27. With All My Soul

WHEN the question is raised, whether there is one that seeketh after God, the Psalmist disputes it, and bitterly complains: "They are all gone aside. . . . there is none that doeth good, no not one" (Psalm 14:3). There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.

Did the poet then dissemble, when in the ear of all the ages he sang so touchingly: "As the hart panteth after the, waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!" (Psalm 42:1). Or did Asaph only pretend a state of soul, which was nothing but self-deceit, when he exultingly exclaimed: "Nevertheless, I am continually with thee" (Psalm 73:23).

Certainly not.

The question is, whether by nature in the heart of even one person the magnetic attraction still operates, which draws toward God and overcomes every hindrance, every resistance. The answer to this is no, and ever again, no; there is no such drawing in the human heart, damaged and maimed, it no longer is what it was by Divine creation, but what it has become by self-corruption. You see it before your eyes.

Or is it not a matter of tears that outwardly the great mass of people have no feeling for God, and thirst not after Him. By itself the number is small of those who take their religion with any seriousness, and smaller still the number of those in whom true piety is revivified. Mingle among those who are still in every way religious, see them, study them, listen to their talk, in their company do as they do; and how surprising it is that everything is done in so external, artificial and mechanical a way; and how rarely you feel, that you deal with a soul which makes it a business to make approaches to God, to come closer to Him, and to find Him.

Even in worship, in church or elsewhere, frequently the question can scarcely be repressed: "Does he or she, when the Amen has been said, come away from the presence of God; or even in worship has this soul been as far absent from God as ever?"

Doubtless, there are always some who in prayer and at other times, seek fellowship with the Eternal in their soul. Only, upon inquiry, it appears again and again, that the magnetic attraction did not originate with them, but that with magnetic power God Himself drew them.

Why this power operates on one, and does not affect another, we do not know. But the fact remains that, as the magnet attracts steel, so God can attract the soul. And when He does, this drawing is irresistible. Then the soul seeketh God, because God draws it.

How does this operate?

Does the soul make its approach to God through the understanding, through the will, through the feeling, through the imagination, or by an unexplainable mystical working for which there is no name?

And the answer differs according to the character of those who make it. One attributes it to intellectual and doctrinal knowledge of God; the other to the intimacy of love; a third to the concurrence of the will; a fourth to dreams and visions; a fifth to inspirations; and the more you ask, the more the answers differ. Disposition and temperament here play the chief ro1e. The subtle dissector of ideas and definitions entrenches himself in vigorous doctrinal confession. The man of action, in his devotion to practical results. He who by nature is finely strung, in the note of pensive longing which he elicits from his emotional temperament. And likewise imaginative minds and those inclined to phantasies, in representation and ingenious imagery. Every one after his own kind, we may say. So it is now, and so it was in ages past. From old writings you see people of long ago still alive before you, and it is evident that things generally are as they were; all sorts of currents, all sorts of schools, all sorts of tendencies - one this way and the other that. You never find unanimity. Never is God sought after with all the soul.

This shows that the choice of one particular method of seeking after God shuts off ways to God, which truly could bring you into His fellowship; and, that the children of God must maintain free walks in all these ways, so that nothing shall limit their communication with the Father's House.

The reason for this is, that the finding of God is not effected by any one power of the soul, but by the whole soul itself. It is not our knowledge, it is not our will, it is not our imagination or our thought, that grasps God and possesses Him; but it is the knowing, the willing, the pondering soul in its totality, in its inner unity and soundness, in its inner reality. Ray by ray enters in, but each ray is caught up in the one focus of the awakening life of the soul; and this action is called faith.

The difficulty here, too, springs from the ruined conditions within, occasioned by sin.

This ruin we do not take into account sufficiently, because we place it too exclusively in the domain of morals. And yet; the whole loss which it entails, is only known when you trace it in its fatal workings in the spiritual life.

In your relation to God things count so much more seriously.

This concerns the first and great commandment; loving God with all your soul, with all your strength. And this is possible. The soul is disposed to this. Yea, it can freely be said, that your soul, as soon as it works normally, can not do otherwise than direct itself to God, in all its entirety and with all its strength. But nowhere does it show more strongly than in this very particular how abnormal in every way the soul has become by sin. And the worst of it is that with respect to this the soul itself is so little aware of its abnormality.

He who has done wrong, especially when it is a heinous wrong, at least knows it, and does not find it difficult to kneel before God and confess his guilt. With more refined forms of transgression, even in the moral sphere, this inner sense may fail us; when gross sin is committed, the conscience speaks in almost every man.

But with respect to the violation of the first and great commandment almost no one has any feeling about it.

Thousands upon thousands, by day and by night, deny God all love, withdraw their whole soul from Him, and rob Him of all their strength - gross transgressors in the spiritual domain, who do not even think that they sin.

And even with those who have been discovered to themselves, the redeemed, the saved, who have confessed to have love for God, conditions are about the same. Among them also you frequently find those who, over and over, for a whole day at a time, have given at most a small fraction of their soul to God, and feebly, with perhaps only one of their powers have consciously worked for God; and who, when they kneel down at night, do not feel it as sin that they have violated, let us say, nine tenths of the first and great commandment.

This same tendency operates so fatally with the one-sided activity that is brought about by reason of our disposition and temperament, and inclines us to use those powers which come most naturally into action, and therefore exact least self-conquest.

Thus, an intellectually disposed man, when he becomes pious, seeks his strength, in his search after God, in dogmatics.

If this is eternal life, "that they might know thee, the only true God," well, then, he will apply himself to this. Of another knowledge save that which is acquired by intellectual analysis he has not the faintest idea, but in his own department he is proficient. So he exhausts himself in tracing what the finest thinkers have embodied in their doctrinal systems regarding the Nature, the Work, the Person, the Attributes - and so on, of the Divine Being. In this he absorbs himself. This appeals to him. Above others he prides himself on it. And now he actually thinks that in this way the real knowledge of God has become his portion.

"No," says another, "Jesus has said, that he who doeth the will of his Father who is in heaven, shall know the glory of the faith;" and he, as a man of action, gives his money, is zealous as few are, brings willingly one sacrifice after another, devotes himself to the affairs of the Kingdom with all his strength. But he has a dislike for all doctrinal distinctions. The creed does not do; with him the main thing is the practice of life.

A third has neither pleasure in doctrine nor in works, but is of an emotional temperament, and he seeks his strength in tender sensations which he arouses, in soulful utterances, in mystical perceptions of love, and so deems that he comes closer to God.

Imagination is the play of phantasy on the part of him who rather seeks his strength in visions and representations, and enjoys himself most in what his idea paints before the eye of his soul. Has not even S. Paul gloried in ecstacies of spirit and in being caught up into higher spheres ?

Add to this, inspiration, the bringing to remembrance, the perception in the soul of sudden emotions, and so on, and you feel, how widely among men the sensations and motions of the soul diverge, when a thirst after God awakens in the soul.

And this now is the pitiful fact, that instead of understanding that all these workings, all these powers and exertions together must be used in love for God, in order to make real the loving of God with all one's powers - God's children for the most part hold themselves each within their own domain, and seek God with one of the powers of their soul, thus leaving the others unused, and then frequently oppose a brother who seeks his salvation in the exercise of another power of soul than theirs.

"With all thy soul," said Jesus. They say: "With a fraction of the life of my soul;" and just because they are truly pious and sincere of purpose, they do not tremble at the thought of how dreadful it is to have all the rest of their soul remain inactive for their God.