lead me, Thou shalt teach me. Lord, I believe.
I have not grasped Thee. No man has grasped Thee.
The man who says that he has grasped Thee proves thereby
that he does not know Thee. I know that I have
not grasped Thee, but I will follow Thee by doing
righteousness, by serving truth, by knowing and acknowledging
Thee until all of that shall become clear to me.
I will follow Thee, and Thou shalt lead me into the
glory which Thou Thyself abidest in. Lord, I
believe, Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.”
The story of the present, the hope, the pure, certain
hope of the future is in those great words: “Lord,
I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.”
I will read to you once again the words which I have
read before, the words of Jesus in the eighth chapter
of the Gospel of St.
John:
“As He spake these words, many
believed on Him. Then said Jesus to those
Jews which believed on Him, if ye continue in My word,
then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you
free. They answered Him, We be Abraham’s
seed, and were never in bondage to any man:
how sayest Thou, Ye shall be made free?
Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you.
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
And the servant abideth not in the house forever:
but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore
shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
I do not know how any man can stand and plead with
his brethren for the higher life, that they will enter
into and make their own the life of Christ and God,
unless he is perpetually conscious that around them
with whom he pleads there is the perpetual pleading
and the voice of God Himself. Unless a man believes
that, everything that he has to say must seem, in
the first place, impertinent, and, in the second place,
almost absolutely hopeless. Who is man that he
shall plead with his fellow-man for the change of
a life, for the entrance into a whole new career, for
the alteration of a spirit, for the surrounding of
himself with a new region in which he has not lived
before? But if it be so, that God is pleading
with every one of His children to enter into the highest
life; if it be so, that God is making His application
and His appeal to every soul to know Him, and in Him
to know himself, then one may plead with earnestness
and plead with great hopefulness before his brethren.
And so it is. The great truth of Jesus Christ
is that, that God is pleading with every soul, not
merely in the words which we hear from one another,
not merely in the words which we read from His book,
but in every influence of life; and, in those unknown
influences which are too subtle for us to understand
or perceive, God is forever seeking after the souls
of His children.
