1. Every venture of faith involves the element of risk. Risk is everywhere where faith is concerned. And faith has to be exercised in our relation to everything. The man who will not exercise faith because there is a risk, will not venture anywhere, for there is no such thing in this world as absolute knowledge concerning anything.
In every age it has been the faith that risked that has moved mountains, cast out devils, and healed the nations. That is where faith finds its test and its triumphs; and, alas! that is where faith so often breaks down. We can trust God for receiving; we can trust even for sanctifying grace: but when it comes to risk! When obedience may mean loss of position, loss of money, loss of home, how many there are that shrink back! When faith involves risk of failure, the sorrow of reproach, and the sting of ridicule, what then?
After Bunyan had been a preacher for five or six years, he was seized for pursuing this unlawful calling, and at the end of seven weeks’ preliminary imprisonment, he was had up to Bedford, where it was charged, “That he, John Bunyan, labourer (for the Lord, they might have said), hath devilishly and maliciously abstained from coming to church to hear Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles,” etc. So they determined that against such a devilish and malicious man they would angelically and benevolently do what they might. Conventicles, indeed, instead of churches Shame on you, John Bunyan, you can listen to the bell-ringing, cannot you, if there is nothing else you can hear at church to your liking. So Judge Keeling says, “Hear our judgment. You must be back to prison; lie there three months. Then if you don’t come to church you shall be banished the country, and if you are not gone by the day appointed, or come back, plainly, you must stretch by the neck for it.” To this Bunyan answered, “If I am out of prison today I shall preach again tomorrow.” And as to hanging, he had his thoughts about that, sometimes comfortable, sometimes not. What if he should quake and faint? That was not pleasant to think of. But if he might convert only one soul by his last words, that would make some amends for hanging. But what of his own faith? “I’ll leap off, blindfold,” said he, “come heaven, come hell, sink or swim. Lord Jesus, if Thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I venture for Thy name.” Bold words, yet humble; but he was not to climb up to heaven by way of the hangman’s ladder. Sometimes in his solitude he had comfort, great comfort. Taken in the very act of saving sinners, and for no other crime, his Saviour was with him, and he rhymes his experience thus:
The prison very sweet to me
Hath been since I came here,
And so would also hanging be
If God will there appear. [Note: T. T. Lynch, The Mornington Lecture, 108.]
2. Faith that goes forward triumphs. Seas divide at its touch and mountains move at its word. It spreads tables in the wilderness and turns desert sands into springs of water. Under its influence the weak become strong and the timid lose their fear. It subdues kingdoms, works righteousness, obtains promises, stops the mouths of lions, quenches the power of fire, delivers from the edge of the sword, and turns weaklings into invincible warriors, who put to flight the armies of the alien. By it men sing in the night, worship in caves, and pray in prisons. Nothing can daunt them; nothing can overcome them; nothing can resist them. Exultant, jubilant, triumphant, the men of faith are the hosts of God. He is their Leader, their Captain, their Father, and their Lord.
I toiled on from day to day, my heart almost sinking sometimes, with the sinking of the well, till we reached a depth of about thirty feet. And the phrase, “living water,” “living water,” kept chiming through my soul like music from God, as I dug and hammered away!
At this depth the earth and coral began to be soaked with damp. I felt that we were nearing water. My soul had a faith that God would open a spring for us; but side by side with this faith was a strange terror that the water would be salt. So perplexing and mixed are even the highest experiences of the soul; the rose-flower of a perfect faith, set round and round with prickly thorns. One evening I said to the old Chief—
“I think that Jehovah God will give us water tomorrow from that hole!”
The Chief said, “No, Missi; you will never see rain coming up from the earth on this island. We wonder what is to be the end of this mad work of yours. We expect daily, if you reach water, to see you drop through into the sea, and the sharks will eat you! That will be the end of it; death to you, and danger to us all.”
I still answered, “Come tomorrow. I hope and believe that Jehovah God will send you the rain water up through the earth.”
At the moment I knew I was risking much, and probably incurring sorrowful consequences, had no water been given; but I had faith that the Lord was leading me on, and I knew that I sought His glory, not my own.
Next morning, I went down again at daybreak and sank a narrow hole in the centre about two feet deep. The perspiration broke over me with uncontrollable excitement, and I trembled through every limb, when the water rushed up and began to fill the hole. Muddy though it was, I eagerly tasted it, and the little “tinny” dropped from my hand with sheer joy, and I almost fell upon my knees in that muddy bottom to praise the Lord. It was water! It was fresh water! It was living water from Jehovah’s well! True, it was a little brackish, but nothing to speak of; and no spring in the desert, cooling the parched lips of a fevered pilgrim, ever appeared more worthy of being called a Well of God than did that water to me! [Note: John G. Paton, ii. 182.]
I was glad to row in my College boat, but I declined the beer and port wine, which were at that time considered essential to training. “No,” I said, “I will leave the boat, but I will not take drink!” I was strengthened by a firm assurance that I was obeying the commandment of God. Strange to say, five of the eight men followed my example. The Common-room butler, with the licence of an old servant, looked in at our meals and said derisively: “Toast and water! you’ll be bumped—no boat can go up on toast and water!” It was that year that our boat rose from the bottom of the river and started on its career which at last put it at the head. [Note: R. F. Horton, An Autobiography, 165.]
It is to the credit of the world that it has never been without those who readily follow the path of venture and loss. Again and again there are courageous chivalrous spirits who are quite ready to risk all in some high adventure if they may but attain their Ideal of Love. As Tennyson sings—
If I were loved, as I desire to be,
What is there in the great sphere of the earth,
And range of evil between death and birth,
That I. should fear,—if I were loved by thee’?
All the inner, all the outer world of pain
Clear Love would pierce and cleave, if thou wert mine,
As I have heard that, somewhere in the main,
Fresh-water springs come up through bitter brine.
‘Twere joy, not fear, claspt hand-in-hand with thee,
To await for death—mute—careless of all ills,
Apart upon a mountain. [Note: G. H. S. Walpole, Life’s Chance, 34.]
