Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

To find Thee only.

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That Thou alone wouldst speak to me, and I to Thee,

As a lover talking to his loved one,

A friend at table with his friend,”[11]

is ever the aspiration of the devout soul. This continuous aspiration towards closest communion is, spoken or unspoken, the prayer of faith. A vain and fond imagination, says the sceptic, begotten of the heart, as when Narcissus became enamoured of his reflected image! What have we to say in reply? Nothing. He who does not perceive that he loves in his brother not the material form, but the spiritual being of which this form is one expression, how can he understand that the Spirit of God should draw with irresistible drawings the spirit of man, which is indeed the whole man. For, after all, what is the body but the garment which the spirit shapes to its uses?

To accept the outward seeming, to ignore the spiritual reality, is the easier way. To say that prayer is flung, as a child flings his kite, into the air, only to come down again; to say that men are the creatures of circumstances, with no power to determine their own fate; that this belief and that are equal verities, and that the worship of Christ or of Buddha is a mere affair of climate and conditions; this easy tolerance commends itself to many minds in these days.

“And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man?... To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to shameful loneliness and selfishness, the more shameful because it is so good-humoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike, enveloped in enormous tradition. If, seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest further than a laugh; if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to go past groaning by you unmoved; if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you had better have died, or never have been at all, than be such a sensual coward.”[12]

Mr. Beeching’s Eleven Sermons on Faith are in refreshing contrast with this sort of modern Saduceeism. In his view, faith is not mystic, supernatural, an exceptional development; it is the common basis of our dealings with each other. Credit, trust, confidence—the framework of society rests upon these. “I cannot trust you”—what worse thing can we say to one another? The law recognises every man’s right to the confidence of his fellow-men, and will have a man accounted innocent until he is proved guilty. Our whole commercial and banking systems, what are they, but enormous systems of credit, and only one in a hundred, or one in a thousand, fails to sustain this credit. Family and social life rest upon credit of another sort; let us call it moral credit, and only one in a hundred or one in a thousand forfeits the trust. If one here and there give occasion for jealousy, mistrust, suspicion, why, the exception proves the rule. In his dealings with men, man lives by credit; in his dealings with God, man lives by faith. Let us use the same word in both cases, and say that man is a spiritual being, and, in all his relations, Godward or manward, he lives by faith. How simple and easy a thing faith becomes! How especially easy to the children who trust everybody and offer a confiding hand to any guide. Could we only rid ourselves of the materialistic notion that spiritual things are not to be understood by us, and that to believe in God is altogether a different thing from to trust a friend, how easy we should find the questions which we allow to stagger our faith.

But the Kingdom of God is coming upon us with power. Let us only break down this foolish barrier of the flesh; let us perceive that our relations with each other are the relations of spirit with spirit, and that spoken and written words are no more than the outward and visible signs of ideas spiritually conveyed, and how inevitable, incessant, all-encompassing becomes the presence of God about us. Faith is, then, the simple trust of person in Person. We realise with fearful joy that He is about our path, and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways—not with the austere eye of a judge, but with the caressing, if critical, glance of a parent. How easy, then, to understand the never-ceasing, ever-inspiring intercourse of the Divine Spirit with the spirit of man—how, morning by morning, He awakeneth our ear, also; how His inspiration and instruction come in the direction, and in the degree, in which the man is capable of receiving them. It is no longer a puzzle to us that the uninstructed savage shows sweet traits of pity and generosity, “for His God doth instruct him and doth teach him.” We are not confounded when we hear of a righteous man who lifts up his face to Heaven, and says, “There is no God,” because we know, He maketh His sun to shine upon the evil and upon the good, and that just that measure of moral light and leading which a man lays himself open to receive is freely given to him. He may shut his eyes and say, “There is no sun,” but none the less is he warmed and fed and comforted by the light he denies. This is the faith in which we would bring up our children, this strong, passionate sense of the dear nearness of our God; found in this conviction, the controversies of the day will interest but not exercise us, for we are on the other side of all doubt once we know Him in whom we have believed.