A well-known writer relates that, when passing through Edinburgh once,
he saw a procession of Friendly Societies, and observed on one of the
banners the name emblazoned, The Order of the Juniper Tree. His comment
is:--"Many of us belong to that order." So we do. And, because of
that, we can diagnose Elijah's trouble quite accurately. He is
suffering, as we have all suffered at some time or other, from the pains
and penalties of reaction. Just because he had climbed to a height
almost superhuman, the reaction when it came was very black and
terrible. The Bible is too wise and too true to human nature to conceal
the fact that for his hour of splendid daring, Elijah had his price to
pay.
It's a commonplace, of course, but just one of those commonplaces which
in the bulk spell wisdom, that there was a physical reason for this
condition. To put it plainly, Elijah was tired out. He had been using
up his physical and nervous energy at such a ruinous rate during the
past few hours, that he had overdrawn his account. It strikes one as a
very significant fact that when God's angel took the prophet in hand,
the first thing he did was to provide him with a meal. Elijah was
actually on his way back to his normal condition when he had had
something to eat.
That is not a mere incident in the story. It is exceedingly important,
because, sometimes the religious depression with which we are acquainted
arises in a similar way. It is a very useful fact to remember that a
man's whole religious outlook is coloured by the condition of his
health. We may be slow to admit such a low and material cause for
effects so apparently spiritual. But it is a fact all the same. And it
is only wise to recognise it.
But Elijah's reaction was not entirely or even mainly physical in its
origin. He had been in a very exalted spiritual condition during the
contest on Carmel. Think what the man had done! He had stood alone in
the path of a whole nation rioting down to idolatry and shamelessness,
and with voice and presence and fire from Heaven had stopped and turned
them, driven the huddled, frightened sheep back again to the ways and
the worship of God. Was it to be wondered at that his very soul within
him was faint under the strain?
Though the vision and the privileges of the hill-top are what the best
men covet most, it is but little of it at a time that any one can stand.
Do you remember that Jesus would not let Peter and James and John remain
long on the Mount of the Transfiguration, even though they wanted to
build tabernacles and dwell there? There have been few greater
spiritual experts than John Bunyan, and when he has described how his
pilgrim fared in the Palace Beautiful, how he slept in a chamber called
Peace, how he saw afar off the Delectable Land, whither he was
journeying, where does he take him next? Straight down into the Valley
of Humiliation, where he has to fight for his life against the darts of
the Evil One flying as thick as hail!
There is no cure for reaction, of course, but there are one or two rules
which experience has proved to be helpful.
For example, it is never a wise thing, when you are depressed, to
attempt to form any judgment about yourself, your service, or your
standing in the sight of God. By some Satanic impulse, that is the very
time, of course, when you will be tempted to do it. It may appear a
very wholesome spiritual exercise when you have gone a day's journey
into the wilderness and are faint, to reckon up what manner of man and
disciple of Christ you are. But don't do it then. Nobody sees truly
either himself or God, under a juniper tree.
And then, if possible, do not speak about your despondency. Don't
express your mood outwardly at all, if you can help it. Bottle it up if
you can, and you will starve it all the sooner. His biographer relates
of the late Ian Maclaren that, like many people who have Celtic blood in
their veins, he was subject to curious fits of depression and gloom
which did not seem to be in any way connected with bodily health. "But,"
he goes on to say, "he never inflicted his melancholy moods on his
family, was only very quiet and absorbed, and kept more closely to his
study. In a day or two he would emerge again, like a man coming out
into the sunshine."
And lastly. Once a man has sworn himself a disciple and soldier of
Jesus Christ, neither doubt nor depression, neither darkness nor
reaction absolves him from the obligation to follow and to serve when he
is called. It must be confessed that it is an undue sense of the
importance of our own feelings that makes the juniper-tree-mood the
peril and hindrance that it is. We need to remember that the call of
Christ overrides personal feelings. In His army too, there is
discipline to be thought of, and "it is not soldierly to skulk." When
the bugle calls to action, nobody but a coward would make the fact that
he is not feeling quite up to the mark, an excuse for sitting still.
Reaction is a natural thing, but cowardice is always shameful.