Faraday was a perpetual mystery. He baffled all his colleagues and
companions. Nobody could understand how the most learned man of his time
could find in his faith those restful certainties on which he so calmly
and securely reposed. They saw him pass from a meeting of the Royal
Society to sit at the feet of a certain local preacher who was notorious
for his illiteracy; and the spectacle filled them with bewilderment and
wonder. Some suggested that he was, in an intellectual sense, living a
double life. Tyndall said that, when Faraday opened the door of his
oratory, he shut that of his laboratory. He did nothing of the kind. He
never closed his eyes to any fragment of truth; he never divided his
mind into watertight compartments; he never shrank from the approach of
a doubt. He saw life whole. His biography has been written a dozen
times; and each writer views it from a new angle. But in one respect
they all agree. They agree that Michael Faraday was the most
transparently honest soul that the realm of science has ever known. He
moved for fifty years amidst the speculations of science whilst, in his
soul, the certainties that cannot be shaken were singing their deathless
song. Like a coastguard who, standing on some tall cliff, surveys the
heaving waters, Faraday stood, with his feet upon the rock, looking out
upon a restless sea of surmise and conjecture. In life, as in death, he
rested his soul upon certainties. And if you will ask what those
certainties were, his biographers will tell you that they were three.
1. _He trusted implicitly in the Father's love._ 'My faculties are
slipping away day by day,' he wrote to his niece from his deathbed.
'Happy is it for all of us that our true good lies not in them. As they
ebb, may they leave us as little children trusting in the Father of
Mercies and accepting His unspeakable gift.'
2. _He trusted implicitly in the Redeeming Work of His Saviour._ 'The
plan of salvation is so simple,' he wrote, 'that anyone can understand
it--love to Christ springing from the love that He bears us, the love
that led Him to undertake our salvation.'
3. _He trusted implicitly in the Written Word._ 'To complete this
picture,' says Dr. Bence Jones, in bringing to a close his great
two-volume biography, 'to complete this picture, I must add that
Faraday's standard of duty was not founded upon any intuitive ideas of
right and wrong, nor was it fashioned upon any outward experiences of
time and place; but it was formed entirely on what he held to be the
revelation of the will of God in the written Word, and throughout all
his life his faith led him to act up to the very letter of it.'
'On these certainties,' he exclaimed, 'I stake everything! On these
certainties I rest my soul!' And, summing up the three in one, he added,
'_For I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed
unto Him against that day_.'
It is wonderful how the universal heart aches for assurance, for
confidence, for finality, for certainty. Mr. Dan Crawford tells of a
cannibal chief beside whose deathbed an African boy was reading
selections from the Gospel of John. He was impressed by the frequent
recurrence of the words '_verily, verily_.'
'What do they mean?' he asked.
'They mean "_certainly, certainly!_"'
'Then,' exclaimed the dying man, with a sigh of infinite relief, 'they
shall be my pillow. I rest on them.'
Sage or savage, it is all the same. Bunyan's great night was the night
on which he found that same pillow. 'It was with joy that I told my
wife, "O, now I know, _I know_!" That night was a good night to me! I
never had a better. I longed for the company of some of God's people,
that I might have imparted unto them what God had showed me. Christ was
a precious Christ to my soul that night; I could scarcely lie in my bed
for joy and peace and triumph through Christ!'
'_Those words shall be my pillow!_' said the African chief.
'_Those words shall be my pillow!_' said the English scientist.
'_Those words shall be my pillow!_' cried John Bunyan.
'_For I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed
unto Him against that day!_'