Thus Coleridge advises those who are troubled with doubts in reference to religion, no matter171how many and bewildering they may be. Read the gospels. Look at the life of Jesus. As you read you will believe. As you look, you will admire and love. And believing in Christ and loving Christ is salvation.
You are desirous to accomplish the whole course at one stride. That is contrary to nature, and to that highest and sublimest order of nature—grace. Take the first step. That is so much gained at least; and having taken that, you will be all the more likely and all the more ready to take the next, and so on till you take the last, even that which crosses the threshold of glory, and the golden gates close behind you, and you find yourself within that happy abode whence “they shall go no more out.”
“Walk on,” says the generous and holy Leighton, “in the way of God’s commands, though it be with weak and tottering steps. ‘Nay, but,’ you say, ‘I cannot, I can but creep.’ Well, then, even creep, so you are only in that path and going forward in it. Creeping will bring you strength to walk, and finally to run, yes, to mount up with wings as an eagle.”
We have not given his remark in form but in substance. Many long years ago it met our eye in one of the fainting and reeling turns of our own spiritual life. It gave us strength. May it do the same for you!
Arago says, in his Autobiography, that his master in mathematics was a word or two of advice which he found in the binding of one of his textbooks. Puzzled and discouraged by the difficulties he met with in his early studies, he was almost ready to give over the pursuit. Some words which he found on the waste leaf used to stiffen the cover of his paper-bound text-book, caught his eye and interested him. “Impelled,” he says, “by an indefinable curiosity, I dampened the cover of the book and carefully unrolled the leaf to see what was on the other side. It proved to be a short letter from D’Alembert to a young person disheartened like myself by the difficulties of mathematical study, and who had written to him for counsel. ‘Go on, sir, go on,’ was the counsel which D’Alembert gave him. ‘The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will draw and shine with increasing clearness on your path.’”
“That maxim,” says Arago, “was my greatest master in mathematics.”
Following out those simple words, “Go on, sir, go on,” made him the first astronomical mathematician of his age. What Christians it would make of us! What heroes of faith, what sages in holy wisdom should we become, just by acting out that maxim, go on, go on!
“Then shall we know him if we follow on to know the Lord: his going forth is prepared as the morning.” If the world should refuse to open its eye to the day, because it does not begin with noon instead of the first faint struggles of twilight with the dominion of darkness, it would lose the day altogether. So with the soul which does not admit with humble and thankful gladness the first flush of the spiritual dawn, the first beams of that “true light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world.” It remains in perpetual night—a night which passes at last into the blackness of darkness. But admitting and rejoicing in these morning rays, we enter on that “path of the just which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”
Francke, it is said, was so full of doubts and misgivings when he began to pray, that he could only say, “Oh, God, if thou art, reveal thyself to me.” Yet that faith, so weak at first, grew by praying and trusting, and those verifications which God never fails to give to his own promises, to such a heroic strength as few examples in the history of the Church have equaled. The Orphan House at Halle and many other noble Christian works attest to this day the power of those maxims. “Try it!” “Go on, go on!”—when they are transferred from the sphere of nature to that of faith.
Such is the grace and kindness of our Heavenly Father that he takes our weak beginnings, and putting into them the certainty of his own immutable purpose and the strength of his omnipotent grace, he bestows on them the fullness of heavenly blessing. He even, “discerning our thought” of penitence and return “afar off,” comes toward the returning soul, longing to embrace his wandering but now sorrowful child. “Thou metest him that rejoiceth and worketh righteousness, those that remember thee in thy ways.” The prodigal said, “I will arise and go to my father,”—and “while he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him, and said, This my son was dead and is alive again.”
Only try it. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. The first “taste” will tempt you to deeper draughts. The first trial will, by the grace of God, encourage you to further efforts, and final perseverance.
Try it. The very experiment is attended with more true enjoyment than the highest worldly success. Search the Scriptures. Ask for the Holy Spirit to open your heart to their light and power. Confess your sins, your darkness, lethargies, averseness. Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. Sit at the feet of Jesus and hear his words.
If there were only one chance in ten thousand of success, the trial would be the wisest putting forth of time and effort you have ever made. But since the mouth of the Lord hath said, Every one that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth—the success is as completely certain as it is blessed and glorious.—Independent.