Faith and Moods
DAILY READINGS
The relationship of faith to feeling, rather than faith's relationship
to mind, is with many people the more vital interest. The emotional
results of faith are rightfully of intense concern to everyone, for
our feelings put the sense of value into life. To see a sunset without
being stirred by its beauty is to miss seeing the sunset; to have
friends without feeling love for them is not to have friends; and to
possess life without feeling it to be gloriously worth while is to
miss living. Now, in this regard, the attitude of faith stands sharply
opposed to its direct contrary--the attitude of fear. Faith and fear
are the two emotional climates, in one or the other of which everyone
tends habitually to live. To the comparison of these we set ourselves
in the daily readings.
Eighth Week, First Day
=Give ear to my prayer, O God;
And hide not thyself from my supplication.
Attend unto me, and answer me:
I am restless in my complaint, and moan,
Because of the voice of the enemy,
Because of the oppression of the wicked;
For they cast iniquity upon me,
And in anger they persecute me.
My heart is sore pained within me:
And the terrors of death are fallen upon me.
Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me,
And horror hath overwhelmed me.
And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove!
Then would I fly away, and be at rest.
Lo, then would I wander far off,
I would lodge in the wilderness.=
=--Psalm 55:1-7.=
How many people are slaves to the mood from which this psalmist
suffered! "Fearfulness and trembling" are their habitual attitude
toward life. They fear to die and just as much they fear to live;
before every vexatious problem, before every opposing obstacle, even
before the common tasks and responsibilities of daily living, they
stand in dread; and every piece of work is done by them at least three
times--in previous worry, in anxious performance, and in regretful
retrospect. Such fear _imprisons_ the soul. No two men really
live in the same world; for while the outward geography may be
identical, the real environment of each soul is created by our moods,
tempers, and habits of thought. Fear builds a prison about the man,
and bars him in with dreads, anxieties, and timid doubts. And the man
will live forever in that prison unless faith sets him free. _Faith
is the great liberator._ The psalmist who found himself a prisoner
of "fearfulness and trembling" obtained his liberty and became a "soul
in peace" (v. 18); and the secret of his freedom he revealed in the
closing words of his psalm--"But I will trust in Thee." Faith of some
sort is the only power that ever sets men free from the bondage of
their timidities and dreads. If a man is the slave of fearfulness,
there is no substance in his claim to be a man of faith; a man who has
vital faith is not habitually fearful. And as Emerson said, "He has
not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear."
_O God, we remember with sadness our want of faith in Thee. What
might have been a garden we have turned into a desert by our sin and
wilfulness. This beautiful life which Thou hast given us we have
wasted in futile worries and vain regrets and empty fears. Instead of
opening our eyes to the joy of life, the joy that shines in the leaf,
the flower, the face of an innocent child, and rejoicing in it as in
a sacrament, we have sunk back into the complainings of our narrow
and blinded souls. O deliver us from the bondage of unchastened
desires and unwholesome thoughts. Help us to conquer hopeless
brooding and faithless reflection, and the impatience of irritable
weakness. To this end, increase our faith, O Lord. Fill us with a
completer trust in Thee, and the desire for a more whole-hearted
surrender to Thy will. Then every sorrow will become a joy. Then
shall we say to the mountains that lie heavy on our souls, "Remove
and be cast hence" and they shall remove, and nothing shall be
impossible unto us. Then shall we renew our strength, and mount up
with wings as eagles; we shall run and not be weary; we shall walk
and not faint. We offer this prayer in the name of Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Eighth Week, Second Day
Not only is it true that fear imprisons while faith liberates; fear
_paralyzes_ and faith _empowers_. The only attitude in which
a man has command of his faculties and is at his best, is the attitude
of faith; while fear bewilders the mind and paralyzes the will. The
physical effects of fear are deadly; it positively inhibits any useful
thinking; and in the spiritual life its results are utterly
demoralizing. Fear is the panic of a soul. Consider such an estate as
the author of Deuteronomy presents:
=And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be
no rest for the sole of thy foot: but Jehovah will give thee there a
trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; and thy
life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and
day, and shalt have no assurance of thy life. In the morning thou
shalt say, Would it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would it
were morning! for the fear of thy heart which thou shalt fear, and
for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see.--Deut. 28:65-67.=
Such a situation oppresses every vital power, and the conquest of such
a situation must always be inward before it can be outward; _the man
must pass from fear to faith_. Let even a little faith arise in
him, and power begins to return. Men fear that they cannot overcome
evil habits, that they cannot successfully meet difficult situations,
that they cannot hold out in the Christian life, and that great causes
cannot be fought through to victory--and the weakness which appalls
them is the creation of their own misgiving.
"Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt."
But faith is tonic; the results which follow a change of heart from
fear to faith are miraculous; spiritual dwarfs grow to giants and
achieve successes that before would have been unbelievable. No verse
in Scripture has behind it a greater mass of verifiable experience
than: "This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our
faith" (I John 5:4).
_Gracious Father, Thou hast invited us, unworthy as we are, to pray
for all sorts and conditions of men.... We pray for all who are in
bondage to fear, unable to face the tasks of life or bear the thought
of death with peace and dignity. Free them from the tyranny of these
dark dreads. Let the inspiration of a great faith or hope seize their
souls, and lift them above their fruitless worry and idle torments,
into a region of joy and peace and blessedness. We pray for the
victims of evil habits, the slaves of alcohol or morphine, or any
other pretended redeemer of the soul from weariness and pain. Great
is the power of these degrading temptations; but greater still is the
saving energy of Thy Spirit. So let Thy Spirit enter the hearts of
these unhappy children of Thine, that their will may be made strong
to resist, and that the burning heat of high thoughts may consume the
grosser desires of the flesh. We pray for souls bound beneath
self-imposed burdens, vexed by miseries of their own making; for the
children of melancholy, who have lost their way and grope without a
light; for those who do their work with no enthusiasm, and, when
night falls, can find no sleep though they search for it as for
hidden treasure. Let Thy light pierce through their gloom and shine
upon their path...._
_Unite us to Jesus Christ, Thy perfect Son, in the bonds of a living
trust, so that sustained by His example, and sanctified by His
Spirit, we may grow more and more into the image of His likeness.
These, and all other blessings, we ask in His name and for His sake.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Eighth Week, Third Day
There are many situations in life which naturally throw the pall of
dread over man's soul. Life is seldom easy, it is often overwhelmingly
difficult, and if a man has worry in his temperament, circumstances
supply plenty of occasions on which to exercise it. The difference
between men lies here: those in whom the fear-attitude is master hold
the oppressive trouble so close to the eye that it hides everything
else; those whom the faith-attitude dominates hold trouble off and see
it in wide perspectives. A copper cent can hide the sun if we hold it
close enough to the eye, and a transient difficulty can shut out from
a fearful soul all life's large blessings and all the horizons of
divine good will. Fear _disheartens_ men by concentrating their
attention on the unhappy aspects of life; _but faith is the great
encourager_. Whittier lived in a generation full of turmoil and
trouble, and his own life is a story of prolonged struggle against
illness, disappointments, and poverty. But, listen:
"Yet sometimes glimpses on my sight
Through present wrong, the eternal right;
And, step by step, since time began
I see the steady gain of man."
That is the attitude of faith; it does not deny the evil, but it sees
around it, refuses to be obsessed or scared by it, and takes heart
from a large view when a small view would be appalling. And history
always confirms the large view. Fear may be right for the moment, but
in the long run it is a liar; only faith tells the truth.
=Be merciful unto me, O God; for man would swallow me up:
All the day long he fighting oppresseth me.
Mine enemies would swallow me up all the day long;
For they are many that fight proudly against me.
What time I am afraid,
I will put my trust in thee.=
=--Psalm 56:1-3.=
_Almighty and ever-living God, we draw near unto Thee, believing that
Thou art, and that Thou wilt reward all those who diligently seek
Thee. We are weak, mortal men, immersed in this world's affairs,
buffeted by its sorrows, flung to and fro by its conflicts of right
and wrong. We cry for some abiding stay, for some sure and steadfast
anchorage. Reveal Thyself to us as the eternal God, as the
unfathomable Love that encompasses every spirit Thou hast made, and
bears it on, through the light and the darkness alike, to the goal of
Thine own perfection. And yet, when Thou speakest to us, we are
covered with confusion, for now we remember all the sadness and evil
disorder of our lives. Thou hast visited our hearts with ideals fair
and beautiful, but alas! we have grown weary in aspiration, and have
declined into the sordid aims of our baser selves. Thou hast given us
the love of parent and of friend, that we might thereby learn
something of Thine own love; yet too often have we despised Thy gift
and shut our hearts to all the wonder and the glory. We make
confession before Thee of our sin and folly and ignorance. Again and
again we have vowed ourselves to Thy service; again and again our
languid wills have failed to do Thy Will. We have been seduced by the
sweet poison of sin, and even against light and knowledge we have
done that which Thou dost abhor, and which in our secret hearts we
loathe. And now we almost fear to repent, lest Thou shouldst call us
into judgment for a repentance that must needs be repented of. O
mighty Saviour of men! be patient with us a little longer. Take us
back to Thyself. Without Thee, we are undone; with Thee, we will take
fresh heart of hope, and bind ourselves with a more effectual vow,
and laying aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset
us, we will follow Thee whithersoever Thou leadest. Amen._--Samuel
McComb.
Eighth Week, Fourth Day
Fear depresses vitality and is a fruitful cause of nervous disorders,
with all their disastrous reactions on man's health. Modern
investigation has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that while illness
comes often by way of the body, it comes also by way of the mind; our
moods and tempers have a physical echo, and of all fatal mental states
none is so ruinous as fear. It is not strange, therefore, that some
people never are well. As Dr. McComb puts it, "Many play at
living--they do not really live. They fear the responsibilities, the
struggles, the adventures, not without risk, which life offers them.
They fear illness. They fear poverty. They fear unhappiness. They fear
danger. They fear the passion of sacrifice. They fear even the
exaltation of a pure and noble love, until the settlements in money
and social prestige have been duly certified. They fear to take a
plunge into life's depths. They fear this world, and they fear still
more the world beyond the grave." In such a mood no man can possibly
be well. Faith, therefore, which drives out fear, has always been a
minister of health. The Master's healings, which to the rationalism of
a previous generation seemed incredible, in the light of the present
knowledge seem inevitable. He had faith and he demanded faith, and
wherever the faith-attitude can be set in motion against the
fear-attitude and all its morbid brood, the consequences will be
physical as well as moral. An outgrown custom of the early Church does
not now seem so strange as it did a generation ago:
=Is any among you suffering? let him pray. Is any cheerful? let him
sing praise. Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of
the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the
name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save him that is
sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins,
it shall be forgiven him. Confess therefore your sins one to another,
and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The supplication of
a righteous man availeth much in its working.--James 5:13-16.=
_Eternal God, who art above all change and darkness, whose will begat
us, and whose all present love doth enfold and continually redeem us,
Holy Guest who indwellest, and dost comfort us; we have gathered to
worship Thee, and in communion with Thee to find ourselves raised to
the light of our life, and the Heaven of our desires._
_Pour upon our consciousness the sense of Thy wonderful nearness to
us. Reveal to our weakness and distress the power and the grace that
are more than sufficient for us. May we see what we are, Thy
Spirit-born children linked by nature, love, and choice to Thy mighty
being; and may the vision make all fears to fade, and a Divine
strength to pulse within._
_Enable us to carry out from this place the peace and strength that
here we gain, to take into our homes a kinder spirit, a new
thoughtfulness; that we may brighten sadness, heal the sick, and make
happiness to abound. May we take into our daily tasks and life of
labor, a sense of righteousness that shall be as salt to every evil
and corrupting influence._
_Because we have walked here awhile with Thee, may we be able to walk
more patiently with man. Send us forth with love to the fallen, hope
for the despairing, strength to impart to the weak and wayward; and
carry on through us the work Thou didst commence in Thy Son our
Brother Man and Saviour God. Amen._--W. E. Orchard.
Eighth Week, Fifth Day
Fear makes impossible any satisfying joy in life. A man of faith may
be deeply joyful even in disastrous circumstances, but a man of fear
would be unhappy in heaven. Stevenson sings in "the saddest and the
bravest song he ever wrote":
"God, if this were faith?...
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen
with the eyes:
With half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right,
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?"
Sad this song may be, but at the heart of it is yet a fierce joy
because faith is there. But put a man of fear in luxury and remove
from him every visible cause of disquiet and he will still be
miserable. The more a man considers these two determinant moods in
life, the more he sees that somehow the faith-attitude must be his, if
life is to be worth living. Without it life dries up into a Sahara;
with it, he comes into a company of the world's glad spirits, who one
way or another have felt what the Psalmist sings:
=Jehovah is my light and my salvation;
Whom shall I fear?
Jehovah is the strength of my life;
Of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil-doers came upon me to eat up my flesh,
Even mine adversaries and my foes, they stumbled and fell.
Though a host should encamp against me,
My heart shall not fear:
Though war should rise against me,
Even then will I be confident.
One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of Jehovah,
And to inquire in his temple.
For in the day of trouble he will keep me secretly in his pavilion:
In the covert of his tabernacle will he hide me;
He will lift me up upon a rock.
And now shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me;
And I will offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy;
I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto Jehovah.=
=--Psalm 27:1-6.=
_Gracious Father! We confess the painful riddle of our being, that,
while claiming kinship with Thee, we feel far from Thee. O, what
means this strange bewilderment, this never-ending war between our
worse and better thoughts? We are Thine by right, yet we have not
given ourselves wholly to Thy care. Our hearts know no rest, save in
Thee, yet they have sought it in this world's vainglory, which
passeth away. We seek to quench our thirst at the cisterns of this
earth, but they are broken cisterns, that can hold no water. Lead us
to Thy well of life that springeth up eternally. Give us to drink of
that spiritual water, of which, if any man drink, he shall never
thirst again. We lament our want and poverty before Thee. Open Thou
our eyes to behold the unsearchable riches of Thy grace, and increase
our faith that we may make them ours. Unite us to Thee in the bonds
of will and love and purpose. Out of Thy fulness, which is in Christ,
give to each one of us according to his need. Make us wise with His
Wisdom; pure with His purity; strong with His strength; that we may
rise into the power and glory of the life that is life indeed. Hear
our hearts' weak and wandering cries, and when Thou hearest, forgive
and bless, for His sake. Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Eighth Week, Sixth Day
=No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other.
Ye cannot serve God and mammon. Therefore I say unto you, Be not
anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink;
nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more
than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the
heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into
barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more
value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit
unto the measure of his life? And why are ye anxious concerning
raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil
not, neither do they spin: yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.=
=But if God doth so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is,
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe
you, O ye of little faith? Be not therefore anxious, saying, What
shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; for your
heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But
seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these
things shall be added unto you.--Matt. 6:24-33.=
The meaning of this passage hinges on the first "therefore." You
cannot serve God and selfish gain at the same time, says Jesus; you
should choose decisively to serve God; and _therefore_ you must not be
anxious about yourself. For _anxious fear so concentrates a man's
thought on himself that he can serve no one else_. That this is the
meaning of this familiar passage is clear also from its conclusion.
The real reason for conquering anxious fear is that a man may give
himself wholeheartedly to the service of the Kingdom. That fear does
spoil usefulness is obvious; a man cannot be fearful for himself and
considerate of his fellows. As Stevenson puts it in "Aes Triplex,"
"The man who has least fear for his own carcass has most time to
consider others. That eminent chemist who took his walks abroad in tin
shoes and subsisted wholly upon tepid milk had all his work cut out
for him in considerate dealings with his own digestion. So soon as
prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it
finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts." The shame
of our fearful living is that it circles about self, is narrowed down
to mean solicitudes about our own comfort, and is utterly incapable of
serving God or seeking first his Kingdom. Only faith puts folk at
leisure from their small anxieties so that they can be servants of a
worthy cause. Jesus, therefore, in this passage is not giving us the
impossible injunction not to think about tomorrow; he is stating a
truth of experience, that anxious fear for oneself which so draws in
the thought that God's great causes are forgotten is a deadly peril in
man's life. By faith thrust out the mean and timid solicitudes, is his
injunction, that life may be free to put first things first.
_We come to Thee, our Father, that we may more deeply enter into Thy
joy. Thou turnest darkness into day, and mourning into praise. Thou
art our Fortress in temptation, our Shield in remorse, our Covert in
calamity, our Star of Hope in every sorrow. O Lord, we would know Thy
peace, deep, abiding, inexhaustible. When we seek Thy peace, our
weariness is gone, the sense of our imperfection ceases to discourage
us, and our tired souls forget their pain. When, strengthened and
refreshed by Thy goodness, we return to the task of life, send us
forth as servants of Jesus Christ in the service and redemption of
the world. Send us to the hearts without love, to men and women
burdened with heavy cares, to the miserable, the sad, the
broken-hearted. Send us to the children whose heritage has been a
curse, to the poor who doubt Thy Providence, to the sick who crave
for healing and cannot find it, to the fallen for whom no man cares.
May we be ministers of Thy mercy, messengers of Thy helpful pity, to
all who need Thee. By our sympathy, our prayers, our kindness, our
gifts, may we make a way for the inflow of Thy love into needy and
loveless lives. And so may we have that love which alone is the
fulfilling of Thy law. Hasten the time when all men shall love Thee
and one another in Thee, when all the barriers that divide us shall
be broken down, and every heart shall be filled with joy and every
tongue with melody. These gracious gifts we ask, in Jesus' name.
Amen._--Samuel McComb.
Eighth Week, Seventh Day
Fear does not reveal its disastrous consequences to the full until it
colors one's thoughts about the source and destiny of life. Folk work
joyfully at a picture-puzzle so long as they believe that the puzzle
can be put together, that it was meant, completed, to compose a
picture, and that their labor is an effort made in reasonable hope.
But if they begin to fear that they are being fooled, that the puzzle
is a hoax and never can be pieced together anywhere by anyone, how
swiftly that suspicion will benumb their work! So joyful living
depends on man's conviction that this life is not a hapless accident,
that a good purpose binds it all together, and that our labor for
righteousness is not expended on a futile task without a worthy
outcome. But fear blights all such hope; it whispers what one
pessimist said aloud: "Life is not a tragedy but a farcical melodrama,
which is the worst kind of play." That fear benumbs worthy living,
kills hope, makes cynical disgust with life a reasonable attitude, and
with its frost withers all man's finest aspirations. _Only faith in
God can save men from such fear._ Fear or faith--there is no dilemma
so full of consequence. Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear
paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear
sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable--and,
most of all, fear puts hopelessness at the heart of life, while faith
rejoices in its God.
=Oh give thanks unto Jehovah; for he is good;
For his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
Let Israel now say,
That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
Let the house of Aaron now say,
That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
Let them now that fear Jehovah say,
That his lovingkindness endureth for ever.
Out of my distress I called upon Jehovah:
Jehovah answered me and set me in a large place.
Jehovah is on my side; I will not fear:
What can man do unto me?=
=--Psalm 118:1-6.=
_O God, we invoke Thy blessing upon all who need Thee, and who are
groping after Thee, if haply they may find Thee. Be gracious to those
who bear the sins of others, who are vexed by the wrongdoing and
selfishness of those near and dear to them, and reveal to them the
glory of their fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. Brood in
tenderness over the hearts of the anxious, the miserable, the victims
of phantasmal fear and morbid imaginings. Redeem from slavery the
men and women who have yielded to degrading habits. Put Thy Spirit
within them, that they may rise up in shame and sorrow and make
confession to Thee, "So brutish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast
before Thee." And then let them have the glad assurance that Thou art
with them, the secret of all good, the promise and potency of better
things. Console with Thy large consolation those who mourn for their
loved dead, who count the empty places and long for the sound of a
voice that is still. Inspire them with the firm conviction that the
dead are safe in Thy keeping, nay, that they are not dead, but live
unto Thee. Give to all sorrowing ones a garland for ashes, the oil of
joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of
heaviness. Remember for good all who are perplexed with the mysteries
of existence, and who grieve because the world is so sad and
unintelligible. Teach them that Thy hand is on the helm of affairs,
that Thou dost guide Thine own world, and canst change every dark
cloud into bright sunshine. In this faith let them rest, and by this
faith let them live. These blessings we ask in the name of our Lord
and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen._--Samuel McComb.
COMMENT FOR THE WEEK
I
Many people do not find their most perplexing difficulty either in the
realm of trust or of belief, but in a problem which includes both.
They are confused because neither their experience of God nor their
intellectual conviction of the reasonableness of faith is dependable
and steady. Faith comes and goes in them with fluctuating moods that
bring an appalling sense of insecurity. Their religious life is not
stable and consistent; it runs through variant degrees of confidence
and doubt, and its whimsical ups and downs continually baffle them. To
classify some folk as men of faith and some as men of doubt does not,
in the light of this experience, quite tally with the facts. There are
moods of faith and moods of doubt in all of us and rarely does either
kind secure unanimous consent. Were we to decide for irreligion, a
minority protest would be vigorously urged in the interests of faith,
and when most assuredly we choose religion, the prayer, "Lord, I
believe, help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24) is still appropriate. We
often seem to be exchanging, as Browning's bishop says:
"A life of doubt diversified by faith,
For one of faith diversified by doubt."
Some hope arises when we observe that this experience which so
perplexes us is fully acknowledged in the Bible. The popular
supposition is that when one opens the Scripture he finds himself in a
world of constant and triumphant faith. No low moods and doubts can
here obscure the trust of men; here God is always real, saints sing in
prison or dying see their Lord enthroned in heaven. When one, however,
really knows the Bible, it obviously is no serene record of untroubled
faith. It is turbulent with moods and doubt.
Here, to be sure, is the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, on
Immortality, but here too is another cry, burdened with all the doubt
man ever felt about eternal life, "That which befalleth the sons of
men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth,
so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; and man hath no
preeminence above the beasts" (Eccl. 3:19). The Scripture has many
exultant passages on divine faithfulness, but Jeremiah's bitter prayer
is not excluded: "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable,
which refuseth to be healed? Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a
deceitful brook, as waters that fail?" (Jer. 15:18). The confident
texts on prayer are often quoted, but there are cries of another sort:
Job's complaint, "Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and
backward, but I cannot perceive him" (Job 23:8); Habakkuk's
bitterness, "O Jehovah, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear?
I cry unto thee of violence and thou wilt not save" (Hab. 1:2). The
Bible is no book of tranquil faith. From the time when Gideon, in a
mood like that of multitudes today, cried, "Oh, my Lord, if Jehovah is
with us, why then is all this befallen us?" (Judges 6:13) to the
complaint of the slain saints in the Apocalypse, "How long, O Master,
the holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood" (Rev.
6:10), the Bible is acquainted with doubt. It knows the searching,
perplexing, terrifying questions that in all ages vex men's souls. If
the Psalmist, in an exultant mood, sang, "Jehovah is my shepherd," he
also cried, "Jehovah, why casteth thou off my soul? Why hidest thou
thy face from me?" (Psalm 88:14).
No aspect of the Scripture could bring it more warmly into touch with
man's experience than this confession of fluctuating moods. At least
in this the Bible is our book. Great heights are there, that we know
something of. Psalmists sing in adoration, prophets are sure of God
and of his coming victory; apostles pledge in sacrifice the certainty
of their belief, and the Master on Transfiguration Mountain prays
until his countenance is radiant. And depths are there, that modern
men know well. Saints cry out against unanswered prayer and cannot
understand how such an evil, wretched world is ruled by a good God; in
their bitter griefs they complain that God has cast them off, and
utterly forgotten and, dismayed, doubt even that a man's death differs
from a dog's. This is our book. For the faith of many of us, however
we insist that we are Christians, is not tranquil, steady, and serene.
It is moody, occasional, spasmodic, with hours of great assurance, and
other hours when confidence sags and trust is insecure.
II
Faith so generally is discussed as though it were a creed, accepted
once for all and thereafter statically held, that the influence of our
moods on faith is not often reckoned with. But the moods of faith are
the very pith and marrow of our actual experience. When a Christian
congregation recite together their creedal affirmation, "I believe in
God," it _sounds_ as though they all maintained a solid, constant
faith. But when in imagination, one breaks up the congregation and
interprets from his knowledge of men's lives what the faith of the
individuals actually means, he sees that they believe in God not
evenly and constantly, but more or less, sometimes very much,
sometimes not confidently at all. Our faith in God is not a static
matter such as the recitation of a creed suggests. Some things we do
believe in steadily. That two plus two make four, that the summed
angles of a triangle make two right angles--of such things we are
unwaveringly sure. No moods can shake our confidence; no griefs
confuse us, no moral failures quench our certainty. Though the heavens
fall, two and two make four! But our faith in God belongs in another
realm. It is a vital experience. It involves the whole man, with his
chameleon moods, his glowing insights, his exalted hours, and his
dejected days when life flows sluggishly and no great thing seems
real.
This experience of variable moods in faith does not belong especially
to feeble folk, whose ups and downs in their life with God would
illustrate their whole irresolute and flimsy living. The great
believers sometimes know best this tidal rise and fall of confidence.
Elijah one day, with absolute belief in God, defied the hosts of Baal
and the next, in desolate reaction, wanted to die. Luther put it with
his rugged candor, "Sometimes I believe and sometimes I doubt." John
Knox, at liberty to preach, "dings the pulpit into blads" in his
confident utterance; but the same Knox recalled that, in the galleys,
his soul knew "anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceived
against God, calling all his promises in doubt." The Master himself
was not a stranger to this experience. He believed in God with
unwavering assurance, as one believes in the shining of the sun. But
the fact that the sun perpetually shines did not imply that every day
was a sunshiny day for him. The clouds came pouring up out of his dark
horizons and hid the sun. "Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I
say?" (John 12:27). And once the fog drove in, so dense and dark that
one would think there never had been any sun at all. "My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46).
This experience of fluctuating moods is too familiar to be denied, too
influential to be neglected. There can be no use in hiding it from
candid thought behind the recitation of a creedal formula. There may
be great use in searching out its meaning. For there are ways in which
this common experience, at first vexatious and disquieting, may supply
solid ground for Christian confidence.
III
In dealing with these variant moods of faith we are not left without
an instrument. We have _the sense of value_. We discern not only the
_existence_ of things, but their _worth_ as well. When, therefore, a
man has recognized his moods as facts, he has not said all that he can
say about them. Upon no objects of experience can the sense of value
be used with so much certainty as upon our moods. _We know our best
hours when they come._ The lapidary, with unerring skill, learns to
distinguish a real diamond from a false, but his knowledge is external
and contingent, compared with the inward and authoritative certainty
with which we know our best hours from our worst. Our great moods
carry with them the authentic marks of their superiority.
Experience readily confirms this truth. We all have, for example,
_cynical and sordid moods_. At such times, only the appetites of
physical life seem much to matter; only the things that minister to
common comfort greatly count. When Sydney Smith, the English cleric,
writes, "I feel an ungovernable interest in my horses, my pigs, and my
plants. But I am forced and always was forced to task myself up to an
interest in any higher objects," most of us can understand his mood.
We grow obtuse at times to all that in our better moods had thrilled
us most. Nature suffers in our eyes; great books seem dull; causes
that once we served with zest lose interest, and personal relationships
grow pale and tame, From such mere dullness we easily drift down to
cynicism. Music once had stirred the depths, but now our spirits tally
with the scoffer's jest, "What are you crying about with your Wagner
and your Brahms? It is only horsehair scraping on catgut." Man's most
holy things may lose their grandeur and become a butt of ridicule.
When the mood of Aristophanes is on, we too may hoist serious Socrates
among the clouds, and set him talking moonshine while the cynical look
on and laugh. The spirit that "sits in the seat of the scornful" is an
ancient malady.
But every man is thoroughly aware that these are not his best moods.
From such depleted attitudes we come to worthier hours; _real
life_ arrives again. Nature and art become imperatively beautiful;
moral causes seem worth sacrifice, and before man's highest life,
revealed in character, ideal, and faith, we stand in reverence. These
are our great hours, when spiritual values take the throne, when all
else dons livery to serve them, and we find it easy to believe in God.
Again, we have _crushed and rebellious moods_. We may have been
Christians for many years; yet when disaster, long delayed, at last
descends, and our dreams are wrecked, we _do_ rebel. Complaint rises
hot within us. Joseph Parker, preacher at the City Temple, London, at
the age of sixty-eight could write that he had never had a doubt.
Neither the goodness of God nor the divinity of Christ, nor anything
essential to his Christian faith had he ever questioned. But within a
year an experience had fallen of which he wrote: "In that dark hour I
became almost an atheist. For God had set his foot upon my prayers and
treated my petitions with contempt. If I had seen a dog in such agony
as mine, I would have pitied and helped the dumb beast; yet God spat
upon me and cast me out as an offense--out into the waste wilderness
and the night black and starless." No new philosophy had so shaken the
faith of this long unquestioning believer. But his wife had died and
he was in a heartbroken mood that all his arguments, so often used on
others, could not penetrate. He believed in God as one believes in the
sun when he has lived six months in the polar night and has not seen
it.
These heartbroken moods, however, are not our best. Out of rebellious
grief we lift our eyes in time to see how other men have borne their
sorrows off and built them into character. We see great lives shine
out from suffering, like Rembrandt's radiant faces from dark
backgrounds. We see that all the virtues which we most admire--constancy,
patience, fortitude--are impossible without stern settings, and that
in time of trouble they find their aptest opportunity, their noblest
chance. We rise into a new mood, grow resolute not to be crushed, but,
as though there were moral purpose in man's trials, to be hallowed,
deepened, purified. The meaning of Samuel Rutherford's old saying
dawns upon us, "When I am in the cellar of affliction, I reach out my
hand for the king's wine." And folk, seeing us, it may be, take heart
and are assured that God is real, since he can make a man bear off his
trial like that and grow the finer for it. These are our great hours
too, when the rains descend, and the winds blow, and the floods come,
and beat upon our house, and it is founded on a rock!
Once more, we have hours of _discouragement about the world_. The more
we have cared for moral causes and invested life in their advancement,
the more we are desolate when they seem to fail. Some rising tide in
which we trusted turns to ebb again, injustice wins its victories, the
people listen to demagogues and not to statesmen, social causes
essential to human weal are balked, wars come and undo the hopes of
centuries. Who does not sometimes fall into the Slough of Despond?
Cavour, disheartened about Italy, went to his room to kill himself.
John Knox, dismayed about Scotland, in a pathetic prayer entitled,
"John Knox with deliberate mind to his God," wrote, "Now, Lord put an
end to my misery." We generally think of Luther in that intrepid hour
when he faced Charles V at Worms; but he had times as well when he was
sick with disappointment. "Old, decrepit, lazy, worn out, cold, and
now one-eyed," so runs a letter, "I write, my Jacob, I who hoped there
might at length be granted to me, already dead, a well-earned rest."
During the Great War, this mood of discouragement has grown familiar.
Many can understand what Robert Louis Stevenson meant when he wrote,
of the Franco-Prussian war, "In that year, cannon were roaring for
days together on French battlefields, and I would sit in my isle (I
call it mine after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the
pain of men's wounds, and the weariness of their marching.... It was
something so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the
top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony."
But these dismayed hours are not our best. As Bunyan put it, even
Giant Despair has fainting fits on sunshiny days. In moods of clearer
insight we perceive out of how many Egypts, through how many
round-about wilderness journeys, God has led his people to how many
Promised Lands. The Exodus was not a failure, although the Hebrews,
disheartened, thought it was and even Moses had his dubious hours; the
mission of Israel did not come to an ignoble end in the Exile,
although multitudes gave up their faith because of it and only
prophets dared believe the hopeful truth. The crucifixion did not mean
the Gospel's end, as the disciples thought, nor did Paul, imprisoned,
lose his ministry. _Nothing in history is more assured than this,
that only men of faith have known the truth._ And in hours of
vision when this fact shines clear we rise to be our better selves
again. What a clear ascent the race has made when wide horizons are
taken into view! What endless possibilities must lie ahead! What ample
reasons we possess to thrust despair aside, and to go out to play our
part in the forward movement of the plan of God!
"Dreamer of dreams? we take the taunt with gladness,
Knowing that God beyond the years you see,
Has wrought the dreams that count with you for madness
Into the texture of the world to be."
These are our better hours.
IV
Such sordid, cynical, crushed, rebellious, and discouraged moods we
suffer, but we have hours of insight, too, when we are at our best.
And as we face this ebb and flow of confidence, which at the first
vexatiously perplexed our faith, an arresting truth is clear. The
creed of irreligion, to which men are tempted to resign their minds,
is simply the _intellectual formulation of what is implied in our
less noble hours_. Take what man's cynical, sordid, crushed,
rebellious, and discouraged moods imply, and set it in a formal
statement of life's meaning, and the result is the creed of
irreligion. But take man's best hours, when the highest seems the
realest, when even sorrows cannot crush his soul, and when the world
is still the battlefield of God for men, and formulate what these
hours imply, and the result is the central affirmations of religious
faith. Even Renan is sure that "man is most religious in his best
moments." Of this high interpretation our variant moods are
susceptible, that _we know our best hours when they come, and the
faith implied in them is essential Christianity_. As Browning sings
it:
"Faith is my waking life:
One sleeps, indeed, and dreams at intervals,
We know, but waking's the main point with us."
This fact which we so have come upon is a powerful consideration in
favor of religion's truth. _Are we to trust for our guidance the
testimony of our worse or better hours?_ We have low moods; so, too,
we have cellars in our houses. But we do not _live_ there; we live
upstairs! It is not unnatural to have irreligious moods. There may be
hours when the eternal Energy from which this universe has come seems
to be playing solitaire for fun. It shuffles the stars and planets to
see what may chance from their combinations, and careless of the
consequence, from everlasting to everlasting it shuffles and plays,
and shuffles and plays again. But these are not our best hours. We may
have moods when the universe seems to us, as Carlyle's figure pictures
it, "as if the heavens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a
devouring monster, wherein, I, palpitating, lay waiting to be
devoured," but we are inwardly ashamed of times like that. Man comes
to this brutal universe of irreligion by way of his ignoble moods.
When he lifts up his soul in his great hours of love, of insight, and
of devotion, life never looks to him as irreligion pictures it; it
never has so looked to him and it never will!
In his best hours man always suspects that the Eternal must be akin to
what is best in us, that our ideals are born from above, have there
their source and destiny, that the Eternal Purpose reigns and yet
shall justify the struggle of the ages, and that in anyone who is the
best we know, we see most clearly what the Eternal is and means. That
goodness is deeper than evil, that spirit is more than flesh, that
life is lord of death, that love is the source of all--such
convictions come naturally to us when we are at our best. When one
examines such affirmations, he perceives that Christianity in its
essential faiths is the expression of our finest hours. This is the
source whence Christianity has come; it is man's best become
articulate. Some used to say that Christian faith had been foisted on
mankind by priests. Christian faith has no more artificially been
foisted upon human life than the full blown rose is foisted on the
bud. Christianity springs up out of man's best life; it is the
utterance of his transcendent moods; _it is man believing in the
validity of his own noblest days_.
Christianity, therefore, at its heart can never fail. Its theologies
may come and go, its institutions rise and fall, its rituals have
their dawn, their zenith, and their decline, but one persistent force
goes on and will go on. _The Gospel is saying to man what man at his
best is saying to himself._ Christ has a tremendous ally in human
life--our noblest hours. They are all upon his side. What _he_
says, _they_ rise to cry "Amen" to. When we are most truly
ourselves we are nearest to him. Antagonistic philosophies, therefore,
may spring up to assail the Gospel's influence, and seem to triumph,
and fall at last and be forgotten. Still Christ will go on speaking.
Nothing can tear him from his spiritual influence over men. _In
every generation he has man's noblest hours for his ally._
V
In the fact to which our study of man's variant moods has brought us
we have not only a confirming consideration in favor of religion's
truth, but an _explanation of some people's unbelief_. They live
habitually in their low moods; they inhabit spiritual cellars. We are
accustomed to say that some friend would be saved from his ignoble
attitudes by a vital religious faith; but it is also true that his
persistent clinging to ignoble attitudes may be the factor that makes
religious faith impossible. According to Dickens's "Tale of Two
Cities" a prisoner in the Bastille, who had lived in a cell and
cobbled shoes for many years, became so enamored of the narrow walls,
the darkness, the task's monotony, that, when liberated, he built a
cell at the center of his English home, and on days when the skies
were clear and birds were singing, the tap of his cobbler's hammer in
the dark could still be heard. So men, by an habitual residence in
imprisoning moods, render themselves incapable of loving the wide
horizons, the great faiths and hopes of religion. They do not merely
make excursions of transient emotion into morose hours and, like men
that find that the road is running into malarial swamps, turn swiftly
to the hills. They dwell in their moroseness; they _choose_ it, and
often obstinately resist deliverance.
The common moods that thus incapacitate the soul for faith are easily
seen in any man's experience. There are _sullen_ tempers when we are
churlish and want so to be. There are _stupid_ tempers, when our soul
is too negligent to care, too dull to ask for what only aspiring minds
can crave or find. There are _bored_ moods when we feel about all life
what Malachi's people felt about worship, "Behold, what a weariness is
it!" (Mal. 1:13); _rebellious_ moods when, like Jonah, deprived of a
comfort he desired, we cry, "I do well to be angry, even unto death"
(Jonah 4:9); _suspicious_ moods, when we mistrust everyone, and even
of some righteous Job hear Satan's insinuating sneer, "Does Job fear
God for nought?" (Job 1:9). No man is altogether strange to
_frivolous_ hours, when those thoughts are lost which must be handled
seriously if at all, and _wilful_ hours, when some private desire
assumes the center of the stage and angrily resents another voice than
his. To say that one who habitually harbors such moods cannot know God
is only a portion of the truth; such a man cannot know anything worth
knowing. He can know neither fine friends nor great books; he cannot
appreciate beautiful music or sublime scenery; he is lost to the
deepest loves of family and to every noble enthusiasm for human help.
Athwart the knowledge of these most gracious and necessary things
stand our obtuse, ignoble moods. The sullen, stupid, bored,
rebellious, suspicious, frivolous, or wilful tempers, made into a
spiritual residence, are the most deadly prison of the soul. Of course
one who dwells there has no confidence in God. Lord Shaftesbury, the
English philanthropist, made too sweeping a statement about this, but
one can see the basis for his judgment: "Nothing beside ill-humor,
either natural or forced, can bring a man to think seriously that the
world is governed by any devilish or malicious power. I very much
question whether anything beside ill-humor can be the cause of
atheism." At least one may be sure that where ill-humor habitually
reigns, vital faith in God is made impossible.
After full acknowledgment, therefore, of the momentous intellectual
problems of belief, we must add that there is a _moral qualification
for faith in God_. So great a matter is not achieved by any sort of
person, with any kind of habitual moods and tempers. There are views
which cellar windows do not afford; one must have balconies to see
them. When Jesus said that the pure in heart are blessed because they
see God, he was not thinking merely, perhaps not chiefly, of sexual
impurity as hindering vision. He was pleading for a heart cleansed of
all such perverse, morose, and wayward moods as shut the blinds on the
soul's windows. He knew that men could not easily escape the sense of
God's reality if they kept their vision clear. On elevated days we
naturally think of Spirit as real, and see ourselves as expressions of
spiritual purpose, our lives as servants of a spiritual cause. When
one habitually dwells in these finer moods, he cannot tolerate a world
where his Best is a transient accident. _He must have God, for faith
in God is the supreme assertion of the reality and eternity of man's
Best._ Any man who habitually lives in his finest moods will not
easily escape the penetrating sense of God's reality.
VI
The certainty with which we tend to be most deeply religious in our
best hours is clear when we consider that a man does practically
believe in the things which he counts of highest worth. Lotze, the
philosopher, even says that "Faith _is_ the feeling that is
appreciative of value." It is conceivable that one might be so
constituted that without any sense of value he could study facts, as
a deaf man might observe a symphony. The sound-waves such a man could
mechanically measure; he could analyze the motions of the players and
note the reactions of the crowd, but he would hear no music. He would
not suffuse the whole performance with his musical appreciations; he
would neither like it nor condemn. Man might be so constituted as to
face facts without feeling, but he is not. Facts never stand in our
experience thus barren and unappreciated--mere neutral _things_ that
mean nothing and have no value. The botanist in us may analyze the
flowers, but the poet in us estimates them. The penologist in us may
take the Bertillon measurements of a boy, but the father in us best
can tell how much, in spite of all his sin, that boy is worth. This
power to estimate life's _values_ is the fountain from which spring
our music, painting, and literature, our ideals and loves and
purposes, our morals and religion. Without it no man can live in the
real world at all.
If we would know, therefore, in what, at our highest altitudes, we
tend to believe, we should ask _what it is that we value most, when
we rise toward our best_. In our lowest hours what sordid,
mercenary, beastly things men may prize each heart knows well. But
ever as we approach our best the things that are worth most to us
become elevated and refined. Our better moods open our eyes to a world
where character is of more worth than all the rest beside, and through
which moral purpose runs, to be served with sacrifice. We become aware
of spiritual values in behalf of which at need physical existence must
be willingly laid down; and words like honor, love, fidelity, and
service in our hours of insight have halos over them that poorer moods
cannot discern. Man at his best, that is to say, _believes in_ an
invisible world of spiritual values, and he furnishes the final proof
of his faith's reality by sacrificing to it all lesser things. The
good, the true, the beautiful command him in his finer hours, and at
their beck and call he lays down wealth and ease and earthly hopes to
be their servant. Men really _do believe_ in the things for which
they sacrifice and die.
In no more searching way can a man's faith be described than _in terms
of the objects which thus he values most_. Wherever men find some
consuming aim that is for them so supreme in worth that they sacrifice
all else to win it, we speak of their attitude as a religion. The
"religion of science" describes the absolute devotion of investigators
to scientific research as the highest good; the "religion of art"
describes the consuming passion with which some value beauty. When we
say of one that "money is his God" we mean that he estimates it as
life's highest treasure, and when with Paul we speak of others, "whose
god is the belly" (Phil. 3:19), we mean men whose sensual life is to
them the thing worth most. _What men believe in, therefore, is most
deeply seen not by any opinions which they profess, but by the things
they prize._ Faith, as Ruskin said, is "that by which men act while
they live; not that which they talk of when they die." Many a man uses
pious affirmations of Christian faith, but it is easy to observe from
his life that what he really believes in is money. Where a man's
treasure is, as Jesus said, his heart is, and there his faith is, too.
Is there any doubt, then, what we most believe in when we are at our
best? While in our lower altitudes it may be easy to believe that the
physical is the ultimately real, in our upper altitudes we so value
the spiritual world, that we tend with undeniable conviction to feel
sure that it must be causal and eternal. Materialism is man's
"night-view" of his life; but the "day-view" is religion. Tyndall the
scientist was regarded by the Christians of his generation as the
enemy of almost everything that they held dear. Let him, then, be
witness for the truth which we have stated. "I have noticed," he said,
speaking of materialism, "during years of self-observation, that it is
not in hours of clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends itself
to my mind."
The challenge, therefore, presented to every one of us by Christian
faith is ultimately this: _Shall I believe the testimony of my better
hours or of my worse?_ Many who deny the central affirmations of the
Gospel put the object of their denial far away from them as though it
were an external thing; they say that they deny the creed or the Bible
or the doctrine about God. Such a description of a man's rejection of
religious faith is utterly inadequate--the real object of his denial
is inward. One may, indeed, discredit forms of doctrine and either be
unsure about or altogether disbelieve many things that Christians
hold, but when one makes a clean sweep of religion and banishes the
central faiths of Christianity _he is denying the testimony of his own
finest days_. From such rejection of faith one need not appeal to
creed nor Bible, nor to anything that anybody ever said. Let the
challenge strike inward to the man's own heart. From his denial of
religious faith we may appeal to the hours that he has known and yet
will know again, when the road rose under his feet and from a height
he looked on wide horizons and knew that he was at his best. To those
hours of clear insight, of keen thought, of love and great devotion,
when he knew that the spiritual is the real and the eternal, we may
appeal. They were his best. He _knows_ that they were his best. And as
long as humanity lives upon the earth this conviction must underlie
great living--that _we will not deny the validity of our own best
hours_.