brethren, is blowing over our Churches and
over our hearts. And wherever it reaches, there labour for Jesus and
for men languishes, and we recoil baffled with unavailing exorcisms
dying in our throats, and the rod of our power broken in our hands.
'Why could not we cast him out? Because of your unbelief.'
IV. Our faith can only be maintained by constant devotion and rigid
self-denial.
I can touch but very lightly on that solemn thought in which our Lord
sets forth the condition of our faith, and therefore of our power.
This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting. The discipline
then which nurtures faith is mainly moral and spiritual--not as a
substitute for, or to the exclusion of, the intellectual discipline,
which is presupposed, not neglected, in these words.
The first condition of the freshness and energy of faith is constant
devotion. The attrition of the world wears it thin, the distractions
of life draw it from its clinging hold on Christ, the very toil for
Him is apt to entice our thoughts from out of the secret place of
the most High into the busy arena of our strife. Therefore we have
ever need to refresh the drooping flowers of the chaplet by bathing
them in the Fountain of Life, to rise above all the fevered toil of
earth to the calm heights where God dwells, and in still communion
with Him to replenish our emptied vessels and fill our dimly burning
lamps with His golden oil. The sister of the cumbered Martha is the
contemplative Mary, who sits in silence at the Master's feet and
lets His words sink into her soul; the closest friend of Peter the
apostle of action is John the apostle of love. If our work is to be
worthy, it must ever be freshened anew by our gaze into His face; if
our communion with Him is to be deep, it must never be parted from
outward service. Our Master has left us the example, in that, when
the night fell and every man went to his own home, Jesus went to the
Mount of Olives; and thence, after His night of prayer, came very
early in the morning to the temple, and taught. The stream that is
to flow broad and life-giving through many lands must have its
hidden source high among the pure snows that cap the mount of God.
The man that would work for God must live with God. It was from the
height of transfiguration that _He_ came, before whom the demon
that baffled the disciples quailed and slunk away like a whipped
hound. This kind goeth not out but by prayer.
The second condition is rigid self-denial. Fasting is the expression
of the purpose to control the lower life, and to abstain from its
delights in order that the life of the spirit may be strengthened.
As to the outward fact, it is nothing--it may be practised or not.
If it be, it will be valuable only in so far as it flows from and
strengthens that purpose. And such vigorous subordination of all
the lower powers, and abstinence from many an inferior good, both
material and immaterial, is absolutely necessary if we are to have
any wholesome strength of faith in our souls. In the recoil from
the false asceticism of Roman Catholicism and Puritanism, has not
this generation of the Church gone too far in the opposite
direction? and in the true belief that Christianity can sanctify
all joys, and ensure the harmonious development of all our powers,
have we not been forgetting that hand and foot may cause us to
stumble, and that we had better live maimed than die with all our
limbs? There is a true asceticism, a discipline--a 'gymnastic unto
godliness,' as Paul calls it. And if our faith is to grow high and
bear rich clusters on the topmost boughs that look up to the sky,
we must keep the wild lower shoots close nipped. Without rigid
self-control and self-limitation, no vigorous faith.
And without them no effectual work! It is no holiday task to cast
out devils. Self-indulgent men will never do it. Loose-braced, easy
souls, that lie open to all the pleasurable influences of ordinary
life, are no more fit for God's weapons than a reed for a lance, or
a bit of flexible lead for a spear-point. The wood must be tough and
compact, the metal hard and close-grained, out of which God makes
His shafts. The brand that is to guide men through the darkness to
their Father's home must glow with a pallor of consuming flame that
purges its whole substance into light. This kind goeth not out but
by prayer and fasting.
Dear brethren, what solemn rebuke these words have for us all! How
they winnow our works of Christian activity! How they show us the
hollowness of our services, the self-indulgence of our lives, the
coldness of our devotion, the cowardice of our faith! How marvellous
they make the fruits which God's great goodness has permitted us to
see even from our doubting service! Let us turn to Him with fresh
thankfulness that unto us, who are 'less than the least of all
saints, is this grace given, that we should preach among the nations
the unsearchable riches of Christ.' Let us not be driven from our
confidence that we have a gospel to preach for all the world; but
strong in the faith which rests on impregnable historical grounds,
on our own experience of what Christ has done for us, and on
nineteen centuries of growing power and unfolding wisdom, let us
thankfully welcome all that modern thought may supply for the
correction of errors in belief, in organisation, and in life, that
may have gathered round His perfect and eternal gospel--being
assured, as we have a right to be, that all will but lift higher the
Name which is above every name, and set forth more plainly that
Cross which is the true tree of life to all the families of men. Let
us cast ourselves before Him with penitent confession, and say,--O
Lord, our strength! we have not wrought any deliverance on earth; we
have been weak when all Thy power was at our command; we have spoken
Thy word as if it were an experiment and a peradventure whether it
had might; we have let go Thy hand and lost Thy garment's hem from
our slack grasp; we have been prayerless and self-indulgent.
Therefore Thou hast put us to shame before our foes, and 'our
enemies laugh among themselves. Thou that dwellest between the
cherubim, shine forth; stir up Thy strength and come and save us!'
Then will the last words that He spoke on earth ring out again from
the throne: 'All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go
ye therefore and teach all nations; and lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world.'