THE invincible power of religion shows itself in the fact, that it goes beyond distress and death.
The waters of adversity cannot rise so high, but the real faith of God’s child boldly strikes out the arms in them and knows how to keep the head above them.
Satan tried it with Job and asked leave of God Himself, to set Job as an example, whether it were not possible in the end altogether to extinguish and stamp out the spark of faith. But however much he plagued and taunted Job, robbed him of all he had and made a wretch of him sitting on the ash-heap, faith in Job in its flaming-up became impure, but extinguished it was not.
Whether Jeremiah indeed was cast into the miry pit and in the end stood alone over against all, so that his flesh rebelled against his soul, and he even said, that he wanted to give up the service of the Lord, yet he ended with finding his faith back again. “Lord, Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed” (Jer. 20, 7).
And as it was with the men of Scripture, so it was in all ages, and is so still. All white-washed and plastered religion falls from the wall, the moment heat scorches it or the stream rises up against it; but all real faith ever showed itself to be like hardest granite, from which scarcely with ax or pick-ax a single sliver can be knocked off.
O, it is sad history what the child of faith has struggled through not merely unintentionally from distress of soul, but what, worse yet, human wantonness or human error intentionally has done to the believer, to force him to deny his inmost conviction of soul; but yet in that somber history there is also something beautiful.
For in that blood-drenched history you see human cruelty and devilish malignity exhaust all its power, to invent the most cruel instruments of torture and to apply them in most excruciating ways, and yet in the end give up, because it availed nothing.
That the rack at length was abandoned and the torture-chamber became a museum of antiquities, is one of the most beautiful triumphs of religion. Not because she softened morals and has rendered public execution of justice less cruel, but because from this terrible struggle religion has come forth victorious, and the urge to torment at length gave up, because she saw, that she availed nothing against the faith.
Now, alas, this real religion, that is able in the end to triumph over every opposition, is not the common good of our human race.
When it came to it, almost always the majority stood on the side of the oppressors, and they who stood their ground were almost always and everywhere a very small minority.
True, there have been wonderful days in the struggle of the early Christian Church, as in the days of the Maccabees, heroic periods of faith in the valleys of the Waldenses and in the struggle of the Netherlands against Spain’s superior power; days in which at length the power of faith prevailed and it seemed as though whole populations were moved by holier ardor.
But such conditions are an exception; and at least in our faithless time there is nowhere, in no single country anything left save a small kernel of the faithful, who still, if necessary, to witness to the name of the Lord, would die at the stake.
For there are still circles abroad in which the Christian faith is confessed, circles in which a certain measure of piety prevails, circles in which prayer is made and heaven is invoked. But even in these better circles so much gold glitters that is not gold, the plant of faith has struck so pitifully little root, and a single blast of the whirlwind would suffice to uproot the whole of this young park.
There is still much that is lovely. Praises are sung of Jesus, tributes of love are brought to His altar, to attain reconciliation for guilt of sin. Also an urge to entice others to Jesus. Not infrequently even a strong urge to shine in all sorts of works of charity and of virtuous practices. But of a faith that goeth out after God, unable to get along apart from the Eternal Being, and restlessly struggles to have one’s refuge and one’s invincible strength in God, with this half-faith you observe so little.
AND, of course, in the hour of trouble such a faith cannot maintain itself.
Religion is and ever remains a seeking, a loving, an affectionate honoring in the soul of the Eternal Being.
God the Lord, and He alone, to all real and genuine faith remains the center of the longings of our soul.
It all goes for His own sake. From Him genuine faith derives its real power. Nothing upon earth, nothing in heaven is comparable with Him, and no more ardent desire can be known, than in all anxiety and in all pain to be near unto the God of our life;—that, and that alone, is the glorious utterance of soul on the part of all true faith that is born of God.
From Him such faith is born, and therefore restlessly it draws toward Him.
Therefore it cries and pants after the living God, as a hart panteth after the water brooks.
To such an one God is his portion, his salvation, his eternal good.
And for the restless and violently moved heart there is no rest, until it can rest in God’s everlasting love.
Of course, such faith then seeks the Mediator and with that Mediator the forgiveness in His blood; yet never otherwise than as means to get near unto God. Not to remain standing by the Mediator, but through Him by Whom we have access, to make our approach unto God.
IT is for this reason, that true lovers of the Lord always reach out for the Psalms again; and that the dear friends, who are more concerned about a physician for the diseases of their soul, feel themselves more drawn to the hymns of Sankey.
For in those Psalms, you also find deliverance dealt with, there also the soul jubilates in the Mediator; but yet in those Psalms, amidst distress and death, it is and ever remains a calling out again after the living God, an impetuous striving to reach His blessed fellowship.
No, the Psalmist is not one, who is anxiously bent upon obtaining for himself first of all a blessed little spot in heaven, whose chief concern is his own body’s and soul’s salvation, and who by a series of good works deems himself capable of balancing his account with heaven.
The Psalmist draws breath in spheres above this world. He peers through the veil of visible things. He therefore knows and seeks the Only One, the Eternal, Who hides Himself behind created things and exalts Himself above all things that are created.
Deep down in his soul he is awed and apprehended by the majesty of the Lord God.
Compared with Him, all that this world offers is esteemed as less than nothing; and therefore he knows, that no creaturely power, that presses upon him, can destroy him, because his God holds all that creaturely power in His hand, and against Him no creature can avail aught. With his God he leaps over a wall; with his God he pushes his way through an host.
He who has not come to this, and still lies down in the concern about the salvation of his soul, and is intent upon beautifying his own life with all sorts of virtue and good works, does not understand those deeper spiritual struggles and therefore cannot find those Psalms to be to his taste.
But he who on the pilgrim’s journey of his faith has those first mile-posts back of him, and has passed over those first hills and gone through the valleys in the foreground, and now obtains a glimpse of the highland of God’s holy mountains, to him religion begins to be a seeking after God Himself; and therefore those Psalms address him with so irresistible a power, that by the side of them every other song seems tame and dull.
To such an one dawns the light of his own soul’s experience upon that glorious note of jubilation: “That God the Lord is a strength to His people in the time of trouble” (Ps. 37, 39).
No longer, as before, a God on Whom to call in times of suffering or accident, that He might avert it, or save them out of it, or heal them of their diseases.
To a certain extent unbelievers do so, too.
He who never prayed in other circumstances, frequently prays, when one dearly beloved, husband, wife or child, lies at death’s door.
But for this very reason in such calling, without more, there is no religion yet. So we also call upon people. Similar help we also expect from our doctors.
No, “strength in the hour of trouble” means to say, that when the time of trouble comes, and we see, that God brings it upon us, and that there is no more escape from it, then so to abide in the midst of this distress and death, that a strength at work in us is evident, which in power excels the distress.
It is, in the hour of trial, to stand as the soldier on the field of battle. Not saying: Let us not fight! but, now that the battle is on, bravely fights, because he confides in his general, because the sacred cause for which the battle is on, beckons him, and because in his holy enthusiasm he loves the honor of his banner and the name of his general.
Under Napoleon overcame, he who without the strength, that went out from that name, would have been defeated.
And so, and in far higher sense, it behooves you, as God’s child, so soon as the struggle begins, and you are personally involved in that struggle, to have your strength in the Name of the Lord, and of you it must be evident, whether the power of your God to strengthen you, is mightier than the influence of Satan and your own flesh to make you succumb.
Herein lay the mystery of martyrdom.
In that innermost experience of soul lay the secret of all triumph, which has ever been won by God’s children.
That secret strength has become manifest, when scorn and shame choked the throat, when adversity and sorrow of soul almost made the waters go over the head, and also not least when one’s own person was assaulted, in the hour of temptation to come to sin, or to apostacy in the hour of death.
For in death, of course, every creature foresakes you. Then every support which the world offered falls away from you. Then you are no longer even capable of holding on to your own body and to your own consciousness.
And then everything depends upon whether you can willingly cast yourself into the stream of death, trusting alone in the Lord your God.
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