INTRODUCTORY
HEARD the other morning a sermon by a
distinguished preacher upon "Rest." It was full of delightful thoughts; but
when I came to ask myself," How does he say I can yet Rest?" there was no
answer. The sermon was sincerely meant to be practical, yet it contained no
experience that seemed to me to be tangible, nor any advice which could help me
to find the thing itself as I went about the world that afternoon. Yet this
omission of the only important problem was not the fault of the preacher. The
whole popular religion is in the twilight here. And when pressed for really
working specifics for the experiences with which it deals, it falters, and
seems to lose itself in mist.
This want of connection between the great words
of religion and every-day life has bewildered and discouraged all of us.
Christianity possesses the noblest words in the language; its literature
overflows with terms expressive of the greatest and happiest moods which can
fill the soul of man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith, Love, Light--these words occur
with such persistency in hymns and prayers that an observer might think they
formed the staple of Christian experience. But on coming to close quarters with
the actual life of most of us, how surely would he be disenchanted. I do not
think we ourselves are aware how much our Religious life is made up of phrases;
how much of what we call Christian experience is only a dialect of the
Churches, a mere religious phraseology with almost nothing behind it in what we
really feel and know.
For some of us, indeed, the Christian experiences
seem further away than when we took the first steps in the Christian life. That
life has not opened out as we had hoped; we do not regret our religion, but we
are disappointed with it. There are times, perhaps, when wandering notes from
diviner music stray into our spirits; but these experiences come at few and
fitful moments. We have no sense of possession in them. When they visit
us, it is a surprise. When they leave us, it is without explanation. When we
wish their return, we do not know how to secure it
All which points to a religion without solid
base, and a poor and flickering life. It means a great bankruptcy in those
experiences which give Christianity its personal solace and make it attractive
to the world, and a great uncertainty as to any remedy. It is as if we knew
everything about health-- except the way to get it.
I am quite sure that the difficulty does not lie
in the fact that men are not in earnest. This is simply not the fact. All
around us Christians are wearing themselves out in trying to be better. The
amount of spiritual longing in the world--in the hearts of unnumbered thousands
of men and women in whom we should never suspect it; among the wise and
thoughtful; among the young and gay, who seldom assuage and never betray their
thirst--this is one of the most wonderful and touching facts of life. It is not
more heat that is needed, but more light; not more force, but a wiser direction
to be given to very real energies already there.
What Christian experience wants is thread,
a vertebral column, method. It is impossible to believe that there is no
remedy for its unevenness and dishevelment, or that the remedy is a secret. The
idea, also, that some few men, by happy chance or happier temperament, have
acquired the secret--as if there were some sort of knack or trick of it--is
wholly incredible. Religion must ripen its fruit for men of every temperament;
and the way even into its highest heights must be by a gateway through which
the peoples of the world may pass.
I shall try to lead up to this gateway by a very
familiar path. But as that path is strangely unfrequented, and even unknown
where it passes into the religious sphere, I must dwell for a moment on the
commonest of commonplaces