Facing the Facts

It was a bright Sunday morning in late summer. The noise of weekday activities was hushed. A peaceful calm seemed to rest everywhere. The blue sky above and the luxuriant green on every side, with the golden sunlight falling over it, made a picture of serenity. Nature was in peace.

But the heart of Howard Gray did not respond. As he stood at the front gate of his country home, his eyes were fixed upon the ground in thoughtful and serious meditation. He was sorely perplexed. He was just at that age when the hand of experience begins to pull back the curtains of the future and to reveal some of the real problems of life. His nineteenth summer was swiftly passing by. This year had brought new experiences to him. It had awakened in him new hopes and new ambitions. It had brought him into new relations. The high thoughts and dreams of youth had come face to face with some of the realities of life, and he had found that dreaming was easier than bringing his dreams into reality. He was learning what all must learn—that life is not the easy thing that youthful dreams have pictured it. He had found that well laid plans often meet unexpected obstacles, and that life to a large extent is made up of overcoming obstacles or of being overcome and thwarted by them.

Howard was a serious, thoughtful young man who liked to think things through to a conclusion. He was usually light-spirited and full of vigor. To his companions he appeared light and gay. But beneath this superficial joyousness was a current of deep, serious thoughtfulness. On this morning he had abundant reason for serious thought.

As he stood by the gate he heard the notes of the church bell in the distance, mellow and soft, calling the worshipers to Sunday school and to church. To this call he usually responded, for in his soul there was a deep reverence for God and for His worship. However, he was in no mood to be in a crowd today. He wished to be alone with his thoughts. So he walked down the road, climbed the fence, and entered into the broad expanse of forest that lay near his home. He walked far out into its depths where no eye could see him. Sitting down upon a fallen log, he began his solitary meditations. Usually he would have been keenly alive to every movement and to every noise. He would have been watching the squirrels in their play, listening to the notes of birds as to the voices of his friends. He loved the forest and knew all its sounds; its inhabitants were all his friends. But today all around him was forgotten. A squirrel chattered at him from a tree that was near by, but he did not look up. The glorious beauty of the summer morning was lost upon him. There was a heavy burden resting upon his soul.

This morning he meant to think this problem through to a solution. He was dissatisfied. Sitting thus in solitude he asked himself, “Why is it that I am not happier in my religion? Why is it that there is such a sense of dissatisfaction in my soul?” His mind ran back in review over his life to the time a few months before when on a Sunday morning he had walked down the aisle of the church, and had taken upon himself the solemn obligations of a member of the church.

But that had not been the beginning of religious things for him. As he sat with downcast eyes, his thoughts went back to his youth and he remembered how at his mother’s knee he had been taught the principles of right and wrong. He heard again the sound of his mother’s voice telling him stories from the good old Book. He remembered the careful earnestness of his parents in their teaching and in their guidance of his life. He remembered how, as that beloved mother had lain upon her dying bed, she called him to speak her last goodbye. How vivid was the scene before him! And he remembered as though it were but yesterday how he, although then only a child, had knelt by her bedside. He remembered the pressure of her hand upon his head and heard again her words, “Howard, be a good boy and meet me in heaven.” Those words had followed him through the years. Again and again when he had been tempted to participate in evil things with his companions, he had heard those tones repeated in his soul, “Howard, be a good boy and meet me in heaven.” They had held him back from many things. They had swayed a powerful influence in his life. As he remembered that departed mother this morning, he thought, “Oh, if she could have lived, she would have taught me. I might not now be in such perplexities.”

In memory, Howard came down over the years. Some things he had done filled him with regret. No, he had not lived as he now wished he had lived. There were many things in the past upon which he could not look back with satisfaction. He had always wanted to do right. For some years now he had made it a practice to bow by his bedside in secret prayer every night. He had wanted to be a Christian, a true Christian, but in some way he had seemed to miss that for which his soul craved. He had tried to live as a Christian secretly, but he had found such a life unsatisfactory. At times he had been overwhelmed with a sense of his own cowardice.

Howard had often felt that he ought to come out boldly and take his stand for Christ. He had hesitated to do this for two reasons. In the first place, he did not feel that he had within his soul that for which he yearned. He had felt himself overcome again and again in spite of his resolutions. He had found himself full of weakness in the face of temptation. He had not felt the confidence in his life that would enable him to step out boldly and call himself a Christian. Another thing that held him back was his natural timidity. He was very sensitive. He had always been very shy and backward. He had trembled to think of trying to pray or to confess Christ in public. He looked back to the time two or three years previously when he had been in a revival meeting held in the church he was used to attending. His heart then had longed for salvation. It had longed to have a knowledge of the forgiveness of its sins. He remembered how, standing in the rear of the crowded church, members of that church had come and talked to others near him and had invited them to go forward to be prayed for. He had not the courage to go without an invitation. He had wished that some one would ask him to go. That would have made it easier. But no one had said anything to him. They had passed him by for others. So he let his timidity keep him from seeking the Lord.

But Howard’s soul had been touched by an influence that lingered with him. That desire to be a Christian was not lost. He looked back over the time he had tried to be a Christian without publicly confessing Christ, but he saw little in it to give him satisfaction. It was a record of failure. He had never been able to live up to the standards to which he felt a Christian ought to live. He had earnestly tried, but he realized that he had been trying in his own strength. He had no consciousness of divine help. He could see many manifestations of the providence of God in his life, but he seemed to lack that one thing that in his consciousness he felt he must have. A few months before he had come in contact, for a short time, with some earnest Christians. There seemed to be something in their lives that was not in his own. It was the something for which he longed. Under the influence of these Christians he had joined the church, and now for a few months he had been participating in its services. He had done so with fear and trembling. The result that he had expected to follow his membership in the church had not followed. He was conscious that sin still had a prominent place in his life.

To be sure, Howard had seen the same thing manifested in the lives of some of his fellow church members. This morning he thought of the lives of the other church members whom he well knew. The question arose in his mind, “What is the difference between these men and women and those other attendants of the church who are not members and who do not profess to be Christians?” He knew all of their lives. He had worked for some of them. He had done business with some of them. He was frequently in the homes of some of them. He had entered into their social life and their business life. He had often seen thoughts and feelings mirrored in their faces. He had listened to some of these church members testify that they had “a hard row to hoe,” that they had “many ups and downs,” that they had “many shortcomings.” He had no difficulty to believe that this was true. When they had testified thus, they had told his own experiences. He could understand it very well. But in what respect did he and the others differ from those who did not claim to be Christians?

Howard thought of one of his nearest neighbors, a man for whom he had frequently worked. He knew from experience that this neighbor was not strictly honest. He had seen him act in a very cruel manner toward his stock and display a temper that was anything but Christian. He thought of a neighbor that lived in the opposite direction from his house. This man made no profession of religion. He was a profane man. But after all, he had to admit that he was much better as a neighbor than the man that was not only a church member, but a member of the official board and a deacon in the church. He contrasted the lives of other church members with non-members. His heart sank with heaviness. “Are we better than they?” he exclaimed. “After all, has our Christianity made any real change in us?” He knew that he was trying to live right more earnestly than he had tried before he became a member of the church. He knew that his sense of responsibility to the church and to the community had kept him out of some of his old sins. Nevertheless, he had the consciousness that from time to time he was coming short, not only of reaching his ideals, but of living up to that standard of practical Christianity which had been instilled into him at his mother’s knee. He had seen that standard lived out in her life and in his father’s life. He could not help but contrast his own shortcomings with the examples that had been set before him. He was dissatisfied with his own life, thoroughly dissatisfied.

As Howard sat in solemn meditation, he began to recall some of the things he had heard preached. He remembered the familiar text, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”* (1 John 1:8) Then he remembered how the Apostle Paul had said, “O wretched man that I am!”* (Romans 7:24)

“I suppose,” he sighed, “that that is about the best we can hope for. I may be as good as most of the other members of our church. In fact, I believe I am. But is this the life the Bible really pictures as the Christian life? Must our souls be forever unsatisfied? Must we be always coming short of our expectations? Is there not a place that can be reached where we shall be at peace? I know they say that such an experience is not for us in this world, and I suppose it must be true. But, oh, my soul longs for something else! I suppose we shall have to make the best of it. Perhaps in heaven things will be different. Of course, they will. People are happy in heaven, but why cannot they be happy in this world? Why does not the Christian religion really satisfy? Why must I always have this consciousness that I am not what I ought to be? But many others seem to be just the same as I. I suppose I may hope for nothing better.”

And then Howard’s mind suddenly reverted to a time two or three years in the past, remembering his school teacher. Yes, she had been different. There had been a something in her life that had made a profound impression upon him. There had been about Miss Burns a gentle, quiet, restful something that had made him like to be in her presence. There had seemed to be an undercurrent of joy in her life. She was different from the others. There was something about her that he had not seen in others. He had loved and admired her as a teacher. He had been deeply impressed with her noble Christian character.

Howard thought also of Mr. Peters, who some years before had been his Sunday school teacher, but now lived in a distant city. “Yes,” he mused, “he had that same thing that Miss Burns had. I do not know what it is. I do not know how people get it, but I should like very much to have it. But then, I suppose it is not for everybody. It seems that there are some people who are different from others. They seem to be naturally better or something. If I were like that, I believe I could be happy. Now, I really have less happiness than I did before I tried to be a Christian. I do not know what more I can do.”

He sat thus in deep meditation for a long time. He began to think how that he had heard the preacher say at various times that people must be born again. He had heard other people tell about having been converted and how happy they had been at that wonderful time. What was it to be born again? What did it mean to be converted? If any such thing had taken place in his life he could not recall it. He had wanted to be a Christian. He had tried to be a Christian. He was a member of the church. What more could he do? Being born again was to him a great mystery and when he faced that mystery he felt a feeling of helplessness come over him. How did people become born again? Frankly, he had no idea whatever. He should like to have the experience, if such a thing were for him. “Here I have been listening to preaching all my life,” he exclaimed, “and yet I seem to know no more with certainty about religion than a cat knows about trigonometry. Of course, I know the difference between right and wrong. I know how to do wrong, and I find that easy enough. But the thing I want to know most—how to do right, I do not know at all. When Paul said, ‘When I would do good, evil is present with me,’* (Romans 7:21) he certainly told my experience. I certainly am not one of those favored souls who seem to do everything right and to be good just naturally. I suppose the best that I can do is to go on doing the best I can. I think I am doing about as well as the rest of the members of our church, and if they get through all right I suppose I shall, too.”

He tried to comfort himself with this, but as he walked homeward there was still in his heart that same sense of dissatisfaction that had been there hitherto. In the days that followed he tried to console himself as best he could and to adapt himself to what he felt was the best that he could do, even though it did not give him that soul-satisfaction for which there was a continuous inner craving. Thus he went on until another event happened to disturb him again.