Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

Read Ps. xxxvii., and Matt. xi.
The Secret of Rest.
"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty."

There is in the human intellect an insatiable eagerness and an indomitable energy of acquisitiveness. It carries in its consciousness an ineradicable instinct of domination, that spurs it to boundless enterprise and prompts it to spurn defeat. This lordly quality of the human mind is the natural outcome of its sovereignty over the physical creation, and the appropriate expression of its kinship with the Creator. It is part of man's Divine birthright, and the insignia of his nobility. But it brings with it the peril of all special prerogative, the inevitable temptation that accompanies the possession of power. It tends to breed a haughtiness that is restive of restraint, a self-sufficiency that forgets its own boundaries, and an arrogance that refuses to wield the sceptre of aught but an unlimited empire. So it comes to pass, when reason in its restless research is brought to a stop by the invisible but very actual confines of human knowledge, it resents the suggestion of limitation, and declines to accept the arrest of its onward march. The temptation that besets it is twofold. On the one hand, pride, irritated by the check, but too clear-sighted to ignore it, is tempted to refuse to admit any truths it cannot fathom or substantiate, and to deny the real existence of any realm of being beyond its natural ken. This is the characteristic error of Rationalism and Positivism. On the other hand, there is in the opposite direction a tendency, born equally of intellectual pride and self-will, to refuse the restriction, to ignore reason's incapacity, and so to venture to state and explain that which is inexplicable. Alike in the spheres of science and of religion men strive recklessly to remove from God's face the veil which His own hand has not drawn, and irreverently intrude into mysteries hopelessly beyond human thought to conceive or human speech to express. This is the transgression of rash speculation and of arrogant dogmatism, and it is in itself as sinful, and in its consequences as harmful, as are the blank negations of scepticism.

Each of these errors the author of our poem was fortunate enough to escape. Recognising the limitation of all earthly knowledge, he does not rage against the restrictions and beat himself against the environing bars. He does not take it on himself, by a foolish fiat of his finite littleness, to decree the non-existence of everything too subtle for his dim eyes to perceive, or too fine for his dull ear to hear. Where he fails to understand the wisdom or goodness of God's ways he does not intrude and try to alter them, neither does he wildly struggle to comprehend their meaning, nor madly refuse to submit to them. He adapts himself to the Divine dealing, and is content to obey without insisting on knowing the reason why. He curbs in the cravings of his mind, nor will suffer the swift stream of his thought to rush on like an impetuous torrent, dashing itself against obstructing rocks, and fretting its waters into froth and foam. He possesses his soul in patience, and does not "exercise" himself "in great matters, or in things too high" for him.

This attitude of acquiescence is the position imposed on us by necessity, and prescribed by wisdom. But, as a matter of fact, its practical possession depends on the presence of a certain inner mood or disposition. We have seen that the denials of scepticism and the excesses of dogmatism are alike the offspring of pride, and spring from an over-estimation of the potency of reason. Therefore, as we might expect, the poet's simple acceptance of limitation and contentment with partial knowledge are due to the fact that he has formed a modest estimate of himself. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty." His submission to restraint has its root in humility. He does not exaggerate his capacity. He takes the measure of his mind accurately. He does not expect to be able to accomplish more than his abilities are equal to. It seems to him quite natural that men should not be able to comprehend all God's ways. It is to be expected that there should be many things in God's operations beyond their knowledge, and in his thoughts passing their understanding. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that men should encounter in God's universe "great matters," and "things too high" for them. Nay, the wonder and disappointment would be if there were no mysteries, no infinitudes, transcending our narrow souls. Would it gladden you if indeed God were no greater than our thoughts of Him? What if the sun were no brighter and no vaster than the shrunken, dim, and tarnished image of his radiance framed in a child's toy mirror? Alas for us if God and the universe were not immeasurably grander than mankind's most majestic conceptions of them! Measuring ourselves thus, in truth and lowliness, over against God, who will not say, with the poet of our Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me"?

III.

Read Ps. lxxiii., and Heb. xii.
Calm after Storm.
"Surely I have behaved and quieted myself."

Peace bulks largely in all our dreams of ideal happiness. Without repose of heart we cannot conceive of perfect contentment. But we must not forget that the peace of inexperience is a fragile possession, and that the only lasting rest is the repose that is based upon conquest. We speak with languid longing and ease-seeking envy of the peace of Jesus, because we forget that His peace was a peace constituted out of conflict, maintained in the face of struggle, and made perfect through suffering. Therefore it was a peace strong and majestic, and the story of His life is the world's greatest epic. A life that commenced with effortless attainment, proceeded in easy serenity, and ended in tranquillity were a life without a history, pleasant but monotonous, devoid of dramatic interest, and destitute of significance. The young cadet, in his boyish bloom and unworn beauty, furnishes the painter with a fairer model, but the grizzled hero of a hundred fights, with his battered form and furrowed face, makes the greater picture. It means so much more. And it means more precisely because the tried valour of the veteran is so much more than the promise of the untested tyro. Innocence unsullied and untried has a loveliness all its own, but it lacks the pathos of suggestion, the depth of significance, and the strength of permanence that make the glory of virtue that has borne the brunt of battle, and has known the bitterness of defeat, the agony of retrieval, and the exultation of recovered victory. We talk proudly of the faith that has never felt a doubt, that has been pierced by no perplexity, and shows no mark of the sweat and stress of conflict. We look askance on difficulty of faith, have no mercy on lack of assurance, and reckon them happy who are convinced without trouble and believe without effort. That is not quite the Bible estimate. The Psalms echo with the prayers of hard-pressed faith, and throb with the cries of agonised doubt. The New Testament speaks of faith as a fight, counts them happy who endure, and pronounces blessed the man who encounters and overcomes temptation. If "strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life," how should faith be easy, since faith is that gate, that way? The truth is that we invert the Divine standard of values, and put last what God puts first. We count enviable the land-locked harbours of unthreatened belief, that are protected from assault by their very shallowness and narrowness. We are blind to the providential discipline which ordains that men should wrestle with difficulty, and in overcoming it attain a tried and tempered faith possible only to those who have passed through the furnace of temptation. For sinful men there can be no real strength that is not transmuted weakness, no permanent peace that is not a triumph over rebellion, no perfect faith that is not a victory over doubt. The saints that have most reflected the spirit of Christ formed their fair character, like their Master, in lives of which it may be said, "Without were fightings, within were fears." The way of the cross has ever been a way of conflict, and it is they who come out of great tribulation that enter into the rest that remaineth. The deep lakes that sleep in the hollows of high mountains, and mirror in their placid depths the quiet stars, have their homes in the craters of volcanoes, that have spent their fury, quenched their fires, and are changed into pools of perpetual peace.

There breathes through our Psalm an atmosphere of infinite repose—a subdued rest, like the hush of a cradle song. Nevertheless, if we listen closely enough to its music, we catch under its lullaby the low echo of a bygone anguish, the lingering sob of a vanished tempest. Nature's most exquisite embodiment of calm is the sweet fresh air that is left by a great storm; and the perfection of the Psalm's restfulness is that it consists of unrest conquered and transmuted. For the poet's peace is the result of a great struggle, the reward of a supreme act of self-subjection. "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself;" or, preserving the imagery of the words, "Surely I have calmed and hushed my soul." His submissiveness had not been native, but acquired. His lowliness of heart was not a natural endowment, but a laborious accomplishment. His acquiescence in God's mysterious ways was a thing not inborn and habitual, but was rather the calm that follows a storm, when the tempest has moaned itself into stillness, and the great waves have rocked themselves into unruffled rest. For his soul had once been rebellious, like a storm-lashed sea dashing itself against the iron cliffs that bounded its waves, and impetuous like a tempest rushing through the empty air, seeking to attain the unattainable, and spending its force vainly in vacancy. He had longed to flash thought, lightning like, athwart the thick darkness that surrounded Jehovah's throne, and to lay bare its hidden secrets. It was all in vain. Hemmed in on every hand, beaten back in his attempts to pierce the high heaven, baffled in every effort to read the enigma of God's ways, he had been tempted to revolt, and either to renounce his trust in the Almighty's goodness or to refuse to submit to His control. It cost him a hard and weary struggle to regain his reliance, to restore his allegiance, to calm and hush his soul.

There was nothing wonderful in this conflict, nor anything exceptional in the experience. It is the common lot of men. True, there are some natures for whom the tenure of faith is less arduous than it is for others. But in almost every life there come crises when this same battle has to be fought. For it is not always easy to be content to trust without seeing, and to follow God's leading in the dark, when the way seems all wrong and mistaken. There are things in life that rudely shake our faith from its dreamless slumber, and sweep the soul away over the dreary billows of doubt and darkness. There are times when, to our timorous hearts, it seems too terrible to be compelled just to trust and not to understand. Such conflicts come to us all more or less. Painful and protracted the struggle sometimes is, but not necessarily evil, not even harmful. For if we do but fight it out honestly and bravely the fruits will be, as they were with our poet, wholesome, good, and peaceable.