When I say I have been “rightly guided” to this or that step, I mean that, being well within the limits prescribed by morality, by personal claims, by the closest attention to the voice of conscience, I have yet felt that there was still a choice to be made as between things equally innocent but probably not equally excellent—a choice, perhaps, between different levels almost infinitely remote from each other—and that in making that choice I have acted under an impelling or restraining power not of my own exerting. I generally mean, further, that in making the choice I have looked, and probably asked, for light from above, and that the results of such choice have tended to confirm the belief that my action has been prompted by One who could see the end from the beginning, who knew things hidden from myself, and “understood my path long before;” in short, that I have been led as the blind by a way I knew not. Is not such experience as this witnessed to by multitudes of Christians, especially as they advance in life? For it may take long years of patience before the last pieces are fitted into the puzzle, so as to enable us to judge of the intention of the whole.
I am well aware that I am speaking of a region of experience in which there is abundant room for self-deception. I know that those who, out of the abundance of the heart, speak very freely of these things with their lips are apt not only to shock one’s sense of reverence, but to betray a deplorable want of logic in the inferences they draw from trifling facts—facts whose significance to themselves cannot possibly be conveyed to others, and may indeed very likely be in large measure fanciful or even distorted. I think that we are wrong when we attempt to found any sort of proof or argument in favour of what is called “a particular providence” exclusively upon the occurrences of our own lives. People forget that what is most convincing to themselves, because it was within the four walls of their own experience that it happened, is for that very reason least convincing to others—that is, in the way of argument, though the impression may, of course, be sympathetically shared, and may rightly have special weight with those who have reason to trust the speaker. But, as a general rule, I believe that reverence and reason combine to demand that the personal and intimate dealings of Divine Providence with each one should be mainly reserved for personal and intimate use and edification. Proof or argument as to the general truth that God does guide His people individually must be founded upon a wider basis than is afforded by any one person’s experience. I believe that there are abundant reasons, of a far-reaching and deep kind, to justify each one in looking for the minutest individual guidance. I cannot, indeed, as I have already stated, understand how those who believe in a providential order at all can limit it to the larger outlines, or, as is so often done in practice, to the pleasing results of the Divine government. If we believe, in any real and honest sense, that the ordering of all human affairs is in the hands of one supreme Ruler, how can we stop short of believing that the minutest trifle affecting any one of us is under the same all-pervading care? It would, I think, be as reasonable to say that God created animals, but left it to each one to develop its own fur or feathers. And, again, if we attribute our preservation from danger to Him, how can we flinch from the parallel belief that by His ordinance also we were exposed to it; yes, and in some cases doomed to suffer the worst it can wreak upon us “without reprieve”?
Therefore I believe that, before we can hope to enter into that intimate and blessed communion with God which transfigures all life, two great conditions must be fulfilled. We must have settled it in our hearts that everything, from the least to the greatest, is to be taken as His language—language which it is our main business here to learn to interpret—and we must be willing to face all pain as His discipline.
I know, of course, that these two conditions can be perfectly fulfilled only as the result of much discipline and much experience of the very guidance in question. But their roots—docility and courage—are in some measure implanted in us long before we begin to think about such questions as the government of the world or the ordering of our lives.
It is, I believe, in the last of these two demands of logic, the demand upon our courage, that the moral hindrance to a full belief in Divine guidance mainly lies. People cannot bring themselves to feel that the infliction of pain can be the act of One whom they desire to know as Love. Yet this is the very central demand of Christianity. What is courage but the willingness to encounter suffering, the readiness to take up the cross?
In the strength of the Spirit of Christ, the everlasting Son of the Father, we can rise to this victory of trust; we can meet life without flinching, and read its darkest riddles in the light of the revelation of Divine love which He has won for us by His own suffering and death. Seen in that light, it is, according to the universal testimony of the saints, a gentle, though often most severe, unfolding of depth within depth of heavenly wisdom—gentle beyond words in its methods, yet inexorable in its conditions. At every step the fiery baptism must be encountered. The deep things of God cannot be reached except through the very destruction of the perishing flesh. It is through death that we enter into life. But as we do enter into it, we can truly look back and say that His ordering has been better than our planning—that His thoughts are high above our thoughts, as the heaven is above the earth.
Our goal must be a heavenly one if we are to judge truly of His guidance. The home to which, if we trust Him, He will assuredly lead us, is no earthly home; but Zion—the heavenly Jerusalem; the beautiful city of peace, which can be entered only through much tribulation. Those who are looking for smooth roads and luxurious resting-places, may well say they perceive no sign of guidance at all. The Divine guidance is away from self-indulgence, often away from outward success; through humiliation and failure, and many snares and temptations; over rough roads and against opposing forces—always uphill. Its evidence of success is in the inmost, deepest, most spiritual part of our existence. It is idle indeed to talk of it to those whose faces are not set Zion-wards. It will bring them none of the results in which they have their reward. Those who know the voice of the Divine Guide, and those who deny that it can be heard, are not so much contradicting each other as speaking different languages—or rather speaking in reference to different states of existence.
I have been speaking of “light,” “voice,” “guidance,” as almost equivalent and interchangeable expressions for our consciousness of the presence of God with us and in us. In the expression “inspiration” we have further the symbol of His power—of the upbearing, purifying, energizing gift of His own Spirit. Here words almost fail; and fresh care is needed, whether in speaking or in hearing, as we draw near to those depths which “cannot be uttered.” I pause on the threshold of the inner chamber of the heart, the holy place of true worship.
CHAPTER III.
WORSHIP.
Our manner of worship is the natural (as it seems to me even the inevitable) result of the full recognition of the reality of Divine inspiration—of the actual living present sufficient fulness of intercourse between the human spirit and Him who is the Father of spirits. Who that truly expects to hear the voice of God can do otherwise than bow in silence before Him?