And here we must leave them for the present. Another and a wilder scene will shortly be presented to us—a scene of desolation and dismay and frenzy; of prayer hoarsening into imprecation; of the cutting away the boats, of breaking in twain the oars, of rushing madly to the spirit-room. They will lash themselves into fury; they will quarrel, fight, and threaten to slay; they will prepare to go together to the bottom, with fire in their brain and defiance on their lips. But when the Apostle was tost on the waves of Adria, and 'neither sun nor stars had for many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on them, and all hope that they should be saved was then taken from them,' the Angel of God stood by him in the night, saying, 'God hath given thee all them that sail with thee.'1 And so, even now in that tormented bark of heathenism, the Spirit of the Almighty will be present. Lo! the crew is in His holy keeping! let them but turn to Him, and be converted, and abide in His faith; there shall be no loss of any man's life among them, but only of the ship.'

1 Acts xxvii. 24.

BIBL

106

LECTURE VI.

EFFORTS OF THE HEATHEN TO AVERT SPIRITUAL RUIN.

ST. MARK IX. 24.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief. CHRISTIANITY appeals to the heart as well as to the head, to the feelings no less than to the judgment. It teaches us that faith depends upon the will as much as upon the understanding, and therefore that it is to be attained by the exercise of the affections, by love and prayer, as well as by the exertion of thought and mind. This Christian paradox is illustrated by the familiar text above cited, Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief;' a text familiar to all Christians at every step in their religious experience; for the feeling which it indicates of the insufficiency of the intellect to comprehend the mysteries of God, or to retain at all times and under all trials its hold of a constant and fervent faith in the Invisible, belongs not to the mere novice only, not to the recent convert, not to the first hearer of the Truth. It belongs to all who are really

6

earnest in examining their own hearts, and jealous of a lapse, however transient, from the fulness of spiritual assurance. The text relates the occurrence of a particular incident, but is registered for all time; and the thoughts it suggests may be useful for all time, and for manifold situations.

The father of the afflicted child yearns for the promised relief. The condition is Belief. He will believe. He makes an effort of the will. His imagination, on the wings of love and prayer, transcends the limits of the visible and the possible. He flings himself into another world of higher existences, and powers, and possibilities. He sees the man Jesus before him dilated to Divine proportions, and shutting out from his field of view the gross realities of the world, with its material laws and its narrow limits. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak; the vision, the dream of faith, vibrates before his eyes; the realities of the world return again and again, they thrust themselves importunately upon him, and threaten to recover all their former vividness. He feels his faith yielding, his spirit fainting, his nerves relaxing; and he cries out for help, for strength to hold on yet a little longer, for light to see yet a little longer; he cries out with tremblings that shake his strength, with tears that blind his sight, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.'

Such were the struggles of the human conscience when Jesus Christ appeared in the world, and held forth the hopes of His healing power to the afflicted and miserable both in soul and body. Such are the

struggles, constantly repeated through all ages, when the knowledge of Him, and of His revelation of mercy, is set forth to the sinners and the spiritually-stricken among men; the same struggle of the will and the understanding, of faith and fear, is ever going on among us, and is the condition of our advance in spiritual light and experience.

But there was a time when the mercy of Jesus Christ was not yet made manifest to man; a time when, though he had actually come in the flesh and dwelt among men, the world was not yet prepared to acknowledge it; when his appearance had not yet been preached to all nations, and the offer of salvation through Him not yet generally published. Nevertheless, in the first ages of Christianity, in the decline of heathenism, there was among those who knew not Christ, nor perhaps had yet heard of him, the same struggle going on, the same opposition between the will and the power to believe. There was even then, at least among some meek and tender spirits, a will to believe in something, they knew not what; a cry for relief from some quarter, they knew not whence; a suspicion-a hope-an assurance that there was a revelation somehow to be made, a revelation of grace and mercy to the spiritually afflicted, and at the same time an earnest wish to be helped against their own unbelief; an effort, with groans and tears, against the deep despondency in which the absence of any visible object of faith had plunged them.

The father in the narrative deeply loved his son, but

his son was afflicted with a devil. The generation of declining heathenism deeply loved the world around them the brilliant cities, the joyous country, the temples and the forum, the baths and the festivals, the objects of art and luxury with which their homes were stored to overflowing, the tranquil ease, the leisure for study or meditation, the security of their long-established civilization, the treasured results of philosophy and science; but the world they so loved was afflicted with a devil. All its pleasures appeared hollow and unsound; sweet to the taste, they left a sting of bitterness; its vices were flagrant, and seemed to call aloud for chastisement; pain and fear had taken possession of it. There was something radically amiss with it, some defect in its constitution, which plainly threatened it with dissolution. The physicians had been consulted, but without avail. The devil had torn them, and driven them away. The patient had himself struggled feverishly against it, but it had ofttimes cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him; he had fallen upon the ground, and wallowed foaming. Such is a picture of the misery of the heathen world at the moment of its highest outward culture; at the moment when it had lost its faith in the heathen religions, and not yet acquired faith in Christ; at the moment when its eyes were opened to its spiritual destitution, and the chastened feelings of humanity led it to recognise the corruption of the flesh, and the desperate condition of the soul that lives without God in the world. Anxious to find some one who could