Fearless Before the Threatening Host

‘*‘ Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.” PSALM xxvii. 3.

It is a marvellous triumph of grace when we can stand before an advancing army of adverse circumstances and not be afraid. We have passed far into the secret place when the massed antagonists do not trouble us any more than a single foe. The fact of the matter is, we are very prone to be confounded by magnitude. Mere mass hypnotises us. We become the victims of its mesmeric fascination. We are distracted. We lose our balance. We see things out of their perspective, and in these matters disproportion is death. We ought to be able to keep a quiet eye when adverse armies bear down upon us. To see them in the larger relationships in which they shrink to a very slender line, to meet them confidently and unperturbed — this is a very clear token that we are moving towards them with the magnificent accompaniment of grace. To fear nothing but God is the supreme triumph.

I am very fond of that strong, vigorous, invigorating sentence of John Milton which I long ago marked in his Areopagitica. ““God intended to prove me, whether I durst take up alone a rightful cause against a world of disesteem and found I durst.” I like Milton’s interpretation of his antagon- ‘isms. He heard the divine challenge in their approach. “Durst thou, or wilt thou retreat?’ And Milton’s soul answered the challenge with all the sensitiveness and reticence with which a true soldier answers the call of the bugle. He first of all retired into the inner room of his own being, and he summoned all his moral and spiritual resources, and he went forth with fearless heart to meet his foes. ‘“‘He found I durst!”? And Milton’s way is the great secret in all radiant triumphs. We must discern the divine Presence on the field of conflict. We must hear the divine challenge in our circumstances. We must see the divine test of our moral and spiritual worth.

‘* Durst thou?” To accept our conditions in this spirit is to face our antagonistic circumstances with a feeling of tonic instead of panic. We are nerved rather than enervated by themenace. “There are some men,” says Emerson, “‘ who rise refreshed on hearing a threat.” They are the men who hear the divine bugle in the gathering gloom. To them the battle-ground is larger than the immediate field. Their company is greater than the threatening host. The encompassing mountains are filled with horses and chariots of fire, and in a sublime confidence they move forward to certain triumph. They lose no strength in traitorous fear. ‘“‘ Durst thou?” “By Thy grace I will.”

So doth the Lord prove us in the dark and cloudy day. And so is our vigour unveiled in the tempests. We are made manifest by the very enemy who came to destroy us. ‘* The things which happened unto me have turned out rather unto the furtherance of the Gospel.” The menace leads us more deeply into the treasures of grace. Our temptations unlock our resources. Our sorrows discover to us the consolations of the ‘everlasting life. And, therefore, ‘“‘ though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.”