The true inward knowledge that Christ is God comes not by nature to any man, but by gift of God—which gift must be earnestly sought, striven, prayed for, and desired: this faith is the very coming to God by which we are saved. If we are not yet in this faith that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, then we are neither Jew, Mahommedan, nor Christian, but wanderers without a fold, and without a Shepherd; longing, and not yet comforted.
How do we come by this joy of the personal loving of God, this Romance of the Soul brought to sensible fruition whilst still in the flesh?
Is it a gift? Yes. Is it a gift because of some merit of goodness on our part beyond the goodness of other persons who are without it, though striving? No. Is it because of some work for God that we do in this world, charitable or social? No. Is it, then, nothing but an arbitrary favouritism on His part? No. Is it a sagacity or cleverness, a height of learning, a result of close study? No.
It is simply and solely a certain and particular obedient attitude of heart and mind towards God of the nature of a longing—giving, a grateful outgoing thinking towards Him, continually maintained, and a heart invitation to, and a receiving of Jesus Christ into ourselves.
Our part is to maintain this obedient tender-waiting, giving and receiving attitude under all the circumstances of daily life, and Christ with the Holy Ghost will then work the miracle in us.
But so difficult is this attitude to maintain that we are totally unable to do it without another gift upon His part—Grace. The whole process from first to last is gift upon gift, and that because first of our belief and desire, and then of our continually remembering that to receive these gifts we have a part to play which God will not dispense with. For an illustration let us turn to the artist and his sitter. The sitter does not produce the work of art, but must maintain his attitude: if he refuses to do this, the work of the artist is marred and even altogether foiled. So with Christ and His Divine Art in bringing us to our Father—by not endeavouring to maintain our right attitude we foil His work. God would seem to give us that which we seek and ask for, and no more. Great ecclesiastics, theologians, philosophers who sought and desired Him with the intelligence, seeking for knowledge, for pre-eminence of spiritual wisdom, were not given as an addition to their learning this exquisite fire and balm of love. Those who desired of Christ the healing of the body received that, and we are not told they received anything further. So also with the woman at the well: "If thou hadst asked," Christ said to her, "I would have given thee of the water of Life." Without we ask for and receive this gift of Love we hang to God by Faith only.
What is true religion, what is that religion by which we shall feel wholly satisfied? It is to have Christ recognised, known, adored, and living in the soul. This is the New Life within us, this is the New Birth. The first proofs of the power of this New Life in us is the victory over all the lower passions, victory over the animal "that once was ourself"! A victory so complete that not only do we cease to desire those former things or be troubled by them but we no longer "respond" to that which is base, even though we be brought into visual contact with such things as would formerly have inevitably excited at least a passing response in us. Can any man free himself in such a manner from his own nature? Common sense forbids us imagine it. It is then a Living Power within us, slowly transforming us to higher levels, from the fleshly to the spiritual, and shaping us to meet the purity of God. And such is the tender consideration of this Power for our weakness that while we are learning to give up these baser pleasures He teaches us the higher pleasures of the soul—we are not left comfortless. So in our earlier stages we may have many very wonderful ecstasies which later are altogether dispensed with, and indeed are eventually not desired by the soul, or even the more greedy heart and mind, which all now ask and desire one favour only—to be on earth in continual fellowship with Christ Jesus and ever able to enter into the love of God. To be without this glorious power of entering Responsive Love of God, to be cut off from this, is the great and only fear of the soul. This fear it is which holds the soul and the creature towards God both day and night lest by the least forgetfulness or wrongful attitude they should lose Him or displease Him.
All these changes no man can bring about for himself—they are accomplished for him by the Holy Spirit; but this he can and must do for himself, invite Sweet Jesus into his heart and enthrone Him there as Ruler. This once accomplished, that mysterious monitor within us commonly known as "Conscience" grows until it attains an excessive sensitiveness which penetrates the minutest acts of life and the deepest recesses of heart and mind. It becomes inexorable, it demands instant and complete obedience. Because of it relations with other persons undergo a drastic change. Complete, instant, entire forgiveness for every offence is demanded, and at last even a momentary annoyance must be effaced; no matter how great the cause of annoyance, it must be effaced in the same instant as that in which it crosses the mind, for a single adverse thought eventually proves as injurious to the Spirit as a grain of sand is to the eyes.
The petty human aims, the smallness of all our former standards, the instinct for "retaliation" must all be overcome, laid upon one side—a slow task of much humiliation to the creature, revealing to it its own smallness and vanity and its own extraordinary ineffectiveness of self-control, its puny powers over itself: nothing short of an absolute self-conquest is aimed at and demanded by this inward monitor—the Soul. With what profound veneration for and recognition of the power of God does the regenerated creature think of those alterations in its own nature which, after long strivings, are eventually given it by God, and of those alterations not yet stabilised because not yet gifts, but only on the way to perhaps becoming gifts—that is to say, still only where the power of the creature itself has been able to raise them: for of these last it may invariably be said that to-day we may feel serene security and to-morrow fall and fail—and this in the very meanest way!
We see on every side men and women who try to fill an emptiness, a wanting that they feel within themselves, by every sort of means except the only one which can ever be a permanent success. Women devote themselves to lovers, husbands, children, dress, society, and dogs; men to business, ambition, the racecourse, folly, drink, games, and arts. Are any of these persons truly happy, truly satisfied in all their being? No, and they descend to old age surrounded by the dust of disillusionment. Lonely and soon forgotten by the hungry pleasure-seeking crowd, such persons pass from this world, and the most their friends have to say is that they have gone to a better one. But have they? For the mere fact of shedding the flesh does not bring us any nearer to God. On the contrary, the shedding of the flesh increases appallingly the difficulty of the soul in finding God. This world is the very place in which we can most easily and quickly get into communication with God. To think that the mere act of dying improves our character and takes us to heaven is a delusion of the Enemy—it is living here which can fit us and carry us to heaven; and we have no great distance to travel either, for heaven is a state of consciousness, and by entering that state of consciousness we become united and connected with such degrees of heaven as the flesh is able to bear, though these degrees fall infinitely short of those required by the soul: hence the fearful hungering and longing of the soul to depart from the flesh. If we do not find Christ whilst we are here, when we cast off the flesh we enter a bewildering vortex of a life of terrible intensity and great solitude. We are aware of nothing but Self, are tormented by Self with its forever unsatisfied longings, and by the impossibility of achieving any other Self. In this intensity of self-tormenting loneliness the soul feels to gyrate, and all that she knows of that which is outside of this Self is the sound of the rushing of invisible things, for she is blind. Without the light of this world and without the light of Christ. The joys of space are not open to her, only the dark and lonely horrors of it: she is in an incalculably greater state of isolation from God than here in this world! The remedy for all this lies here; let no one think he can afford to wait to find this remedy until after he leaves this world, for then his chance is gone, and who is able to foretell when it will return? What can be more beautiful, more happy, than to find this remedy, to find the only Being who loves us as much as we love ourselves! the gentle, tender, gracious, all-sufficing Christ; that all-mighty ever-giving Christ who yearns over and longs for us—what madness is it that prevents us seeking Him?