Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 281, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 November 1916 — “DO YE BELIEVE?" [ARTICLE]

“DO YE BELIEVE?"

Challenge of Our Lord Stands Today as It Stood on the Eve of His Passion. Jeaua answered them. Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, la now come, that ye ahall be scattered every man to hia own, and ahall leave me Alone. . . . Theae things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.—St. John 16:11-31 Only it did not look like it It looked exactly the opposite; no one could have failed to see what the appearances indicated. This great prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, had challenged the world with his tremendous claim, and to all appearances the world had been manifestly too much for him. True there were times when the mass of the people In Galilee appeared likely to support him. The common people could not but hear gladly one who spoke words of compassion and had a mysterious power corresponding to his pity, so that it was a pity that had power in it actually to relieve and remedy their distresses and diseases. No doubt the common people heard him gladly. But they found very soon that the claim which he was making on their Ilves was a claim for a profound conversion and change of spirit which we all know is the most troublesome claim that can be made upon Us. It tested their sincerity. There were only a few who were ready for such a sacrifice. So it was but a very little band which formed the disciples of the new teacher. And now, in their turn, they were trembling In anxiety and vacillation of spirit. Our Lord challenges them there, in the eve of his passion, as they sit or stand around him —this little trembling group: “Do ye now believe?” And in their heart of hearts they cannot give him the answer which he would have. Nay, he knows the future and it came as he anticipated: They all forsook him; one denied him, one betrayed him. The failure which at tfae moment seemed so threatening became complete. Obstacles to Belief. “Do ye now believe?” I would chalenge you with that question. I would say investigate, think, as freely as ever you can; but challenge yourself with that 'question —“Dost thou now believe?” There are the normal obstacles to belief. The cause of Jesus Christ is always up against great interests, and the normal vacillation of the human heart, and it is always seeming to fail —that is the ordinary experience. But also we are in the midst of an experience which is extraordinary, and the minds, imaginations and hearts of people of all sorts are forcing them to ask themselves: Can I now believe that central and fundamental witness of Jesus for which he lived and died, that witness to his father? Can I believe that the world, this horrible world of hostility and enmity, of bitterness and lying—can I believe that the one God who made this world and who is responsible for it, the one power who made and sustains all things is love, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whose name he bare witness? My friends, challenge yourselves, but remember that the strength of the witness of Jesus is that it is given in the face of just those experiences which are at the moment staggering your imagination, that witness which lies behind the witness of Jesus —the witness of the Old Testament Scriptures; the belief, - there developing itself, in the one God of perfect power and perfect goodness, came Into the hearts and minds of those prophets of Israel, and through them into the hearts and minds of other men, under experiences exactly like thoge which are now staggering our minds and imaginations. It was under the tramp of those terrible armies—Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, Roman —that men first came to believe in one God of power and goodness. And when that witness was Intensified and deepened by our Lord, remember the circumstances. The Man of Sorrows. There is nothing that has ever led men to doubt the love of God or his power that did not lie in the immediate circumstances which closed around the form and history of Jesus of Nazareth. If it had been some bright angel who had come down from heaven and told us-with never so many miracles that God was love, we shoulu have listened respectfully but at the end, when he had flown away, we should have said: “It sounds very pretty, but we know better.” But It was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Everything, I say, that has ever led men to doubt the love of God, every pain of body, and agony of mind, every experience of malignity and hostility and bitterness, every experience of the weakness of the good and the strength of the evil, everything that In slow and embittering experience has turned philanthropists into pynics and made wise men mad —everything Jesus Christ bore; and it was out of the very depths of all that experience that he cried that great cry, asked that tremendous question to which there is no answer—“My God, my God, why didst thou forsake me?” And truly, if entering into the innermost chambers of your being you can answer that great question, Do ye now believe? with an affirmative becoming more and more confident, “Lord, 1 believe, help thou mine unbelief,” then there is no doubt about it, you may have, you must have, peace—that central peace subsisting at the heart of endless agitation.—The Bishop of Oxford.