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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

JAMES MOFFATT - On the editorial staff of the Hibbert Journal; minister of the United Free Church of Scotland; born Glasgow, July 4, 1870; educated at the academy, university and Free Church College, Glasgow; ordained in 1896; Jowett lecturer, London, 1907; author of "The Historical New Testament," "English Edition and Translation of Harnack's 'Ausbreitung des Christentums,'" "The Golden Book of Owen," "Literary Illustrations of the Bible."



And David said in his heart, "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul. " - 1 Sam. 27: 1.

But he did not perish by the hand of Saul. He lived to pronounce a eulogy, and a generous eulogy, upon his dead foe. Saul perished first; his attack seemed irresistible, but it came to nothing, and David's fear proved vain.

Thus do even strong, religious natures often make trouble for themselves out of a future about which they know next to nothing. David was terribly discouraged at this moment. The fond hope which he had cherished of succeeding to a high position in the kingdom had ebbed away. Wherever he turned, he saw nothing but the prospect of further peril and privation, whose end, sooner or later, meant defeat. Saul's resources were so numerous, and his power was so versatile, that the result of the struggle seemed to David to be merely a question of time.

Now, forethought is one thing. We have to be on the alert against the risks of life and open-eyed in face of any horrible combination which may threaten our position or affect our interests injuriously. But it is another thing altogether to collapse weakly in despair of heart before apprehensions and anxieties which may turn out to be quite unfounded. In the early part of last century a young scientist once wrote: "It has been a bitter mortification to me to digest the conclusion that the race is for the strong, and that I shall practically do little more but be content to admire the strides others make in science." It was Charles Darwin. He was in bad health, and bad health is apt to bring low spirits. Yet Darwin lived to do work which made others only too glad to follow his strides in science. That is one instance of the misjudgments which we are prone to make about our future, and David's bitter cry is just another.

We can all see how wrong it is for a religious man to yield thus to depression, and how foolish this perverse habit is, but surely we can also feel how natural it is to lose heart and courage for the moment. Only those who have had to make the effort know how difficult it is to be brave at certain times in life. I am speaking not of the courage required for some enterprise or heroic action, but of the quieter courage which holds depression at bay, which braces the soul against anxiety and which ena¬bles people to be composed and firm under circumstances of hardship, when doubts as to our own usefulness and prospects occur, or when the pressure of things seems to thwart and even to deny any providence of God within our sphere of life. At such moments, the strain almost overpowers us. David was living the anxious life of a hunted creature, like Hereward the Wake, or Bruee in the Athole country, or Wallace in Ayrshire and the North, obliged to be on his guard against repeated surprises, his nerves aquiver with the tension of pursuit. As he bitterly complained, Saul was chasing him like a partridge among the hills. True, he had first succeeded in outwitting his foe, but at night reaction came over him like a wave. How long could this guerrilla warfare go on? One day the fugitive pretender would be sure to fall into an ambush! He could not expect always to foil the attack of his enemies! And so thinking he lost his heart. "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul."

We must be on our guard against such moments of reaction, especially toward evening, when after the tiring day the body is too exhausted to help the mind against the inroad of oracle fears. Then doubts about our faith and health and work and income rise and shape themselves into dark possibilities of evil, and feelings are apt to get the better of our self-possession, and faith is shaken for the moment. It is a great part of life's management to be on our guard against such apprehensions. Towards night, or when you are run down, whenever reaction sets in, the judgment and the content of faith are apt to be disturbed by fears which either vanish or at any rate shrink to their true proportions in the light of the morning. You are bound to remember that, and to lay your account with it.

The mood is almost constitutional with some. Owing to inherited disposition or to imperfect training, some are tempted to dwell repeatedly upon the darker side of things. They are highly strung, by nature. Their sensitive hearts get easily deprest. The sense of danger, which acts upon certain people like a pacific stimulus, only serves to damp their courage. They belong to the class for which Bunyan, with all the generosity of a strong nature, felt such evident sympathy - Mrs. Despondency, Miss Much-Afraid, Mr. Fearing, Mr. Feeble-Mind, the ready inaction of Giant Despair and of Castle Doubting.

At the same time, neither circumstances nor character can altogether explain the occasional failure of moral courage in life. David, for example, lived in the open air; his body was strong; there was nothing morbid about his habits of life; he loved music and fighting. But nevertheless he was subject to fits of depression and dismay, which discolored life and made God seem actually indifferent or hostile to him. Now, what is to be done, when the spirit is thus overwhelmed within us?

In the first place, there is usually something that can be done. Action is one of the best means of banishing idle shadows from the path. There is this to be said for David, that he never allowed self-pity to benumb his faculties. Despair made him energetic; it drove him at this crisis to seek shelter outside the boundaries of the country for himself and his household. Instead of folding his hands and letting things drift, he did his best to secure a haven for his family and to provide as well as he could for himself. Such is the first note of practical courage in our religious life. Often, to lose heart means, with us, to lose vigor. People brood on their difficulties and perplexities until hardship is allowed to paralyze their faculties of resistance. Now David's example summons us to face our troubles and to make the best of them, instead of sitting down to bemoan ourselves as the victims of fate. We all have our moments of cowardice. Thank God if they are only moments. Thank God if we have enough faith and nerve left to rise, as David did, even with a heavy heart, and put our hand to some business of the day. The mere feeling of movement will help to raise our courage. It will inspire us with the conviction that we are not meant to be mere driftwood, at the mercy of the wild risks and chances of the current. Our very proverb about "rising to the occasion" is based upon this truth.. And to rise to the occasion means that we shake off the selfish torpor of self-pity and depression, standing up to grapple somehow with the difficulties of our lot.

The second mark of returning courage is to get away from the circle of our own feelings, and this is the escape of faith. Remember what David forgot for the moment - God's purpose and God's faithfulness. Long ago he had been chosen from the sheepfold for a career which neither he nor anyone else anticipated. God had lifted him from the country to the court. His vocation had opened up, and now, although everything appeared to contradict this purpose, could it have failed? Could the will of God be shattered or recalled? Was the past experience of His favor accidental or delusive? Such is the heart's logic of the religious man. It is in fact the underlying faith in providence which rallies and restores our nature in its broken hours. Newman once called it the true religion of Great Britain. "What Scripture illustrates from its first page to its last," he declared, is God's providence; and that is nearly the only doctrine held with a real assent by the mass of religious Englishmen. Hence the Bible is so great a solace and refuge to them in trouble. The reason why people draw hope and encouragement in this way is that religion means not simply an ordered view of the universe, which excludes caprice and tyranny alike, but a sense of the divine control and care for the individual. A vague impression of providence would not rally anybody. What is needed to reinforce our moral strength is the conviction of God's personal interest in the single life, and of a wise, loving Will which never fails anyone who loyally follows it at all hazards. No outsider can form any idea of the, change produced in a human soul by this resolute trust in the higher responsibility of God. The center is changed from nervous worry about oneself to a pious reliance on the care of the Lord, and a real but unaccountable sense of security passes into the very secrets of the soul. According to our temperament it takes many forms, from quiet calm to an exulting confidence, but in every form this faith does its perfect work by putting the entire concern of life into God's sure keeping.

Here, then, lies another remedy for nervousness and agitation about our prospects. Even in your hours of panic, when life seems brought to nothing, you can reflect: "After all, I am the object of my Father's care and purpose. I can trust Him absolutely. He has put me here and been with me hitherto. I am not left to myself. I cannot, I will not, believe that He has grown weary of the responsibility for what He made." To say that in your heart is not vanity; it is the sheer trust of faith, won from long experience and still to be verified during the days to come. Unknown as your future may be, you are at the disposal of One whom you have learned to trust, whose management of life you are prepared to accept, not coldly but with a steady and even a cheerful consent. The deepest thing you know about your life is that you are His choice and charge and handiwork.

That naturally opens out into a third source of courage, namely, gratitude. Faith, in order to do its perfect work, needs to pass from dull submission and acquiescence into a habit of thankfulness to God. The spirit of praise ministers to our sense of God's reality by calling up before our mind and heart those acts in which we see His character and from which we are intended to gain a firmer impression of His continuous and personal interest in ourselves. When we thank God, we realize Him more profoundly and intimately than ever. Too often, I am afraid, most of us are thankful to get past some difficulty, and if we remember it at all it is to congratulate ourselves secretly upon the skill and good fortune which carried us over the jolt in the road. But these steps and stages should be precious to the soul. They ought to be accumulating for us, as the years go by, a steady faith in God's sure faithfulness. Now that is impossible unless we are in the habit of saying to ourselves, as each favor comes: "This is the doing of God. I thank thee for this my Father. Thou art very good to me." Dejection is frequently the result of nothing more than a failure to practice this habit of thankfulness. We forget to praise God for His daily mercies, and so they pass away from us without leaving any rich deposit of assurance, as they would have done if we had owned His hand in every one. Now the full good of any deliverance and help is not merely the outward benefit which it confers upon our life. The relief is something. But surely we are also intended to win from it a new confirmation of our faith in God's character and a deeper apprehension of His purpose in relation to ourselves. The repeated acts of God within our personal experience are so many glimpses into the constancy and truth of His will, and it is our privilege to use those, from time to time, in order to learn how surely He can be depended upon. David seems to have forgotten this, for the time being. He had rejoiced over his recent exploit, but he had not allowed it to bear home to him the sense of God's unfailing care, and that was one reason why he lay open to misgivings and fear. It is always so, in human experience, when we face the future without having won from the past a more settled faith in the continuity of God's living will.

Such are some of the methods by means of which religion ministers to strength and constancy of life. Courage indeed varies with our disposition and our training. "The French courage," Byron wrote once to Murray, "proceeds from vanity, the German from phlegm, the Turkish from fanaticism and opium, the Spanish from pride, the English from custom, the Dutch from obstinacy, the Russian from insensibility, but the Italian from anger." A generalization like this is always loose, but it serves to remind us how many forces in life will call out courage; an inspiriting example, sympathy, indignation, pity, the sense of self-respect - any of these will often keep us from breaking down and giving way. Faith can pour strength along these and other channels, but most directly of all it helps us, if it is real, to be self-possest and brave by calling up before us the entire compass of the situation. Where we fail is in forgetting to include the greatest element of all, or in undervaluing it. We leave God out of our estimate. David said, "I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul." Was there no more in his life than that? I and Saul? What about God? Had life resolved itself into a mere trial of strength between David and his foe? Was there no longer any providence in it? What of the splendid confession before Goliath, "The Lord who delivered me from the power of the lion and the bear will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine" Ah, there spoke the true David, the man after God's own heart, who recognized God's hand in the action and passion of his days,. and who was no more sure of his own existence than of God's answer to the faith and effort of the soul.

The sterling courage of religion is to be satisfied with this assurance, to win it from experience and to hold it by due care of the mind and body and by a habit of sincere thankfulness to God. It may be that for a time your life is very different from what you expected. You may have to face difficult passages and dark turns when it is not easy to feel much more than the annoyance and uncertainty and strain that sometimes crowd upon you with disturbing force. There are days when you scarcely venture to look ahead, in case you are unnerved by the prospect. It seems as if almost everything conspired to strip life of its just hope and vitality. When such clouds of physical reaction and brainweariness come down, will you believe that God has not abandoned you? Do not reckon up nervously this chance and that, pitting the one against the other, but fall back on what you know of God's character and goodness in the past, till His word and witness put some fresh hope into your soul.



Say it not, even in your heart. Believe it not. What does remain is the undying interest of God in you. What faints not, nor faileth, is this redeeming purpose. Don't give way. Whatever you do, do not lose heart and hope, under the gray sky. Tell yourself to wait, to wait for the living God, and see. And you will see what thousands of men and women have rejoiced to see, that, whoever fails you, whatever may be thrust on you or taken from you, nothing, neither life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, will be able to separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

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