13. Now, if we have established things so far, can you stop there? If you believe that there is sympathy in God with what we call love and moral law in man, can you stop short and say, 'But God does not communicate with man'? Will you confront with calm denial the whole experience of the world-the conviction most instinctive, most indispensable, most dear to human beings? A consciousness rather than an intelligence that God is in communication with the human spirit? As of old, men crave for signs and wonders. They think they would believe if occasionally one rose from the dead. But what would be the use of that? If a flaming spirit descended at this moment into this church bearing a revelation from the Invisible; don't you think we should have fifty explanations of the occurrence ready by to-morrow morning, and a facetious article upon the subject in the next Saturday Review? Is there one medical man present who, in spite of his own senses, would not be prepared to maintain the hallucination theory rather than the supernatural theory? But persistent consciousness of Divine communion, the consciousness of ages, substantially identical with our own consciousness, is less easy to tamper with; the spirit of sons, crying, Abba, Father, is less easy to silence. This is the consciousness which is more than a feeling, and above a knowledge! I see before me stretching away down the dim vistas of time, ranges of temples thronged with worshippers. These countless fanes were raised to this known yet unknown God. Sacrifices and prayers have been offered to him in heathen groves, in Indian forests, upon Gentile mountains, in Jewish synagogues, and in all lands. See how, from the early dawn of history, there has been an innumerable multitude bowing down in prayer because they have this consciousness and need in them of God realised, this ineradicable desire to meet Him, this conviction that He was to be met with. Yes, my brethren, underlying the grossest idolatries I find this permanent passion, this lonely cry, this imperishable faith. Even now, this very congregation before me bears witness to the impossibility of exterminating the sentiment and crushing out our permanent instinct in this most corrupt and immoral city, in this most civilised but sceptical age. You are still here by virtue of your belief that God can be communicated with, and that you are in some sort communicating with Him this day. But withdraw your thoughts if you can from the multitude. Look at the central religious reformers of the world. Suppose your own feeble glimmer of religious sensibility is but a false and fugitive 'ignis fatuus.'. Do you believe that the saints, the apostles, the martyrs, were all taken in, that all their experience was imagination, that they were all the time merely bowing down to some moral sentiment created by themselves, in the teeth of lust, avarice, and violence, a sentiment corresponding to no divine Reality, with no other ground than the shifting and baseless fabric of a dream? Look at Luther breaking away from the prejudices of his early youth-Luther, who might have been an illustrious Roman doctor, a wealthy and popular ecclesiastic, perhaps the most admired, the most popular man in Europe. Behold him breaking away for truth and conscience sake, because he had the pure conviction that he was supported in the path of duty by a communion with his God. See him as he stands before the powerful ones of the earth, defying them and living a life of martyrdom in this world, because he was supported by this same feeling of communion, this justification which he had by Faith, this strong and righteous sense of soulallegiance to the Most High. Do you think it was a fancy which induced Paul to relinquish the brilliant career before him for one of constant trial and persecution? Paul, who might have been a brilliant ornament to the society in which he had been brought up, throwing over all his early friends and associations, lifted up by the same sense of Divine communion. What enthusiasm has cheered on those solitary wanderers who have borne the seeds of truth across tempestuous oceans and untravelled continents? Who was with them in the darkness? Who was by their side in the lonely forest? Who supported them when they were led to the stake for conscience sake? Whose arms were about them when the savage hatchet clave their temples, and their blood was poured out upon the lone sea-shore? All, all were the victims of their own delusion. Though calm their lives-though wise their counsels, though pure their deeds, all, all were deceived. They had no Father in heaven; there was no God, no Comforter. And Jesus Christ, too, brethren. Say you He was a mere dreamer? No Son of God at all? None heard Him when He prayed, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' No angel from heaven comforted Him. Was he a forsaken man, speaking wild words into the midnight air; was His whole life nothing but that of a deluded enthusiast? or was He indeed thrilled through and through with the Divine life to be what He came forth from God to be, to accomplish what he did, and to drink to the dregs 'the cup which the Father had given him'? The most transcendent facts of history, the lives of all prophets, of all religious reformers, of all devout worshippers, the mission-work of the Jewish nation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, and all the religions of the East, and the West, and the North, and the South, are without explanation if you deny the God-consciousness in humanity, and the God-communion with man. But why need I dwell upon the past when I look around me, upon this crowded assembly, upon you, my brethren, who have this morning listened with such marked attention to a discourse which cannot have been very easy to follow? I ask, what does this concourse mean? Why are these people here? Why are others crowding into churches and chapels this day all over the land? Because the services are conducted in so excellent a manner? Because the churches are so handsomely decorated that they have a tendency to draw people in to look at them? Is that the reason why people go to church? Because they have never heard a word against religion in any of its forms? Because the ground of their faith has never been questioned ? Because the air is not impregnated with Atheism and with forms of belief which qualify each other until nothing is left? Is that why? No; that is not why. It is because they cannot get out of their minds, although all the influences of the world are against them, though many impulses of their own hearts are against them, and the flesh and the devil are against them, and some, even of the foremost intellects of our time, cast doubts upon the possibility of a rational religion at all-yet they cannot get out of their minds this exalted and adorable superstition that God is in the midst of His people, about their beds and about their path, spying out all their ways, coming to us in our youth and health and in the exuberance of our physical life, coming to us in the paralysis of tribulation, a ready help in time of trouble, wiping away our tears and binding up the brokenhearted, and doing for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think, for His great love wherewith He has loved us! O living will, that shalt endure When all that seems shall suffer shock, Rise in the spiritual rock, Flow through our deeds and make them pure, That we may raise from out of dust A voice as unto him that hears By Faith that comes of self-control, The truths that never can be proved |