■[j I go to some respectable pew-holder in my church and I say to him, " My friend, do you believe in God ? " Affrighted and indignant he turns round on me and asks, " What do you take me for ? A pagan ? An atheist ? Of course I believe in God." And then my doubt as to his belief in God deepens, for when a man answering such a question can say that he believes as a matter of course, I begin to doubt whether he has ever gone through the Gethsemanes of brain-sweat and heart-sweat
' Wordsworth.
2 KINGS VI. 17 479
essential to the mastery of that truth which is not a matter of course, which has to be worked for, wrestled for, prayed for, waited for, sufiered for, by some of us through long years of varied agony of mind and of flesh. But I say to my friend, "Tell me something of this God in whom you believe." And immediately he goes back, guided by the information of the Bible, and he describes to me the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of David and Isaiah, the God revealed in Christ, the God who inspired the apostolic age. And I then ask him, " What more ? " and he turns right round from the far past to the far future, and he tells me of God who, somewhere and some when, when the shadows of all have been dissipated and the sins of all have been washed out, will then live and walk in the midst of His people, a reconciled and recognized Father and Friend. But when I push the inquiry, " What about London to-day, what about our Life to-day, our problems, our burdens, our necessities ? " then it seems to me that there is for him just one vast arch from the far past to the far future, and that under that arch there is an infinite void in which there is no God. There are plenty of men who believe in God who do not see Him, do not know Him, do not feel His living contact, do not respond with the glow and gladness of their whole being to His close and intimate and redeeming relations.^
0 distant Christ! the crowded, darkening years Drift slow between Thy gracious face and me; My hungry heart leans back to look for Thee,
But finds the way set thick with doubts and fears.
My groping hands would touch Thy garment's hem, Would find some token Thou art walking near; Instead they clasp but empty darkness drear,
And no diviner hands reach out to them !
Sometimes my listening soul, with bated breath, Stands still to catch a footfall by my side, Lest, haply, my earth-blinded eyes but hide
Thy stately figure, leading Life and Death;
My straining eyes, 0 Christ, but long to mark A shadow of Thy presence, dim and sweet, Or far-off light to guide my wandering feet,
Or hope for hands prayer-beating 'gainst the dark.
1 C, A. Berry.
48o THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE
0 Thou ! unseen by me, that like a child Tries in the night to find its mother's heart, And weeping, wanders only more apart,
Not knowing in the darkness that she smiled —
Thou, all unseen, dost hear my tired cry,
As I, in darkness of a half belief.
Grope for Thy heart, in love and doubt and grief: O Lord ! speak soon to me — " Lo, here am I." ^
III.
The Invisible Visible.
" The Lord opened the eyes of the young man ; and he saw : and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."
There are some spheres where the holden eyes are blessed. We do not forget that it is the great compassion of God that keeps us half-blind from the cradle to the grave. They darken the bird's cage, they tell us, when they teach it to sing; and unless the covering hand of the Almighty darkened the windows here, we should never sing, and never be strong at all. It is God's mercy that I do not see the future. It was God's grace that the mother's eyes were sealed, when long years ago she crooned her babe to sleep ; and her heart was radiant, and she dreamed her dreams — and where is her wandering boy to-night ? If we had known, if we had seen, could we have stood it? It was compassion that hung that curtain on to-morrow. Do not forget that. Do not be blind to the untold blessings of our blindness. But we are not pleading for vision for to-morrow. We are plead- ing for the recognition of the Spiritual, and for its recognition to-day. It is to-day that there are horses and chariots round us. It is to-day that there are promises and helps for us. It is to-day that Christ stands at the door and knocks. " Lord, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man " there at once.
1. The Spiritual vision does not come to all. Why ? we ask. And the answer seems to be that they have not fulfilled the conditions.
* Margaret Wade Dcland.
2 KINGS VI. 17 481