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Page 11
Such moments, however, are not abiding; and in the reaction that follows
them the mind will question whether it has not been the victim of
illusion. John Bunyan owns: "Though God has visited my soul with never
so blessed a discovery of Himself, yet afterwards I have been in my
spirit so filled with darkness, that I could not so much as once
conceive what that God and that comfort was with which I had been
refreshed." Many a Christian today knows the inspiration and calm and
reinforcement of religion, only to find himself wondering whether these
may not come from an idea in his own head, and not from a personal God.
May we not be in a subjective prison from whose walls words and prayers
rebound without outer effect?
How far may we trust our experience as validating the inferences we draw
from it? The Christian thought of God is after all no more than an
hypothesis propounded to account for the Christian life. May not our
experiences be accounted for in some other way? We must distinguish
between the adequacy of our thought of God and the fact that there is a
God more or less like our thought of Him. Our experience can never
guarantee the entire correctness of our concept of Deity; a child
experiences parental love without knowing accurately who its parents
are--their characters, position, abilities, etc. But the child's
experience of loving care convinces the child that he possesses living
parents. Is it likely that, were God a mere fancy, a fancy which we
should promptly discard if we knew it as such, our experience could be
what it is? An explanation of an experience, which would destroy that
experience, is scarcely to be received as an explanation. Religion is
incomparably valuable, and to account for it as self-hypnosis would end
it for us as a piece of folly. Can life's highest values be so dealt
with? Moreover, we cannot settle down comfortably in unbelief; just when
we feel most sure that there is no God, something unsettles us, and
gives us an uncanny feeling that after all He is, and is seeking us. We
find ourselves responding, and once more we are strengthened,
encouraged, uplifted. Can a mere imagination compass such results?
How shall we test the validity of the inference we draw from our
experience?
One test is the satisfaction that it gives to _all_ elements in our
complex personality. One part of us may be deceived, but that which
contents the entire man is not likely to be unreal. Arthur Hallam
declared that he liked Christianity because "it fits into all the folds
of one's nature." Further, this satisfaction is not temporary but
persistent. In childhood, in youth, in middle age, at the gates of
death, in countless experiences, the God we infer from our spirit's
reactions to Him meets and answers our changing needs. Matthew Arnold
writes: "Jesus Christ and His precepts are found to hit the moral
experience of mankind; to hit it in the critical points; to hit it
lastingly; and, when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it,
then to come out stronger than ever." Unless we are to distrust
ourselves altogether, that which appeals to our minds as reasonable, to
our hearts as lovable, to our consciences as commanding, and to our
souls as adorable, can hardly be "such stuff as dreams are made on."
Nor are we looking at ourselves alone. We are confirmed by the completer
experiences of the generations who have preceded us. "They looked unto
Him and were radiant." Those thousands of beautiful and holy faces in
each century, "lit with their loving and aflame with God," can scarcely
have been gazing on light kindled solely by their own imaginations.
And all their minds transfigured so together,
More witnesseth than fancy's images,
And grows to something of great constancy.
Religion has written its witness into the world's history, and we can
appeal to an eloquent past.
Look at the generations of old, and see:
Who did ever put his trust in the Lord, and was ashamed?
Or who did abide in His fear, and was forsaken?
Or who did call upon Him, and He despised him?
And its witness comes from today as certainly, and more widely, than
from any believing yesterday. Ten thousand times ten thousand, and
thousands of thousands, out of every kindred and tongue and nation,
throughout the world, testify what the God and Father of Jesus Christ
means to them. Are we all self-deceived?
Nor are we limited to the experiences of those who at best impress us as
partially religious. For the final confirmation of our faith we look to
the ideal Believer, who not only has an ampler religious experience than
any other, but also possesses more power to create faith, and to take us
farther into the Unseen; we look unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of
faith. His life and death, His character and influence, remain the
world's most priceless possession. Was the faith which produced them,
the faith which inspired Him, an hallucination? There is contained in
that life more proof that God is, than in all other approach of God to
man, or of man to God.
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