Greatest
Thing in the
World
Introductory
By:
Henry Drummond
Heard
the other morning a sermon by a
distinguished preacher upon
“Rest.” It was full of
delightful thoughts; but when I
came to ask myself,” How
does he say I can yet Rest?”
there was no answer.
The sermon
was sincerely meant to be
practical, yet it contained no
experience that seemed to me to
be tangible, nor any advice which
could help me to find the thing
itself as I went about the world
that afternoon.
Yet this
omission of the only important
problem was not the fault of the
preacher. The whole popular
religion is in the twilight here.
And when pressed for really
working specifics for the
experiences with which it deals,
it falters, and seems to lose
itself in mist.
This want
of connection between the great
words of religion and everyday
life has bewildered and
discouraged all of us.
Christianity
possesses the noblest words in
the language; its literature
overflows with terms expressive
of the greatest and happiest
moods which can fill the soul of
man. Rest, Joy, Peace, Faith,
Love, Light—these words
occur with such persistency in
hymns and prayers that an
observer might think they formed
the staple of Christian
experience.
But on
coming to close quarters with the
actual life of most of us, how
surely would he be disenchanted.
I do not think we ourselves are
aware how much our Religious life
is made up of phrases; how much
of what we call Christian
experience is only a dialect of
the Churches, a mere religious
phraseology with almost nothing
behind it in what we really feel
and know.
For some of
us, indeed, the Christian
experiences seem further away
than when we took the first steps
in the Christian life. That life
has not opened out as we had
hoped; we do not regret our
religion, but we are disappointed
with it. There are times,
perhaps, when wandering notes
from diviner music stray into our
spirits; but these experiences
come at few and fitful moments.
We have no
sense of possession in them. When
they visit us, it is a surprise.
When they leave us, it is without
explanation. When we wish their
return, we do not know how to
secure it
All which
points to a religion without
solid base, and a poor and
flickering life. It means a great
bankruptcy in those experiences
which give Christianity its
personal solace and make it
attractive to the world, and a
great uncertainty as to any
remedy.
It is as if
we knew everything about
health— except the way to
get it.
I am quite
sure that the difficulty does not
lie in the fact that men are not
in earnest. This is simply not
the fact.
All around
us Christians are wearing
themselves out in trying to be
better. The amount of spiritual
longing in the world—in the
hearts of unnumbered thousands of
men and women in whom we should
never suspect it; among the wise
and thoughtful; among the young
and gay, who seldom assuage and
never betray their
thirst—this is one of the
most wonderful and touching facts
of life. It is not more heat that
is needed, but more light; not
more force, but a wiser direction
to be given to very real energies
already there.
What
Christian experience wants is
thread, a vertebral column,
method. It is impossible to
believe that there is no remedy
for its unevenness and
dishevelment, or that the remedy
is a secret.
The idea,
also, that some few men, by happy
chance or happier temperament,
have acquired the secret—as
if there were some sort of knack
or trick of it—is wholly
incredible.
Religion
must ripen its fruit for men of
every temperament; and the way
even into its highest heights
must be by a gateway through
which the peoples of the world
may pass.
I shall try
to lead up to this gateway by a
very familiar path.
But as that
path is strangely unfrequented,
and even unknown where it passes
into the religious sphere, I must
dwell for a moment on the
commonest of
commonplaces.
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