The Will to Know

If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.—John 7:17.

1. The Feast of Tabernacles was in progress in Jerusalem when Jesus entered the Temple to teach. A circle of Jews were gathered round Him, who seem to have been spellbound with the extraordinary wisdom of His words. He made no pretension to be a scholar. He was no graduate of the Rabbinical schools. He had no access to the sacred literature of the people. Yet here was this stranger from Nazareth confounding the wisest heads in Jerusalem, and unfolding with calm and effortless skill such truths as even these Temple walls had never heard before. Then “the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?” What organ of spiritual knowledge can He have, never having learned? Never having learned—they did not know that Christ had learned. They did not know the school at Nazareth whose Teacher was in heaven—whose schoolroom was a carpenter’s shop—the lesson, the Father’s will. They knew not that hidden truths could come from God, or wisdom from above. What came to them was gathered from human books, or caught from human lips. They knew no organ save the mind; no instrument of knowing the things of heaven but that by which they learned in the schools. But Jesus points to a spiritual world which lay still far beyond, and tells them of the spiritual eye which reads its profounder secrets and reveals the mysteries of God. “My doctrine is not mine,” He says, “but his that sent me”; and “my judgment is just,” as He taught before, “because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” And then, lest men should think this great experience was never meant for them, He applies His principles to every human mind which seeks to know God’s will. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the teaching whether it be of God.”

2. “If any man willeth to do … he shall know.” The quality of our perceptions is to be determined by the character of our wills. If we look after our moral wills our spiritual eyes will attend to themselves. Our visions wait upon our volitions. Moral obedience is the secret of spiritual discernment. “If any man willeth to do”; that is the first step in the exploration of eternal truth; that is the “open sesame” into the region of light and glory. “If any man willeth to do,” that is the instrument; “he shall know,” that is the consequent revelation. “If any man willeth to do”; that is the telescope through which we survey the far-stretching panorama of Gospel truth, or it is the microscope through which we discern the mind of God in the immediate problem. “He shall know!” The first part of the text proclaims the means, the second enshrines the issues.

Doing and knowing are blood relations. “Obedience is the organ of spiritual vision”—so Robertson re-issued the truth, that, if we would know God’s doctrine, we must do His will. Experiment and experience spring from the same root, and will not grow apart. Do you wish you had a Christian’s experience? Will to make the Christian experiment. Will you know who Christ is, and what He can do for you? Obey Him; do as He directs. Do not expect experience without experiment. “Follow me” was Christ’s way of saying “Taste and see that the Lord is good: Blessed is the man that trusteth in him.”1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 38.]

I

Obeying

“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.” Here we have the means by which knowledge of truth is attainable. There are a number of instruments for finding out the will of God. One of them is a very great instrument, so far surpassing all the rest in accuracy that there may be said to be but one which has never been known to fail. The others are smaller and clumsier, much less delicate, indeed, and often fail. They often fail to come within sight of the will of God at all, and are so far astray at other times as to mistake some other thing for it. Still they are instruments and, notwithstanding their defects, have a value by themselves; and when the great instrument employs their humbler powers to second its attempts, they immediately become as keen and as unerring as itself.

The most important of these minor instruments is Reason; and although it is a minor instrument, it is great enough in many a case to reveal the secret will of God. God is taking our life and character through a certain process, for example. He is running our career along a certain chain of events. And sometimes the light which He is showing us stops, and we have to pick our way for a few steps by the dimmer lights of thought. But it is God’s will for us then to use this thought, and to elevate it through regions of consecration, into faith, and to walk by this light till the clearer beam from His will comes back again. Another of these instruments is Experience. There are many paths in life which we all tread more than once. God’s light was by us when we walked them first, and lit a beacon here and there along the way. But the next time He sent our feet along that path He knew the sidelights would be burning still, and let us walk alone. And then there is Circumstance. God closes things in around us till our alternatives are all reduced to one. That one, if we must act, is probably the will of God just then. And then there are the Advice of others—an important element at least—and the Welfare of others, and the Example to others, and the many other facts and principles that make up the moral man, which, if not strong enough always to discover what God’s will is, are not too feeble often to determine what it is not.

Even the best of these instruments, however, has but little power in its own hands. The ultimate appeal is always to the one great Instrument, which uses them in turn as it requires, and which supplements their discoveries, or even supplants them, if it choose, by its own superior light, and might, and right. It is like some great glass that can sweep the skies in the darkest night and trace the motions of the farthest stars, while all the rest can but see a faint uncertain light piercing, for a moment here and there the clouds which lie between. And this great instrument for finding out God’s will, this instrument which can penetrate where reason cannot go, where observation has not been before, and memory is helpless, and the guiding hand of circumstance has failed, has a name which is seldom associated with any end so great, a name which every child may understand, even as the stupendous instrument itself with all its mighty powers is sometimes moved by infant hands when others have tried in vain. The name of the instrument is Obedience. Obedience, as it is sometimes expressed, is the organ of spiritual knowledge. As the eye is the organ of physical sight; the mind, of intellectual sight; so the organ of spiritual vision is this strange power, Obedience. This is one of the great discoveries the Bible has made to the world. It is purely a Bible thought. Philosophy never conceived a truth so simple and yet so sublime. And, although it was known in Old Testament times, and expressed in Old Testament books, it was reserved for Jesus Christ to make the full discovery to the world, and add to His teaching another of the profoundest truths that have come from heaven to earth—that the mysteries of the Father’s will are hid in this word “obey.”

Men say that when they know they will do; Jesus says that when they do they will know. He does not promise to manifest Himself to the man who dreams or debates, but to him who keeps his commandments. The seeds of truth sprout in the soil of obedience. The words of Jesus in the mind of a disobedient man are no more vital than wheat in the wrappings of a mummy. To know the Divinity of Jesus’s teachings, we must do His will with definite intention. Moral disobedience is mental darkness, but to submit our wills in loyalty to His law is to open our minds to the light of His truth.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Every-Day Living, 19.]

1. “If any man.”—Observe the universality of the law. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself.” The law was true of the Man Christ Jesus Himself. He tells us it is true of all other men. In God’s universe there are no favourites of heaven who may transgress the laws of the universe with impunity—none who can take fire in the hand and not be burnt—no enemies of heaven who if they sow corn will reap tares. The law is just and true to all: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” In God’s spiritual universe there are no favourites of heaven who can attain knowledge and spiritual wisdom apart from obedience. There are none reprobate by an eternal decree, who can surrender self and in all things submit to God, and yet fail of spiritual convictions. It is not therefore a rare, partial condescension of God, arbitrary and causeless, which gives knowledge of the truth to some, and shuts it out from others; but a vast, universal, glorious law. The light lighteth every man that cometh into the world. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.”

Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest,—that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favourite of the Fates, as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the Nations; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighbourhood of the steeple under which that Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact,—unpleasant you may think it; pleasant, it seems to me,—that you, with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor little red, black, or blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth; and that, of the two, you probably know less about God than she does; the only difference being that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you much that is wrong.1 [Note: Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (Works, xviii. 36).]

2. “Willeth to do.”—The old version reads: “If any man will do his will, he shall know,” but the Revised Version takes us a step farther back, away to the preparatory conditions before any deed is yet accomplished. “If any man willeth to do … he shall know!” Back from doing to willingness to do. We are led from the realm of conduct to the region of character, from finished deed to primary aspirations. Notice the difference this makes in the problem. Before, it looked as if the doing were to come first and then the knowing His will; but now another element is thrown in at the very beginning. The being willing comes first and then the knowing; and thereafter the doing may follow—the doing, that is to say, if the will has been sufficiently clear to proceed. The whole stress of the passage therefore turns on this word “willeth.” And Christ’s answer to the question, How shall we know the will of God? may be simply stated thus: “If any man is willing to do God’s will, he shall know,” or, in plainer language still, “If any man is sincerely trying to do God’s will, he shall know.” The connection of all this with obedience is just that being willing is the highest form of obedience. It is the spirit and essence of obedience. There is an obedience in the world which is no obedience, because the act of obedience is there but the spirit of submission is not.

On John 8:43-44 : “Ye cannot hear my word; and the lusts of your father ye will do,” Brownlow North remarks, “The ‘will’ explains the ‘cannot.’ You cannot, because your will is in opposition.”1 [Note: K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 265.]

“A certain man,” we read in the Bible, “had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to-day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father?” Obedience here comes out in its true colours as a thing in the will. And if any man have an obeying will, a truly single and submissive will, he shall know of the teaching, or of the leading, whether it be of God.2 [Note: H. Drummond, The Ideal Life, 309.]

3. “His will.”—If there is one thing more than another which is more personal to the Christian, more singularly his than God’s love or God’s interest—one thing which is a finer symbol of God’s love and interest, it is the knowledge of God’s will—the private knowledge of God’s will. And this is more personal, just inasmuch as it is more private. My private portion of God’s love is only a private share in God’s love—only a part—the same in quality and kind as all the rest of God’s love, which all the others get from God. But God’s will is a thing for myself. There is a will of God for me which is willed for no one else besides. It is not a share in the universal will, in the same sense as I have a share in the universal love. It is a particular will for me, different from the will He has for any one else—a private will—a will which no one else knows about, which no one can know about, but me.

(1) God has a life-plan for every human life. In the eternal counsels of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the Creator had a thought for each of us. Our life was to be the slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn-stalk from the grain of corn, or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and years, our influence and our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, from another will, if we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed. But it was man’s prerogative to choose his path, his duty to choose it in God. But the Divine right to choose at all has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God, and cut out his career for himself.

(2) It has happened, therefore, that the very fact of God’s guidance in the individual life has been denied. It is said to give life an importance quite foreign to the Divine intention in making man. One life, it is argued, is of no more importance than any other life, and to talk of special providences happening every hour of every day is to detract from the majesty and dignity of God; in fact, it reduces a religious life to a mere religious caprice, and the thought that God’s will is being done to a hallucination of the mind. But the Christian cannot allow the question to be put off with poor evasions like these. Every day, indeed, and many times a day, the question arises in a hundred practical forms. What is the will of God for me? What is the will of God for me to-day, just now, for the next step, for this arrangement and for that, and this amusement, and this projected work for Christ? For all these he feels he must consult the will of God; and that God has a will for him in all such things, and that it must be possible somehow to know what that will is, is not only a matter of hope, but a point in his doctrine and creed.

4. How may we assure ourselves that this willingness to do God’s will is ours?

(1) We may judge our primary bias by our treatment of the light which we have already received. Our inclinations are reflected in our ways; our inclinations are the moulds in which our deeds are shaped. What, then, have our deeds to say about our inclinations? What have we done with the light which has already been given? For God has nowhere and at no time left Himself without a witness. In no man’s life, however imprisoned and bewildered, is there ever a heaven without a twinkle of guiding light. On the darkening wastes of every life, with all its moors and fens and torrents, there is a kindly gleam. Many things are hidden, but all things are not obscure. Some things are clear, and what have we done with them? We are praying for larger days, and there is a little glow-lamp at our feet; what have we done with that? Are we asking for stars and at the same time despising candles? Are we waiting for light upon unknown continents, and disdaining the proffered lamp that would guide us down the street? We are, perhaps, waiting for the sun to rise upon the dark and awful mysteries of the Atonement, while in our immediate presence there shines the light of a vivid and neglected duty. The text makes one thing plain, and we shall do infinitely well to heed it—that sunrises are not for those who neglect candles, and that we need never expect to enter into the illumined recesses of sacred truth if the condemnatory light of despised lamps is shining in our rear. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know,” and we are pathetically and tragically foolish if we are seeking the knowledge by any other road. The way to firm, fine perception, and therefore to the rich unfolding of truth and glory, is not through metaphysics, or by the towering aspirations of philosophic Babels, but by the humble commonplace road of reverent moral obedience.

An earnest but pessimistic priest was talking to the Bishop about the state of his parish, and was specially troubled by the small success of his efforts to help the younger farm-lads lodging at the various homesteads. “For example, my Lord,” he said, “there is one lad with whom I had taken much trouble, and I hoped an influence for good was getting a lodgment in the boy’s heart. But, imagine my distress when I asked what he had done in the way of preparation for his early Communion at Easter, and all he said was, ‘I’s cleaned my boots, and put ’em under the bed.’ It is sad, indeed!”—“Well, dear friend,” replied the Bishop, “and don’t you think the angels would rejoice to see them there?”1 [Note: G. W. E. Russell, Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, 114.]

(2) Many of us are putting second things first. We are seeking to know the mind of the Lord, to disengage His truth, when all the time we are rebels to the truth we know. Now a neglected duty always pollutes the air like a neglected lamp; it contributes smoke when it was purposed to contribute light, and the very minister of illumination makes the atmosphere more dense and opaque. In our quest for God and truth we must, therefore, see to it that there are no smoking lamps, and we do this when we firmly set ourselves to do the will we know. There are whole continents of spiritual truth lying back in twilight and night, but there is a fringe of revelation in the foreground, glimpses of our Lord’s will which leave us in no manner of doubt. Let us begin with the will we know, and through it move on to the unknown. But, when I say “the will we know,” I mean all the will we know. We are not to choose a candle here and a candle there, and reject and ignore the rest. We must not pick and choose among the lamps. If we are seeking the land of the morning, we must not despise a single candle which gives its kindly guidance by the way. Wherever we find a clear revelation of our Master’s will it is through scrupulous obedience to that will that we must seek the unveiling of the truth that still remains hid.

Obey something; and you will have a chance some day of finding out what is best to obey.1 [Note: Ruskin, Fors Clavigera.]

As long as we set up our own will and our own wisdom against God’s, we make that wall between us and His love which I have spoken of just now. But as soon as we lay ourselves entirely at His feet, we have enough light given us to guide our own steps; as the foot-soldier who hears nothing of the councils that determine the course of the great battle he is in, hears plainly enough the word of command which he must himself obey.2 [Note: Mr. Tryan, in Scenes of Clerical Life.]

(3) If a man is willing to do the will of God, he will be watchful against the prejudices and prepossessions which would hinder him from knowing that will. He will know the danger which always exists of self-deception, and of confounding strong conviction with sound and solid persuasion. Some men have strong convictions, but they believe a lie, a lie for which, if need be, they are prepared to give up their life. Let us never forget that the firmness with which we hold any principle is no proof of its truthfulness, unless we have verified it in practice. The man whom Christ contemplates is one to whom all light is welcome, come from what quarter it may. It may disturb old convictions; it may reveal that as true which before seemed to be false; it may alter the proportions and relations of truths, giving a primary position to some which once held but a secondary, and, on the contrary, reducing to a lower status what once was highest of all. But it is the will of God he is bent on knowing and doing, and this is more than a recompense for all the disturbance which may befall merely inherited opinions. He will feel that there is no interest, either in this world or in any other, compared with that of finding out and fulfilling the will of God. This must be right, this must be best.

The difficulty of gaining admission for any truth into the minds of men whose lives are in disconformity with it is proverbial. If a man’s interests, his present or even his fancied interests, or his pleasures are involved in his continuance in any course of action, we know what a mass of evidence is required to convince him that he is in the wrong. To the makers and sellers of silver shrines there will be no goddess like Diana of the Ephesians. If a craft, however iniquitous, be in danger, we need not be sanguine in our hopes of convincing of its wickedness those who are enriching themselves by its gains. We may be prepared with much evidence of its wrongfulness, but they have profits which overwhelm all our demonstrations. Hence it is that the opinions of men are quite as frequently the product of their practices as their cause; and the doctrine, while it gives its complexion to the life, as certainly takes its complexion from it. Thieves do not first excogitate evil maxims, and then begin to steal; they first begin to steal, and then adopt evil maxims; and as a rule, the worse the man, the worse must be the principles from which he acts; and the better the man, the nobler the principles which animate him.1 [Note: E. Mellor, The Footsteps of Heroes, 239.]

When the Cliffords tell us how sinful it is to be Christians on such “insufficient evidence,” insufficiency is really the last thing they have in mind. For them the evidence is absolutely sufficient, only it makes the other way. They believe so completely in an antichristian order of the universe that there is no living option: Christianity is a dead hypothesis from the start.2 [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 14.]

II

Knowing

“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know.” Here we have the issue of obedience. This willingness to do His will, whether I find the clear revelation in the sacred word or in the private oratory of my own conscience, gives to my life the requisite atmosphere in which all spiritual truth is to be discerned. To be willing to do His will, and to do it, gathers into the life a certain air of refinement which is the only congenial medium for the discovery of spiritual truth. Everybody has noticed how clearly sounds travel when there is snow on the ground. When that white vesture clothes the earth soft sounds become articulate and doubtful callings become clear. And when, by scrupulous obedience to the will of the Saviour, the heart grows pure, when it is clothed in habits of consecration which dim even the whiteness of the virgin snow, then do the doubtful utterances of our Lord become articulate, and suggestions of remote and hidden truth speak clearly in our receptive ears. “If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching.”

1. “He shall know.”—If we hear our conscience and set our face to duty, it will be with us as with the traveller who ascends the Gemmi Pass. When he comes to the foot of the precipice along whose ledges and through whose crevices the narrow path ascends, the mist may be lying heavy, and at first he may not find the starting-point. Once his feet are upon the path, although he cannot see beyond a few yards and has no idea how the path may wind, it is only a matter of dogged and careful perseverance. With every step the mist grows more luminous, glimpses of the crest can now and again be caught, and suddenly the traveller comes out from the cloud into the clear sunlight on the height, with the spotless snow around him and the blue of God’s heaven over his head. He that wills to do God’s will shall come to know God’s will before set of sun.

I have known men who have for long doubted the existence of God and denied that we could know anything of Him, resolutely set themselves to be true and pure and unselfish, and the changed attitude has begotten a yearning for and a trust in a truth and righteousness and goodness out of and beyond themselves. The conviction that they must dwell in a personal source has gradually grown within their aspiring spirits; and they have come to feel sure that it is a Personal Will that is at the centre of our complicated, perplexed, and mysterious life, always going out in work and always unexhausted—a Will and not a cold, hard, material “power-not-of-ourselves”; the Personal Will of a living and loving Father. In seeking to do the best, they have, like Zaccheus, come on the track of Him who is the Absolute Best embodied and made attractive to all men for the salvation of the world.1 [Note: J. Clifford, The Dawn of Manhood, 95.]

(1) “He shall know.”—There is a wide distinction between supposing and knowing—between fancy and conviction—between opinion and belief. Whatever rests on authority remains only supposition. We have an opinion when we know what others think. We know when we feel. In matters practical we know only so far as we can do. Feel God; do His will, till the Absolute Imperative within you speaks as with a living voice: Thou shalt, and thou shalt not; and then you do not think, you know, that there is a God. That is a conviction and a belief.

Faith in Christ is an act rather of the spiritual nature than of the intellect, and as the result of sympathy with the truth rather than of critical examination of evidence. A painter or art-critic familiar with the productions of great artists feels himself insulted if you offer him evidence to convince him of the genuineness of a work of art over and above the evidence which it carries in itself, and which to him is the most convincing of all. If one of the lost books of Tacitus were recovered, scholars would not judge it by any account that might be given of its preservation and discovery, but would say, Let us see it and read it, and we will very soon tell you whether it is genuine or not. When the man you have seen every day for years, and whose character you have looked into under the strongest lights, is accused of dishonesty, and damaging evidence is brought against him, does it seriously disturb your confidence in him? Not at all. No evidence can countervail the knowledge gained by intercourse. You know the man, directly, and you believe in him without regard to what other persons advance in his favour or against him. Christ expects acceptance on similar grounds.2 [Note: Marcus Dods.]

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet know I how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

I never spoke with God,

Nor visited in heaven;

Yet certain am I of the spot

As if the chart were given.1 [Note: Emily Dickinson.]

(2) Let us remember, however, that the knowledge promised by Christ may become ours only gradually. Our experience may be like that of a man waiting for the dawn, rather than that of a man who is suddenly plunged out of darkness into the full blaze of the midday sun. The light grows upon us; and whilst, at first, we may see distinctly only one or another thing that lies nearest to us, after awhile other things rise into view, till at last whatever is within range becomes clearly visible. In relation to Divine truth we often find an impatience which would be counted very foolish in relation to natural truth. Men who are content to grope on very slowly in science, getting a glimpse now of one truth and then of another, expect in the region with which we are here concerned to pass almost at once into full light and certainty. This cannot be. Moral loyalty, earnest and well-directed labour and humble patience, are necessary conditions of entering into full possession of the secret of the Lord.

I think I cannot be mistaken here. Could you know how I have lived in His mind, and tried to understand Him, till comprehension became adoration, you would think so. I am not pretending to a superior appreciation beyond yours—except only on this ground, that, professionally forced to the contemplation, and forced more terribly by doubts and difficulties that nearly shattered morals and life, till I was left alone with myself and Him, I am, perhaps, qualified to speak with a decision that would be otherwise dogmatism.2 [Note: Life and Letters of F. W. Robertson, 407.]

2. “He shall know of the teaching.”—We ought to fix in our minds what exactly Jesus intended by His words when He spoke of knowing the teaching and doing the will. He did not mean that we must be acquainted with the various dogmas which scientific religion has from time to time created and into whose mould the fluid idea concerning spiritual truth has been run. Dogmas are the achievement of the intellect, and the Pharisees were exceedingly strong in their dogmatic knowledge. When Jesus spoke of teaching He referred to the burden of His own teaching, and the sum of all His teaching was God. His aim was to impress the mind with a certain idea of God, and it was a moral rather than an intellectual conception. We do not find Jesus enlarging upon the existence and attributes of God after the manner, say, of the Athanasian Creed. He said nothing about the being of God, but He endeavoured to convince men that God was the merciful and faithful Father of the human race; that He loved men, both good and bad, with a patient fatherly love; that He desired His children to abandon their sins and come home to His fellowship; that He was ready to receive them if they would only trust and obey Him. This was not theology, it was religion. It was not God’s being but God’s doing that Jesus preached, not His nature but His character. He desired not that men should solve problems about God, but that they should have fellowship with Him.

I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner’s knowledge.1 [Note: Dinah Morris, in Adam Bede.]

3. “Whether it be of God.”—The earnest purpose to do the will of God operates upon the heart of man, and leads him to the knowledge of the teaching, whether it be of God. Who can set himself to the higher life without there coming upon his soul a sense of contrast between such life and that which he has hitherto led? There is something enlightening in the very entertainment of a true purpose. It gives notice to all the unworthy passions of the heart that a conflict is at hand. The birth of this heavenly resolution is not unmingled pleasure. It cannot be. For there is a past which comes up with its records of sin and guilt, and the man feels that that past is his, and cannot be treated as if it had never been. He cannot wipe it from his memory, nor can he silence the accusations of conscience. Does not the soul feel that the teaching is of God, whatever may be the mysteries which envelop it—that it is of God, because it addresses itself to the awakened conscience—that it is of God, because it does not sweep justice away that it may find room for mercy, but blends the claims of both in the sovereign and the fatherly dispensation which saves the sinner, while it condemns his sins?

I asked myself what my life was, and received as an answer: “An evil and an absurdity.” And indeed, my life—that life of pampered appetites and whims—was meaningless and evil, and so the answer, “Life is evil and meaningless,” had reference only to my life, and not to human life in general. I comprehended the truth, which I later found in the gospel, that men had come to love the darkness more than the light because their deeds were bad, for those who did bad deeds hated the light and did not go to it, lest their deeds be disclosed. I saw that in order to comprehend the meaning of life it was necessary, first of all, that life should not be meaningless and evil, and then only was reason needed for the understanding of it. I comprehended why I had so long walked round such a manifest truth, and that if I were to think and speak of the life of humanity, I ought to think and speak of the life of humanity, and not of the life of a few parasites of life. This truth had always been a truth, just as two times two was four, but I had not recognized it because, if I recognized that two times two was four, I should have had to recognize that I was not good, whereas it was more important and obligatory for me to feel myself good than to feel that two times two was four. I came to love good people and to hate myself, and I recognized the truth. Now everything became clear to me.1 [Note: Tolstoy, My Confession (Complete Works, xiii. 62).]

4. What wonderful light the words of our Lord cast on the true channel through which spiritual knowledge enters man, and how they rebuke the pride and arrogance of that reason which presumes to have the power to master all things. Reason has its sphere assigned to it by its Maker, and within that sphere it is “a vision and a faculty Divine”; but there are realms in which it plays, and was designed to play, a subordinate part, and in which its discovering power is very small. Even apart from religion, how many departments of truth there are in which reason is but an incompetent authority. How many men of the highest intellectual powers are shut out of the beauties created by the genius of the artist, the poet, the painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Their reason is blind and deaf before forms and sounds of the most transcendent loveliness. Many a mathematician, peerless in his power of calculation, stands in blank and unsympathetic mood before the loveliest forms that ever breathed on the canvas; and many a logician, whom no sophistry could elude, hears nothing but a succession of incoherent and confused noises in some marvellous creation of music which enthrals the appreciative soul. And yet the truth of art is as true as that of such matters as are within the province of reason itself, and can no more be justly discarded or despised by the merely intellectual philosopher than the radiant glories of the external universe can be denied by the man who is blind. So also, but in still higher degree, religion has its truths, which, though not contrary to reason, lie beyond its power to discover or, it may be, for the present, to harmonize. Shall reason, shut out of so many realms of truth even in the natural world, claim a sovereignty over the world in which infinite love and infinite wisdom are displaying their resources to redeem man from sin? Reason by itself has almost as little to do with the deeper experiences of the soul as affection has to do with the questions of arithmetic or the problems of geometry; for these deeper experiences are those of repentance, remorse, faith, hope, temptation, and struggle and heavenward aspiration. Love is ever the key to the deepest mysteries. Though shut to the scrutiny of the keenest reason, they open to the knocking of an affectionate and reverent heart. Hidden from those who regard themselves as the wise and prudent, they are revealed unto babes. They that seek to do the will of God shall indeed be taught of Him.

If e’er when faith had fall’n asleep,

I heard a voice “believe no more”

And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason’s colder part,

And like a man in wrath the heart

Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.”1 [Note: Tennyson, In Memoriam.]

I’ve seen pretty clear ever since I was a young un, as religion’s something else besides notions. It isn’t notions sets people doing the right thing—it’s feelings. It’s the same with the notions in religion as it is with math’matics,—a man may be able to work problems straight off in’s head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe; but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution, and love something else better than his own ease.1 [Note: Adam Bede, in Adam Bede.]

5. There are two types of men to whom Jesus’ words ought to be a warning.

(1) The first is the man who supposes that he knows the doctrine, but is not doing the will. Is he sure that he knows anything which counts when his knowledge is so absolutely divorced from life? He has a very strong theory about the inspiration of the Bible, but what good is his devotion to the letter when the spirit of the Book has not affected his heart? He believes that he knows God, but how can he?—for God is love, and this man is not loving his brother. He is very keen about the Deity of Christ, but what right has he to speak of Christ since he will not carry Christ’s cross in mercy and humility? He is convinced that his sins are forgiven, and prates about assurance, but can they be loosed if he will not give quittance to his brother man? He has an unfaltering confidence that he will reach heaven when he dies, but what place can he have in heaven who to-day is carrying a hell of unclean or malignant passions in his heart?

(2) The other is the man who is proud of his scepticism, and complains that he cannot know, while all the time he is refusing to obey. Granted that the Holy Trinity and the sacrifice of Christ are mysteries, and that God Himself is the chief mystery of all, he ought to remember that everything in life is not a mystery. It is open to us all to do our daily work with a single mind, to be patient amid the reverses of life, to be thoughtful in the discharge of our family duties, and to be self-denying in the management of our souls. Duty at any rate is no mystery, and it is grotesque that a man should proclaim that he cannot believe the most profound truths when he is making no honest effort to keep the plainest commandments.

“I wish I had your creed, then I would live your life,” said a seeker after truth to Pascal, the great French thinker. “Live my life, and you will soon have my creed,” was the swift reply. The solution of all difficulties of faith lies in Pascal’s answer, which is after all but a variant of Christ’s greater saying, “He that willeth to do the will of God, shall know the teaching.” Is not the whole reason why, for so many of us, the religion of Christ which we profess has so little in it to content us, simply this, that we have never heartily and honestly tried to practise it?1 [Note: W. J. Dawson, The Empire of Love, 101.]

Therefore be strong, be strong,

Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,

Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,

But do the works that unto you belong;

Believing that for every mystery,

For all the death, the darkness, and the curse

Of this dim universe,

Needs a solution full of love must be:

And that the way whereby ye may attain

Nearest to this, is not through broodings vain

And half-rebellious, questionings of God,

But by a patient seeking to fulfil

The purpose of His everlasting will,

Treading the path which lowly men have trod.

Since it is ever they who are too proud

For this, that are the foremost and most loud

To judge His hidden judgments, these are still

The most perplexed and lost at His mysterious will.2 [Note: Trench, Poems, 102.]

6. Jesus’ word has great comfort for two kinds of people.

(1) The first is the man who is harassed by many perplexing questions, but who is doing his duty bravely. Courage, we say, and patience. No one ever carried Christ’s Cross without coming near to Christ Himself, and where Christ is, the light is sure to break. There is no sacrifice we make, no service we render, that is not bringing us nearer to the heart of things; for the heart of the universe is love. Let us watch as those who watch for the morning, and watch at our work, for the day will break and it will come with morning songs. St. Thomas could hardly believe anything, but he was willing to die with Christ, and Christ showed him His wounds.

With anxious thoughts at this time General Booth avers, when the rubicon was passed and the severance from the Methodist New Connexion made final, “That he and his wife went out together not knowing a soul who would give them a shilling, neither knowing where to go.” Mrs. Booth wrote to her parents, “I am so nervous I can scarcely write. I am almost bewildered with fatigue and anxiety. If I thought it was right to stop here in the ordinary work I would gladly consent. But I cannot believe that it would be so. Why should he spend another year plodding round this wreck of a circuit, preaching to twenty, thirty, and forty people, when, with the same amount of cost to himself, he might be preaching to thousands? And none of our friends would think it right if we had an income. Then, I ask, does the securing of our bread and cheese make that right which would otherwise be wrong when God has promised to feed and clothe us? I think not; William hesitates. He thinks of me and the children, and I appreciate his love and care. But I tell him that God will provide if he will only go straight on in the path of duty. It is strange that I, who always used to shrink from the sacrifice, should be the first in making it.”1 [Note: The Life Story of General Booth, 55.]

I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;

I woke, and found that life was Duty.

Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?

Toil on, sad heart, courageously,

And thou shalt find thy dream to be

A noonday light and truth to thee.2 [Note: Ellen S. Hooper.]

(2) The other is the man who laments the simplicity of his intellect. Be of good cheer, and do not despair or despise yourself. The Master thanked God that He had hidden the deep things from the wise and had revealed them to babes; He also set a child in the midst of the disciples and told them that if any one desired to be great he must become as a little child. It is not through deep thinking, but through faithful doing, that one comes to know the mystery of God; and faithful doing is within every one’s reach. The path which philosophers and scientists have often missed has been found by shepherds on the hills, and by working women. Mary of Bethany and the fishermen of Galilee knew more of God than the scholars of Jerusalem.

One hears sometimes of religious controversies running very high; about faith, works, grace, prevenient grace, the Arches Court and Essays and Reviews;—into none of which do I enter, or concern myself with your entering. One thing I will remind you of, That the essence and outcome of all religions, creeds and liturgies whatsoever is, To do one’s work in a faithful manner. Unhappy caitiff, what to you is the use of orthodoxy, if with every stroke of your hammer you are breaking all the Ten Commandments,—operating upon Devil’s-dust, and, with constant invocation of the Devil, endeavouring to reap where you have not sown?3 [Note: Carlyle, Miscellaneous Essays, vii. 229.]

The Will to Know

Literature

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Butler (A.), Sermons, ii. 168.

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Davies (J. Ll.), Sermons on the Manifestation of the Son of God, 124.

Dawson (G.), Sermons on Disputed Points and Special Occasions, 249.

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Drummond (H.), The Ideal Life, 297.

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