Self-Communion

Stand in awe, and sift not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Offer the sacrifices 0/ righteousness, and pit your trust in the Lord.” — Ps. iv. 4, 5.

There are four phases in the birth of the religious life — self-awakening, self-reflection, self-help, and self-abandonment. There is first the awakening of self-life to the presence of another law, a moral law which says, “Stand in awe, and sin not.” There is secondly the communing of the soul with itself, the asking of that momentous question, “Am I in harmony with this moral law?” There is thirdly the effort to reach that harmony by deeds that shall create the consciousness of merit — the offering of the sacrifices of righteousness. Lastly there is the perception that the consciousness of merit is itself a want of harmony with law, and the soul by an act of self-forgetfulness loses alike its sense of merit and demerit in the trust of the living God.

My soul, wouldst thou reach this blessed conclusion? Wouldst thou arrive at this final haven of moral peace where thy weakness shall itself become thy strength? Thou mayest arrive at it, but it must be after a storm — a storm whose peculiarity shall be its inaudibleness to any ear but thine. Ere thou canst reach the final rest thou must enter into communion with thyself, must examine thine old nature in the stillness of solitude. Thine must be a struggle with thine own thoughts — a struggle where there is no clang of arms, but whose soreness lies in its very silence. How still is that communion which thy God requires of thee! “Commune with thine own heart;” what converse so silent as that? “Thine own heart;” not the heart of another. The heart of another would give more companionship, but it would give less test of truth. Thou mightest compare thy righteousness with the righteousness of thy brother, and go down to thy house rejoicing, and yet all the time thou mightest be in discord with the moral law of God. Only in thine own heart canst thou see thyself truly reflected, therefore it is with thyself that thy Father bids thee commune. “Commune upon thy bed;” not alone with thine own heart, but with thine own heart in the stillest locality — in the silence of the midnight hour, where there is no distraction, and where there is no deception. There thou shalt learn what it is to be an individual soul. In the world thou art taught to forget this; thy little life is swallowed up in the crowd, and thy moral good or ill seems an indifferent thing. But here the world’s judgment is reversed. When thou art alone with God the crowd melts away, and thou art to thyself an universe. Thy very sense of sin reveals to thee the infinitude of thy being. Thy very moral struggle tells thee that in spite of thyself thou art an immortal. Commune with thine own heart, 0 my soul.