05.03 The use of spiritual endowments
III. THE USE OF SPIRITUAL ENDOWMENTS
Consider, also, our use of spiritual endowments. Here, again, we cannot honestly plead that we have none. The very instinct of religion is itself one one which raises the humblest man to a point in the scale of creation immeasurably higher than the noblest animal. It is this instinct of religion which we are asked to strengthen and deepen by care and thought and effort. Is it not true that the average Englishman is sensible of the need of hard work in every other sphere of life except religion? Elsewhere he is strenuous and active: there he is curiously indolent. He seems to think that religion requires nothing more for its sustenance than occasional feelings or a few acts of dutiful observance. It is true, of course, that its source is the Spirit of God, but in this, as in all His gifts, the Spirit of God requires the co-operation of the spirit of man. It is true that we are inheritors of the Kingdom of God, but it is only by the output of thought and will that we can realize our heritage. Let us apply this truth to two necessary parts of religion study and prayer.
Study. How many of us can say at this moment that we are engaged in some definite study of a book of the Bible or of Christian doctrine? Are we not apt to take some limited point of Christian truth the tradition in which we were brought up, the presentment of Christian doctrine to which we are accustomed, it may be the truth which first appealed to us and “bury it in the earth,” keeping jealous guard over it, almost suspecting any addition to it! But there is no Christian truth, however simple, which would not, if only we thought it out and “traded” with it, lead us by its own kinship with them to other truths, wider, deeper, and higher. We must “follow on,” by thought and study, “to know the Lord.”
Otherwise we stand in danger of losing even the talent which we had and what was once a truth becomes, often without GUI; knowing it, a form. “For unto every one that hath shall be given; but from him that hath not even that which he hath shall be taken away.”
Prayer. No one, surely, can deny that he has the instinct of prayer. Even among the least religious it proves itself to be, in times of anxiety or sorrow, almost invincible. In its simplest form it is a gift most wonderful a token of the kinship which, deep-set in the very elements of being, binds the children to the Father. Yet how little trouble we take to improve our power of prayer, how feeble are the ventures of faith or perseverence which we throw into it!
We know the excuses which are ready upon our lips: “I find my prayers so difficult, so unreal. I have no power of imagination, or thought, or expression. If God expects from me eager and fervent prayers, He is expecting to reap what He has not sowed, and to gather what He has not scattered.”
It is the very plea of the slothful servant; and, like him, we are content merely to keep the talent, to be satisfied with some routine of prayer as a duty for the day. But are we to expect that we can compass a thing so wonderful as converse with God without patient and persevering effort? Let us lay the truth to heart, that what God values, in prayer, what He most certainly rewards, is not the immediate fervour of feeling, but the loyal setting of the will towards Himself. We are often nearest God when we feel Him least. For prayer which perseveres in spite of dryness of feeling is for that very reason a real venture of faith. As such it earns its interest, the interest of added strength of will, clearness of purpose, peace of conscience. The mere act of prayer, if only a sincere will is behind it, is as it were a hand stretched out in the darkness to God. His hand will meet it even if we do not feel the grasp. To one who was in trouble because of the want of any felt satisfaction in prayer, a wise man said: “If you have not gained a sense of the presence of God, you have gained the next best thing, a sense of His absence.” To realize the desire for God, is to have that hunger of the soul wh’ich He is pledged to satisfy, and this of itself lifts a man far above the mass who neither know the joy of God’s presence, nor feel the pain of His absence.
TAGS: [Parables]