WHEN GOD SEEMS FAR AWAY

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 77, 17 April 1937, Page 12

WHEN GOD SEEMS FAR AWAY

'fFirst of all," says the worldrenowned writer, Leslie W eatherhead^ •'I don't think it helps much to assert hat God withdraws Himself from us at any time. Some great saints have spoken and Written as though He did. They speak of 'the dark night of the soul. ' Possibly it comes to the same thing in the end, but I should prefer to say that although He is ever nigh, He does allow His presence to be obseured by other things in our lives. It is not quite the same, for if He withdrew Himself He would be uufxndable; a thought ivhich it is very hard to aceept, Sometimee when He seems unfmdable the clouds suddenly burst asunder and He is there in radiance and power. "But He allowts ns to miss flint, perhaps that we may know how

inuch we need Him and how bleak and cold bnd dead, life seems when we arp out of touch and out of tune with TTiTn, I have lived in lands of overlasting sunshine whei'e sunshine is aecepted and thought nb thing about. But last Friday — a foggy November the 1st — the sun only shone for half an hour where I live. Luekily it Was in the dinner hour and I called wife and daughter for & hasty walk. For twenty minutes we all revelled in radiant sunshine and came baek thrilled. i don't remember being thrilled like that by' eunshine in India or Mesopotamia. "We are all too apt to judge ourselves by our feelings. "I don't pray," eays one, "because when I do I don't feel any different.' 'I don't go to church, I don't feel better for going. ' But is feeling the most reliable theirmometcr with which to thke our spiritxial temperature? I would emphatically deny this. "The test of a religipus experience is not merely or maiply in subjeetive feeling, but in attitude to othere.. Is he easier to live with? Is he stronger pf will to choose Christ's way where the ways eroes? Is he kinder to othersj lesS ready t6 criticise, less intolerant 1 Is resentful, less lustf ul, les intolerant? Is hd more serene in spirit, less easily ruffled, less heetic? Has he a joy that is not dependent on health and high spirits? Has he a peace not. dependent on plenty of lelsure, quite independent of all he has to do in a day? The satisfaetory answer to these quesfcions is certaiiily a more important sign of authentieity than what might be called the 'bubbly ' religious fervour obtainable by singing (a number of Sankey's hymns, or that strange, hypnotie effect of Sunday evening serviees which I call 'feeling Sunday-nightis'h. ' "I have been preaching in my own pulpit for over ten years. Probably no one remembers more than ten sermons, even if anyone ean remember so many. Would it have been just the same to preach but once a year? Nol What I can hope to have done is to have altered people 's ways of looking at life, altered their sense of values, increased their resistanee against sin, given them armour against this doubt and that fear, planted xesources of comfort in this sorrow and that calamity, built up in the unconscious mind a Christian character which reacts independently of the ideas I have given them or the poor example of them which I myself am. "When the weather is elear I motor from my home to my church along a by-pass road. I can do the journey more. quickly and easily. But when it is foggy I follow the tram-lines. And in heavy f og I cannot do better than crawl along behind a tram, following its lights. It never strays. It keeps cn the rails. It gets where I want to be. "It is gOOd that in things spiritual we should go along our own road, quickly, easily, rejoieing in the sunshine of God 's presence. But what shall I do when God seems far away, when the sun seems blotted out, and the thick fogs of doubt come down upon the soul. "I'll tell you what to do— just as 1 try, to do myself. I try. to follow the lines others have laid down and following^ have come out where I want to be. When the sou! Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust, 1 try to follow in mind where the saints iave walked. I much regret that I do not know the lives of the greatost saints as I ought to do. But I think of sOme I have known, dear to me, and some I know now, and some whpm I adxnije from afar who have first-class brains and Christ-centred hearts. So when I am deep in those clouds that dreneh the morning etar 1 try to grope along, enormonsly helpcd by the thought tliat the road I am on has been followed by thousands, and they emerged at last in the place where they would be."