Of all the objects of faith, however, faith in Christ is historically the best established, humanly the most intelligible, and as a matter of personal experience the most easily found to be true. If in any man it is not all this, truly and enduringly, then the cause lies in his own will, or absence of will, for which the Gospel of John finds the correct expression, “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God.” Luther also truly says: “Because the expression ‘to trust God and serve Him’ must be so elastic that every man follows after his own thoughts, and one thinks so and the other thus, therefore He has fixed Himself to a certain place and to a certain person, since He wants to be found and met in such a way that one may not miss Him.” A man’s faith is, therefore, itself no force or power, else superstition must also be such, but all true power in spiritual things is the property of God. But he summons this power and makes its appearance upon earth possible.
Only, this is likewise true, that Christianity has no effect in a man whose spirit is unbroken, who has no inner humility, but then it remains an empty form at best. If it is then united with the office of teaching, or with some other pretension of a special position or distinction, it conduces to the man’s destruction. What is regarded in the outer life as an irreparable harm, “a broken existence,” a rent that runs through all the plans of life, is not at all such in the inner; on the contrary, that is the soil in which faith in Christ best prospers, and they of all men are most to be pitied who despair just at the moment when they find themselves in such a position and can not grasp how near they are to salvation.
From this moment of humility there enters into man the real regenerative power of the good, which springs from that true righteousness which “counts” with God.
His further journey is, on the one hand, much easier than is often represented, for nothing more is now required of the man for which he has not power and insight in sufficient measure, together with a gladness of hope that can no longer be wholly troubled, and with a special, personal guidance that lightens all. But, on the other hand, it is more difficult than is, in this first moment, believed. For life is yet far from its termination; indeed, now is its real starting-point, and there begins a long series of occurrences which all have the purpose of showing man his real nature more clearly than he was in position to bear earlier, and of gradually being no longer indulgent toward him in any respect, as was hitherto in great measure the case. For “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” But all this happens only in the following, or even, now and then, in the final, period of life; before, it would have been quite impossible.
III
The difference between this “new life,” as Dante already called it, and the earlier seems not to be very great at first, and particularly not so great as fantasy, which always flies higher than reality, and enthusiasm, which must accompany every great resolve, had expected. Indeed, it is possible that there will still be moments in which the soul, freed from the slavery of selfishness, is seized with a certain backward-glancing desire for the “flesh-pots of Egypt”; for, in truth, the old “enjoyment of life” fades away only by slow degrees.
But there is one essential difference that is always noticeable: first of all, in the taking away of the feeling of fear and anxiety before an uncertain future, and of the continual fluctuation between exultation and dejection, which never let the feeling of security prevail. But now there is a fixed point where there is always rest. From this there follows, of itself, more patience with oneself and others, and less dependence upon them, besides a juster discernment for the essential in all things, and therewith the true wisdom of life that springs therefrom. Finally (and this is the chief matter), there is an absence of the continuous sense of sin because it can always be at once abolished, and there is a certainty of the right road, of steady advance, and of a good outcome at the end of life: “the path of the righteous is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
The first period of this division of life is usually filled up with the continuous strengthening and confirmation of these principles through tests of many kinds. These can not fail to appear very soon, for faith, in spite of what has been said above, is nothing traditional that persists once for all, but something that must be engendered anew daily and hourly. A faith that is not always living and present could not be capable of successfully withstanding the attacks of Apollyon, who desires surely to reclaim his rebellious subject.
The power of this “Spirit of the World” is very great; happily, one experiences this only gradually in life; otherwise, perhaps, no one would have the courage to take up the battle with it. But there is one power that is still greater, and that is the power of God, which is made alive in a man through true Christianity. The chief matter in this (for most) the longest period of life is, therefore, steadfastness and courage. “Hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown;” and look not back, when thou hast once laid hand to plough.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing in this period of life is the union in man of divine control with freedom. Whatever God wills, he carries out in the man—easily, if he gives up his will, with difficulty and sorrow, if he resists or desires to go another way, and no power in the world can any longer prevent it. But there are, nevertheless, long portions of time at this stage of life when all principles or doctrines of belief refuse their service, and everything transcendental persists in appearing again as a mere dream and sport of fantasy. Those are the dangerous times in which the soul must keep itself quite still and beware of all decisive activity. But if it is obliged to act, then let it say with the Spanish poet, “And be my life or truth or dream, right must my actions be.”