Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 263, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 November 1917 — GRACE VS. FAILURES [ARTICLE]

GRACE VS. FAILURES

Often Times It Is the Great Revealer of God’s Mercy, Love and Power to Deliver. The disciples learned through their falls, but they never learned anything which would not have been better learned through their faith. It is enough to say that God"Xlll teach us through our stumblings -when that Is the only text-book left to teach us out of. We need not go into any raptures about failure. When he had denied his-Lord and then suddenly saw him in all his truth and beauty, Peter knew well enough that he might have seen his Lord more clearly without a fall. But be that as it may, the fall was there, and the wonder of It was that his master was still willing to reveal himself through what was left. Almost, any master could take the defects and mistakes of his disciples and point out what they had lost, but who else would take the meanest and most in one’s existence stud make even them a lens through which they could sge the divine if they would? There are more normal ways of revelation, points out the Sunday School Times, but when this is the only way we have left to God, then he takes our falls and reveals himself through them. Without ever once saying that the fall was upward, or that the sin was goodness in the making, the Bible takes what men give and shows how wonderfully God will commence the miracle of repair. It may be that we do not learn as we might because we are too proud to learn through the only means we have left for God to employ in teaching us. A great fall may still be a great revealer. When we have had one we may look upward because there is nowhere else to look. At last we look unto the hills whence cometh our help. One of the marks of a Christian believer is that to him a fall is something different froth what it is to another man. To the non-Christian a fall may seem nothing but a finish. To the Christian it must in some way seem more terrible than to anybody else. But though he is cast down, he is not destroyed. _

Every Christian is brought very low at times. To anyone else it would be the end; but he is taught to expect so constantly exhibited the exuberance of the Gospel, said: “I have known as nearly as any man what tt was to be forsaken, I have reached out and found no help, that is,'%o lateral help. The only direction from which helF~ could come to me was vertical.” These exhaustions ought; never to have been, but they are here, and they may be made the ground of revelations. When we cannot pray to God out of our nearness .to him, then we can pray out of our distance. George MacDonald said that sometimes he felt he had no other claim upon God except that he was so miserable; and he made that claim. One man lets his weakness overwhelm him. His religion ends there. But another takes his stand upon his weakness, it is all he has, and he uses that as an approach to God; and the willingness to do that has been a great revealer to men. Pride may ruin us, it may keep us waiting until we have some better basis on which to speak to God —and we never find that basis, Who would not wish that he might look into God’s face from a life that was all clear? But we cannot. The Pharisee tried it in the temple and failed. The publican knew that if he was to see God at all he must see him from the standpoint of sin and shame; throwing away his pride, waiting for nothing, saying "God be merciful to me a sinner,” he saw God. There Is not a sinner in the world who may not add to the glories of revelation.

"God fulfills himself In many ways.” 5Ve could wish that- the truth might come to us steadily, through eyes that are always bright and glad. But the truth comes to many of us through tears. It may come that way. Let us not despise our disappointments. So far our sins and falls may have only revealed to us ourselves. They may have only intensified our selfknowledge. This is something; but If it is all, it may end in death. But when one realizes that just this experience is what Christ has been looking for, and that, made over to him*, he may make it a means of revelation, then our greatest days may be drawing nigh. You are having some terrible dis-, appointment or sorrow or failure. Do not let it be that and nothing mote. Do not be proud about it. Do not say you will not see God unless he comes in the grand way. If this is all you have by way of present experience, then it will suit God better than anything else you can offer. Christ always took men just where they were. He never asked that the situation should be altered. He said nothing about "hard cases.” There was no depth to which one had fallen which might not become a ground from which to rise again. Just there the soul may find, if it is humble enough, the help which just matches his need. When Thoreau fell and sprained his ankle in the woods, as he lay on the ground looking about he saw for the first time in many months the herb arnica mollis, good for sprains, and felt it was a parable of much else In the spiritual world. So when our first shame and discouragements are over, we are to> It may be the beginning of greater revelation than we have yet