When John Wesley was on his way home from Georgia, he wrote this record
of the voyage in his Journal:--"Being sorrowful and very heavy (though I
could give no particular reason for it) and utterly unwilling to speak
close to any of my little flock (about twenty persons), I was in doubt
whether my own neglect of them was not one cause of my heaviness. In the
evening, therefore, I began instructing the cabin boy, after which I was
much easier."
This is a significant passage for various reasons. For one thing, it
lets us see that even a spiritual genius like Wesley sometimes fell into
the mood of doubt. And, for another, it shows how, almost by accident,
as it seems, he found a cure for his trouble. It is plain that religion
just then had lost its savour for the great evangelist. The joy had gone
out of his service and the power from his prayers, and he was not sure
of anything at all. This is practical doubt, the only serious kind
there is. "Being sorrowful and very heavy and very unwilling."
There are not a few men and women whose trouble this is. They are in
straits to know what is really God's truth. They greatly desire to lay
hold of it surely for themselves. The tremendous earnestness of those
who have found the old dogmas unsatisfying, and are adrift again in a
twentieth century search for God, is one of the most significant
features of the situation. Can a man really come in touch with God?
they ask. Is there a living Christ whose presence redeems men from evil
and can lift them up to what they long to be? Is there a life with God
which even Death cannot end? And those who are in such deep earnest to
know God vitally for themselves, are sorrowful and heavy indeed to find
that all their thinking and reading and inquiry do so little for them.
They pray for light, and examine all the evidence with a wistful
eagerness, but the clouds still lie around them, and they are still
wandering, now in this direction, now in that, like men lost in a mist.
Is there no way out of this tangle? Yes, there is. To all who are
sorrowful and heavy because they know so little they can call their own
about God and spiritual living, I want to say, There is a way forward, a
safe, sure way. It is the way that Wesley stumbled upon. "I began
instructing the cabin boy." That is the way for you and me to a fuller
experience of God.
That is the simple solution which so many thousands of us have
overlooked, and it was the discovery of Jesus Christ. When asked how He
knew about God, He answered that it was because He was doing God's will,
and He added, If any man, no matter who, no matter what his doubts be,
if any man be willing to do God's will, where, and as, it is clear to
him, he too shall know. God will not leave him in ignorance of what is
really essential.
Nowhere, except in the Bible, do you find such a method of learning
recommended. From nobody but Christ could such a precept come, for it
is clean contrary to all that we know about learning in other spheres.
Study and you will know, think, investigate, ask questions--that, we can
understand. That is how knowledge comes to us in the realms with which
we are acquainted. But when men asked Christ how they could learn God's
truth for themselves, He said, First of all you must obey it. Do, and
you will know.
You remember the lepers whom Christ touched, of whom it is written that
"as they went, they were healed?" That is how the only sort of doubt
that really matters is healed. As you go, not as you sit still and
puzzle, but as you shoulder the nearest duty and obey what light and
knowledge you have.
"I don't know," Wesley would say to himself, "whether I am in my right
place here or not, whether I am really Christ's servant or not. I am in
the dark, and don't seem to be sure of anything. But there is that
cabin boy. I can at least do him some good. That is right anyhow,
whatever be uncertain." "After which," he says, "I was much easier." It
is marvellous to read, but it is a law as certain and safe as
gravitation. Do God's will as you know it, and you will get more light.
"Doubt of any sort," said Thomas Carlyle, "cannot be removed except by
action."
It is hardly necessary to say, of course, that the knowledge which
Christ promises to those who will obey God's will is not of dogma in its
restricted theological sense. It was life Christ talked about, it was
life He was concerned with, and, for Him, life meant not head-knowledge,
but heart-experience and heart-hold of God. It is that He promises in
His great saying. So do not make the mistake of thinking that when you
seek to do the Will of God, all your mental difficulties, about miracles
or inspiration or what not else, will come to an end. These are
problems, not of life, but of mind, and you have them because God has
given you a mind, and you will probably have them as long as your mind
is growing. What Christ does promise is of vastly more importance,
namely, the light of God's truth in your heart, the assurance of God in
your inmost soul, that you shall know for yourself that God is, and that
He is near to you, and that your true life is in Him; and when a man has
got that length, there are many doctrinal and other mental puzzles for
the solution of which he is content to wait with an easy trust and
patience.
I like that saying of Viscount Kenmure's, away back in the sixteenth
century, "I will lie at Christ's door like a beggar, and, if I may not
knock, I will scrape." I like it, for this reason, that I am quite sure
there is no essential door of God in earth or heaven which is shut
against the man who casts himself so utterly on Him as that. And I take
Kenmure's word to illustrate what Jesus meant by If any man will do
God's will. It is when a man says, I cannot see, I do not know, my mind
is filled with spectres and doubts and questions, but, so help me God, I
will do the thing that is right for me, I will walk by what little light
I have--it is then, it is to that man that there come infallibly the
knowledge which no criticism can shake, and the peace which the world
can neither give nor take away.