By James Stalker
"My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God..." Psa 42:2
THE subject is the Religious Faculty, and I will speak of the Reality, the Universality, the Analysis and the Cultivation of this faculty.
I. It's Reality.
The verse before the text is well known on account of it being set to fine music: "As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, 0 God." That is remarkable language. But is it real? Are there people who long for God in this intense way? Every human being is aware of physical sensations, which may exist in such excess. Thirst, for example-we have all ex perienced, or at least can imagine, what it is to be so thirsty as to be almost delirious with the desire for water, But the desire for God-can we con ceive this being as poignant and imperative as thirst or hunger? I daresay, we have all felt the want of some human being in a degree difficult to exaggerate. The absence or the loss of someone has made us sick with desire-sick almost to death -whereas the presence or the return of the same person has produced inexpressible delight.
But God; is it natural for the human heart to entertain such sentiments about Him? Some of us may have felt an extreme thirst for knowledge-delight in the acquisition of it and a passionate longing for more. And beauty-there are those who, when they first enjoy the privilege of visiting one of the great picture-galleries of the world, like that of Dresden or Florence, feel that during their pre ceding life, their sense of beauty has been starved; and those of us who have been brought up in the country sometimes feel in the city, with its mono tonous streets and foggy atmosphere, so im prisoned and crushed, that, as the time for our annual visit to the country approaches, we ex perience an almost physical hunger for the sight of the mountains and the heather. But is it possible to thirst for God as for knowledge or beauty? Some human beings at least have done so. It is in the Book of Psalms that our text occurs: and both its sentiment and intensity could easily be paralleled not only from that book but from others in the Old Testament. In the New Testament the same kind of language is common enough; only it is applied chiefly to the Second Person of the Trinity. Open any hymn-book and you come at once on lines like these:
Sweeter sounds than music knows
Charm me in Immanuel's name;
All her hopes my spirit owes
To His birth, and cross and shame.
O my Saviour, Shield and Sun,
Shepherd, Brother, Husband, Friend,
Every precious name in one,
I will love Thee without end.
Open a book of heart-religion, like The Confessions of St. Augustine or The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis or the Letters of Samuel Ruther ford, and you find on every page the same ap parent extravagance of emotion. The sincerity of the writers is, however, indubitable; and you are forced to the conclusion, that this is the native language of the religious faculty, when it is thoroughly alive and awake, and in close contact with its object.
II. Its Universality.
We have seen that the religious faculty is a striking feature in some persons, but the question is, whether it is a property of all human beings. Is it a universal endowment of human nature, or is it, like genius, only the gift of a few?
Against Calvinism the reproach has been made, and it could perhaps be sustained against some indiscreet Calvinists-that it has obscured the truth on this subject by a one-sided doctrine of human depravity; because it has produced the impression that the only sentiment towards God in the natural heart is one of enmity. No doubt there is in the natural heart an aversion to God, which may deepen into dislike and repulsion; but this enmity is like that which in domestic life sometimes springs up between relatives and seems all the more bitter because of preceding affection, yet does not anni hilate the relationship. The enmity of man to God has behind it an earlier relationship, which it does not disannul. Indeed, its intense sinfulness is not realized till this is remembered; for our lack of love to God is guilty in proportion to the closeness of our kinship with Him. The Prodigal in the far country is still a son, although a lost one; but it is this that makes his downfall so degrading.
If Calvinism has thus obscured the universality of the religious nature, other influences of recent date have impressed it on the general mind. Dis covery and travel have made the present generation far better acquainted than were their fathers with the races, the histories and the habits of mankind; from beneath the sands of the desert the records of buried civilizations have been dug, and with extraordinary skill the remains of perished literatures have been deciphered. And one of the surest results of this new knowledge is the demon stration that man is a religious being. Wherever human beings exist, there religion of some sort exists also.
Religion is a universal element of human nature; and it is an ideal and refining element, belonging to man's higher and not to his lower self. It is one of the merits of the idealistic systems of philosophy in Germany to recognize this, all the greatest thinkers interpreting religion as the highest and purest flower of human development. It was from France, on the con trary that the suggestion came that religion is a transient phase of the human mind, which the race may outlive. With this some of our own thinkers have manifested a disposition to agree; and more of them have practically passed the subject by altogether, as if it were a negligible quantity in any account of human history. But a truer sentiment begins to prevail; and some of the foremost thinkers of America, like Mr. Royce and Professor James, have specially dis tinguished themselves in recent years by recognizing the dignity and permanence of the religious sentiment.
Perhaps it cannot be asserted that the instinct for religion is in all specimens of the race entirely alike. It may be stronger in one sex than another: woman may be naturally more religious than man. It may be more characteristic of one tribe than another: thus, in our own island, the Celt may be more religious than the Saxon. But the testi mony of history is broad and clear. Why is it, for example that, all the world over, the most prominent and richly ornamented buildings are the temples and the churches? The reason is a very human one: as the humbler buildings of a town-its shops and workshops-subserve man's physical nature; as those of higher pretensions- the dwelling-houses-subserve the affections; and those more spacious still-the schools and colleges-subserve the intellect; so do the churches and cathedrals subserve the spirit or religious faculty, and with their magnificence corresponds its dignity among the human faculties.
III. The Analysis.
Although I have spoken of the religious faculty, it is a question by no means as yet settled whether this element in the human constitution is a special faculty, like memory or imagination, or whether it is a general tendency of the whole man, in which all the faculties concur. In spite of the title of this discourse, I rather incline to the latter view, because, it seems to me, the thirst for God may assert itself in different portions of human nature.
Thus, for example, religion may be an intellectual want. The thirst for God may be a thirst for an explanation of the tangle and contradiction of existence. A classical expression of this frame of mind is to be found in the Book of Job, the hero of which, confused and blinded by the ap parently aimless drift and whirl of events, cries out with passionate earnestness for a revelation of the Deity, who rides upon the storm; and, although Job is a work of imagination, there can be no doubt that this belief in unity amidst the multiplicity of nature and in purpose and wisdom amidst the ap parent contradictions of fortune is one of the most imperative demands of the human spirit.
Oftener, however, the thirst for God is a thirst of the heart. The majority of human beings are stronger in the heart than in the head, and their emotional are more imperative than their intel lectual necessities. The desire to be loved, to be thought about and cared for is universal. This desideratum finds satisfaction in the domestic affections, and these may sometimes be so satisfy ing as to fill up the measure of the desire altogether. There are, however, those to whom this happiness is denied or from whom, after having been en joyed, it is withdrawn. There are, besides, circum stances in which our fellow creatures cannot help; indeed, in its most solemn experiences the heart is utterly alone. And then it needs a love more sympathetic, more intelligent, more enduring than any human being can give-a love, in short, that can come from God alone.
Deeper still, perhaps, is the thirst for God in the conscience. The conscience is a portion of our nature, which psychology has as yet only imperfectly explored; and perhaps in the ordinary man its capacities are less frequently brought to full con sciousness than are those of the intellect and the heart. But the poets-those knowers of what is in man-have done it justice; and few persons of any seriousness are without experiences which give them some conception of the convulsions of which it is capable. It is a tremendously urgent and clamorous portion of our being, when it is thoroughly aroused. It cries out to be delivered from guilt, which scorches it like fire; and it cries out for moral victory over temptation and sin. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that the principal reason why Christianity is destined to supersede the other religions is because it really meets these wants. It does not make light of the demand: on the contrary, it sharpens the edge of conscience, to begin with, and increases its distress; but it ends with giving it a noble satisfaction. While it begins with making a man groan, "0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death," it ends with enabling him to shout, "Thanks be unto God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Thus, religion is the faculty, which divines a purpose in the cosmic movement, a heart of love at the centre of all life's experiences, and a holy will, outside ourselves and embracing the universe, which gives sanction and sacredness to our sense of duty. There may be other faculties, which have their own religious manifestations; but these are enough to prove how essential religion is to the dignity and happiness of life, and how ill we should fare without it.
The hold of any object on our belief or affection is sometimes only realized by losing it. All are aware how frequently the dead awaken a desiderium of which we were not aware when they were living. And some have sought to bring home to the con sciousness of men how essential God is to their happiness by imagining Him non-existent. Of such attempts the boldest is the famous dream of Jean Paul Richter, translated by Carlyle, in which he imagines himself in a world without a God- where he looks up for the Divine Eye and sees only a ghastly eye-socket. According to that poetic but powerful thinker, the universe without a God would be as void as the ravings of a madman's brain; creation would be petrified into a universal sepulchre; and the natural escape existence that had become intolerable would be an act of universal suicide.
IV. It's Cultivation.
The thirst for God is present in all; but it cannot be maintained that it is at all times active in all. It rather resembles the thirst for beauty, to which I have compared it: many a man can remember when the sense of the beautiful awoke in him; and he may be able to remember also events, such as a visit to scenery of remarkable loveliness or to some rare collection of works of art, by which it was stimulated; yet he would recognize that it is a universally human element of his nature.
The sense for religion is subject to strange fluctua tions. Thus, it may decline. Some there are who were once more religious than they are now. Once even the warmest expressions of faith in God or of love to Christ would have been not only in telligible to them but congenial. This faculty is more subject than most others to atrophy through disuse. The heart hardens; the Holy Spirit is grieved by a lapse into sensuality or worldliness. On the other hand, it is susceptible of cultivation; and one or two special means for its cultivation may be mentioned.
One of these is the Lord's Day. It is a pity that in this country this institution should be thought of so much as a yoke which one party are trying to impose and another to reject. Those who really know it do not think of it in this way: to them it is the opportunity for developing the higher nature. The fine and delicate instincts which go out to the divine and eternal are too much suppressed during the week; but on the Lord's Day they come out, like flowers in the sun, and ex patiate in their native element; and one who realizes what his high vocation is as a religious being will be jealous of anything, however urgent, which would rob his better self of its chance of development.
Another means for the same end is Prayer. It is a pity that this, also should be so much argued about on a very low plane-as if the chief purpose of prayer were to obtain fine weather or recovery from illness or some similar earthly good. Those who know prayer do not think of it in this way. To them it is the means of getting close to God and enjoying the company of Christ. It may resemble the rope, which sailors throw on the pier from their ship, when they pull as if to bring the pier to them, but really to bring themselves to the pier; but its virtue is not thereby lessened. It is indispensable to the realization of the possibilities of our nature; for man can never be all he ought to be without God.
