as a cemetery for the inhabitants of the farm. It was situated in the middle of our woods. Almost every day I went to kneel upon the grave, the last resting-place of the child whom I had so much loved, and it was there that God gave to me a change of heart. "Up to this period of my life, although I was far from being irreligious, I had never taken much interest in religion. During the course of my education no one had ever spoken to me of religion. During the first years of my childhood, I had had under my eyes the worst possible examples. In the high society of Paris I had been witness of scandals, so often repeated that they had become familiar to me to the point of no longer moving me. In this way every thought of morality had been benumbed in my heart, but the hour had come when I had to recognize the hand which had smitten me. "I do not know exactly how to describe the transformation which came over me. It seemed to me as if a voice cried out to me that I must change my whole being. Kneeling upon the grave of my child, I implored her to obtain from God, who had already recalled her to Him, my pardon and a little relief from my distress. My prayer was heard. God accorded me then the grace to know and serve Him. He gave me the courage to bend very humbly under the stroke which had smitten me and to prepare myself to support without complaining the new griefs by which in His justice He deemed it proper to try me in the future. From that day the divine will found me submissive and resigned." Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, these do not matter very much when you get down to the real thing like that! It is in that way God is always dealing with men. We build churches, preach sermons, try different religious methods, like children playing with their building blocks. The great worker upon the hearts of men is the invisible silent Spirit, and only He knows how He transmutes that external meaningless belief into the character that merits confidence. We pay too much attention to the merely doctrinal side of our creed. I do not minimize its value, it makes all the difference to have a clear and pure teaching, but it is only half of the mystery after all. It is not so much whether I believe in God as whether God believes in me. I am not a Christian because I think it most probable that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God; I am a Christian rather if Jesus of Nazareth could have trusted mecan indeed trust me now. In this City Temple one always has the consciousness that there are folk who gather from Sunday to Sunday, but who have little definite creedal belief. I want to say to you, "the essence of true Christianity is being worthy of the trust of Jesus Christ." Suppose that the great eternal Spirit in this world is a Spirit like that of Christ. Suppose that the last question that shall be asked of us, when life is over, and the greater light has dawned, shall be asked in the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, will not the supreme thing be whether we have so lived as to have deserved His trust? You have your difficulties, but can you go away determined to try to live so that Jesus Christ would have trusted you, would have rested His cause in your hands, and believed that, in spite of all your weaknesses or your failings, you would remain loyal and carry through at last? Let us try to live so that Jesus might reasonably believe in us. They whom Jesus could have believed in are usually those in whom others believe. When sufficient time has passed, we forget the idiosyncrasies of their belief and remember just THAT! |