'In whom,' with all the disabilities and pains and absence, 'yet
believing,' you can put out a long arm of faith across the gulf that
lies, not only between to-day and eighteen centuries ago, but the deeper
and more impassible gulf that lies between earth and heaven, and clasp
Christ with a really firm grasp, which will fill the hand, and which we
shall feel has laid hold of something, or rather has laid hold of a
living person and a loving heart. That is faith. The Apostle uses a very
strong form of expression here, which is only very partially represented
by our English version. He does not say only '_in_ whom believing,' but
'_towards_ whom'; putting emphasis upon the effort and direction of the
faith, rather than upon the repose of the heart when it has found its
object and rests upon Him. And so the conception of the true Christian
attitude is that of a continual outgoing of Trust and its child Love; of
Desire and its child Possession; and of Expectation and its child
Fruition towards that unseen Christ. It is much to believe Him, it is
more to believe in Him; it is--I was going to say--most of all to
believe towards Him. For in this region, quite as much as, and I think
more than, in the one to which the saying was originally applied,
'search is better than attainment.' Our condition must always be that of
'forgetting the things that are behind'; and however much we may realise
the union with the unseen Christ in the act of resting upon Him, that
must never be suffered to interfere with the longing for the larger
possession of myself, and fuller consequent likeness to Him, which is
expressed in that great though simple phrase of my text 'believing
towards Him.' Such a continual outgoing of effort, as well as the rest
and blessedness of reposing on Him, is indispensable for all true
gladness. For the intensest activity of our whole being is essential to
the real joy of any part of it, and we shall never know the rapture of
which humanity, even here and now, is capable until we gather our whole
selves, heart, will, and all our practical, as well as our intellectual,
powers in the effort to make more of Christ our own, and to minimise the
distance between us to a mere vanishing point, 'Believing towards whom
ye rejoice.'
That act of trust, however inadequate the object upon which it rests,
and however mistaken may be our conceptions of that on which we lean,
always brings a gladness which is real, until disappointment
disillusionises and saddens us. There is nothing that so sheds peace
over the heart as reliance, absolute and quiet, upon some object worthy
of trust. It is blessed to trust one another until, as is too often the
case, we find that what we thought to be an oak against which we leaned
is but a broken reed that has no pith in it, and no possibility of
support. So far as it goes, all trust is blessed, but the most blessed
is simple reliance upon, and aspiration after, Jesus Christ. Ever to
yearn for Him, not with the yearning of those who have no possession,
but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to
bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which
there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow,
wrapping the whole man in its ebon folds. For this Christ is enough for
all my nature and for the satisfaction of every desire. In Him my mind
finds the truth; my will the law; my love the answering love; my hope
its object; my fears their dissipation; my sins their forgiveness; my
weaknesses their strength; and, to all that I am, what He is answers, as
fulness to emptiness, and as supply to need. So, 'believing towards Him,
we rejoice.'
But note that the joy is strictly contemporaneous with the faith. Tear
away electric wire from the source of energy, and the light goes out
instantly. It is as another Apostle says, '_in believing_' that we have
'joy and peace.' And that is why so many of us know little of it.
Yesterday's faith will not contribute to to-day's gladness, any more
than yesterday's meals will satisfy to-day's hunger. Present joy depends
upon present faith, and the measure of the one is the measure of the
other.