Another element in life, which of course is first in importance,
is GOD.
The Angelus is perhaps the most religious picture painted this
century. You cannot look at it and see that young man standing
in the field with his hat off and the girl opposite him with her
hands clasped and her head bowed on her breast, without feeling a
sense of God.
Do we carry about with us the thought of God wherever we go? If not,
we have missed the greatest part of life. Do we have a conviction
of god's abiding presence wherever we are? There is nothing more
needed in this generation than a larger and more Scriptural idea
of God. A great American writer has told us that when he was a
boy the conception of God which he got from books and sermons was
that of a wise and very strict lawyer. I remember well the awful
conception of God which I had when a boy. I was given an illustrated
edition of Watts' hymns, in which God was represented as a great
piercing eye in the midst of a great black thunder cloud. The
idea which that picture gave to my young imagination was that of
God as a great detective, playing the spy upon my actions, as the
hymn says:
"Writing now the story of what little children do."
That was a very mistaken and harmful idea which it has taken me
years to obliterate. We think of God as "up there," or as one who
made the world six thousand years ago and then retired. We must
learn that He is not confined either to time or space. God is
not to be thought of as merely back there in time, or up there in
space. If not, where is He? "The word is nigh thee, even in thy
mouth." The Kingdom of God is within you, and God Himself is among
men. When are we to exchange the terrible, far-away, absentee God
of our childhood for the everywhere present God of the Bible? Too
many of the old Christian writers seem to have conceived of God
as not much more than the greatest man--a kind of divine emperor.
He is infinitely more; He is a spirit, as Jesus said to the woman
at the well, and in Him we live and move and have our being. Let us
think of God as Immanuel--God with us--an ever-present, omnipresent,
eternal One. Long, long ago, God made matter, then He made the
flowers and trees and animals, then He made man. Did He stop? Is
God dead? If He lives and acts what is He doing? He is
Making men better.
He it is that "worketh in you." The buds of our nature are not
all out yet; the sap to make them comes from the God who made us,
from the indwelling Christ. Our bodies are the temples of the Holy
Ghost, and we must bear this in mind, because the sense of God is
kept up, not by logic, but by experience.
Until she was seven years of age the life of Helen Keller, the
Boston girl who was deaf and dumb and blind, was an absolute blank;
nothing could go into that mind because the ears and eyes were
closed to the outer world. Then by that great process which has
been discovered, by which the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the
mute speak, that girl's soul became opened, and they began to put
in little bits of knowledge, and bit by bit they began to educate
her. They reserved her religious instruction for Phillips Brooks.
After some years, when she was twelve years old, they took her to
him and he began to talk to her through the young lady who could
communicate with her by the exceedingly delicate process of touch.
He began to tell her about God and what He had done, and how He loved
men, and what He is to us. The child listened very intelligently,
and finally said:
"Mr. Brooks, I knew all that before, but I didn't know His name."
How often we have felt something within us impelling us to do
something which we would not have conceived of by ourselves, or
enabling us to do something which we could not have done alone.
"It is God which worketh in you." This great simple fact
Explains many of the mysteries of life,
and takes away the fear which we would otherwise have in meeting
the difficulties which lie before us.
Two Americans who were crossing the Atlantic met on Sunday night
to sing hymns in the cabin. As they sang the hymn, "Jesus, Lover
of my Soul," one of the Americans heard an exceedingly rich and
beautiful voice behind him. He looked around, and although he did
not know the face he thought that he recognized the voice. So when
the music ceased he turned and asked the man if he had not been
in the Civil war. The man replied that he had been a Confederate
soldier. "Were you at such a place on such a night?" asked the
first. "Yes," he said, "and a curious thing happened that night;
this hymn recalled it to my mind. I was on sentry duty on the
edge of the wood. It was a dark night and very cold, and I was a
little frightened because the enemy was supposed to be very near
at hand. I felt very homesick and miserable, and about midnight,
when everything was very still, I was beginning to feel very weary
and thought that I would comfort myself by praying and singing a
hymn. I remember singing this hymn,
'All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring,
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.'
After I had sung those words a strange peace came down upon me,
and through the long night I remember having felt no more fear."
"Now," said the other man, "listen to my story. I was a Union
soldier, and was in the wood that night with a party of scouts. I
saw you standing up, although I didn't see your face, and my men
had their rifles focused upon you waiting the word to fire, but
when you sang out,
'Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.'
I said, 'Boys, put down your rifles, we will go home.' I couldn't
kill you after that."
God was working in each of them, in His own way carrying out His
will. God keeps his people and guides them and without Him life
is but a living death.