01.04 The thin-surfaced soil
III. THE THIN-SURFACED SOIL
Some seed fell upon the thin-surfaced soil. Where there is a mere layer of earth covering a hard rock, the seed cannot spread downwards and take strong root, and its growth is both sudden and shortlived. “Those on the rock are they which when they have heard receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe and in time of temptation fall away.” In the pregnant phrase of S. Luke, “they have no root in themselves.” Alas! there is here for very many of us the need of anxious self-testing. Has our religion any real root in ourselves? It may be that our religious emotions are quick and warm; that our interest in religious or ecclesiastical matters is intense. It may be that we have even gone through, to us, memorable religious experiences. All these things are good in their own way; but they are only surface matters. The Word of God can find no soil in which to take root there.
It must get down to a man’s will; for his inner self is what he is willing to be. Unless religion is conceived as an obligation a power which reaches, grasps, and holds the will it cannot stand the strain of life.
There comes perhaps the temptation to grow tired of moral drudgery the long and weary task of daily self-discipline, of clearing out some besetting fault. It is tedious and depressing, assuredly; and the feelings of religion can apparently maintain themselves without it; why take so much pains about it? Yet it is scarcely too much to say that two-thirds of true practical religion is just this drudgery of daily discipline. I am convinced it can only be faced, maintained, brought out to success by a man whose religion has got down to thfc roots of his being, and there more and more works with the steadiness and spontaneity of a new instinct.
There comes perhaps the trial of a great sorrow. Ah, how common, how pitiful, is the spectacle of the withering of religion under the blight of suffering! “I used to enjoy my prayers; I loved my church, its sacraments, its services; and now, just when I want it most, my religion fails me.” Many a time have I heard that bitter complaint on the lips of those who, when the sun shone, were very religious. Doubtless it may be failure of nerves rather than failure of faith which accounts for this sense of blankness. But too often the reason is that faith has not got down to and mingled itself with the roots of life its elementary instincts, its enduring characteristics. How different these complaints from the words with which Jesus, in whom the Father’s will was the very breath of life, met the coming of His Passion “Father, the hour is come, glorify Thy Son.” Or there may come the trial of “persecution.” We may be sure that our religion has only a surface hold when we find that it becomes harassed, petulant, distressed in the atmosphere of criticism; and criticism is the most common modern substitute for the older and franker modes of persecution.
If a man’s religion is part of himself rooted in the bases of his being he will not be tossed to and fro by the currents of opinion and talk. He may not be able to meet argument by argument, he may be baffled often in his own reasoning, but the “man in him,” the real self, will remain unshaken. That is the lesson for qur learning.
Religion, if it is to be sure and strong, must be pressed down till it reaches and grasps a man’s inmost self that self which abides the same beneath all, changes and chances of life and sorrow and doubt. This is the radical reform of which the characters of most of us stand in urgent need. It comes to this have we any conviction for which we are ready to die, 1. e, which we could not give up without giving up the whole meaning of.life? Such a final standing-ground Frederic Robertson reached.
“In the darkest hours through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain if there is no God, no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward.” Not much, you may say, but at least it was a root which had wrought itself into the fibres of the man’s whole being.
Therefore a new strong faith could grow up from it “a faith and hope and trust,” as he says, “no longer traditional but his own a trust which neither earth nor hell shall shake henceforth for ever.” Such a standing-ground they reach who know that they would rather part with life itself than with the conviction which alone to them gives life its meaning and its inspiration, the conviction that the inner voice which once called them from the drift of indifference and set the light of a true ideal before them, and since then has cheered and guided them in their new journey was the voice of a Living Person, Jesus the Lord and Brother of men. Rest not satisfied till you have found some such holding root of faith.
Plant it deep in the bases of your life. Test its strength by its control over the will. Do not despise, but distrust mere feeling; and look to acts as the real proof of your religion. For it is by action, more and more- immediate and instinctive and quick to obey the promptings of faith, that the fibres of faith’s root become entwined close and strong around your inmost self. It is from a religon thus deep-rooted that a man’s character brings forth a harvest for God’s gathering.
TAGS: [Parables]