iv. His Prayer.
** I believe ; help thou mine unbelief."
1. When we take the prayer in its entirety, it may seem to us a hrief and imperfect confession, and a prayer which it were needless for us to use. Certainly the words recorded by St. Mark were the expression of a weak, rudimentary faith : a confession due to interested motives, followed by the petition of one struggling to attain just such a measure of belief as was the necessary condition of his request being granted. " Only he who really believes," it has been said, "guesses aught of the unbelief of his heart." He is no true believer who is not keenly alive to the weakness and unworthiness of his faith. No one who has any true faith can fail to realise how this continually requires enlarging and strengthening. We can never dispense with the prayer, " Help thou mine unbelief," until this life is ended, and faith is exchanged for the open vision of those who know even as they are known. The disciples themselves were rebuked on this very occasion for their unbelief. Later in the ministry they were constrained to address to their Master the petition, " Lord, add to our faith," ^ 1 0. H. Parkhurst. ^ H. M. Stanley, In Da/rkest Africa, i. 2. » T. H. Stokoe.
ST. MARK 221
^ " What God requires and looks at," says Bishop Hall, " is neither the arithmetic of our prayers — how many they are ; nor the rhetoric of our prayers — how eloquent they be; nor the geometry of our prayers — how long they be; nor the music of our prayers — how sweet our voice may be; nor the logic, nor the method, nor even the orthodoxy of our prayers. The one thing which prevails is ferventness and sincerity."
2. The very appeal is a tribute to God. — May we not say that there is a faith of the mind and a faith of the heart ? One climbs to his creed by syllogisms, from premise to con- clusion, and seems to know not only what he believes, but why he believes it. Another is averse to logic, and clings to God in trustfulness through the magnetism of love. He does not know why he believes ; it is enough for him that the character of God finds a response and an affinity in the impulses of his own soul. He may not exactly believe in the God of other men, at least according to the portraiture given by other men, but he believes in God as he understands His portraiture in the Gospel, and he worships what he sees. From the view-point of other men he may be an unbeliever, but his soul clings to an ideal which he finds in the Book of God ; and at least he can say : " Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." And he may take to himself the words of the apostle : " If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." It is something to know what is in your mind, but it is more to know what is in your heart, for out of the heart are the issues of life. The brain is the birthplace of ideas. The heart is the touchstone of impulse. The mind moulds creeds. The heart may have no spoken language, but it is a dynamo, and it throbs motive into life.
^ A Society of Atheists at Venice sent an address to Victor Emmanuel congratulating him on the escape of his son and daughter from assassination. Forgetting that they were atheists, they thanked Divine Providence for the miraculous escape.
^ It is told of Thistlewood, the Cato Street conspirator, that, after arguing against the existence of a God, the moment he was left alone he was heard to fling himself on his knees in his prison cell in a passion of entreaty, and that on the scaffold he poured out the agonised supplication, " 0 God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul ! " ^
1 S. J. Hardy.
222 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
IL
Christ's Attitude towards the Suppliaijt.
i. The Sympathy of Christ.
1. There are people so superior in their own estimation that it is impossible to approach them. They do not suffer fools gladly or suffer them at all. If we ask them a question they snap us up ; they cannot tolerate our ignorance and stupidity. It is different with those who are really great. Their patience with our infirmities often surprises us. And the greatest of all, the perfect Man, was, and is, the most accessible. He suffered children to come unto Him when His followers would have driven them away. Any one might touch His garment, and He put His hand even on lepers. Few of us believe enough to tolerate doubt. How different was the Truth in this respect ! The greater than Solomon who answered the hard questions of humanity was most patient to faithless, awkward, stupid interrogators. The Lord Jesus Christ did not insist upon a confession of His Divinity. Christ's first followers were far from possessing the full Christian belief. A centurion merely said that a word of His would heal, and the Lord commended the greatness of his faith. An alien woman asked to eat the crumbs of His mercy, and He answered, " 0 woman, great is thy faith." When one of His followers declared Him to be " the Christ, the Son of the living God," he received the beatitude which may now be read in huge letters underneath the dome of St. Peter's.