Acts 17:27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: 1. The first peculiarity of the climbing plant to which Mr. Darwin calls our attention is "the slow revolution, in a larger or smaller circle, of the upper extremities in search of a support," and when in their revolutions they are brought into contact with some firm object, they immediately press against it and so twine round it. The plant cannot stand alone, and it begins to reach out after support just as soon as it begins to grow. Do we not witness in these movements an analogy of the outreachings of the soul after God? The soul knows that it cannot thrive alone, that it needs some Power stronger than itself to cling to; and it feels after it if haply it may find it. Blindly, in the dark, the minds of men grope after this Object of their faith. It is not the heathen alone who have this experience. You know, my friend, no matter how irreligious your life may have been, that your heart is often yearning for a good you have not got; that the sense of helplessness and dependence sometimes takes strong hold of you and forces from your heart the cry: "Oh that I knew where I might find Him and lay hold upon His strength!" 2. "On another plant," says Mr. Darwin, "three pairs of tendrils were produced at the same time by three shoots, and all happened to he differently directed. I placed the pot in a box open only on one side and obliquely facing the light; in two days all six tendrils pointed with unerring truth to the darkest corner of the box, though to do this each had to bend in a different manner." The tendril is seeking an object to cling to, the light coming freely from one side shows that no object is there, so the tendrils turn in the other direction; support is nearest on the side where the shadow is. But how does this prefigure our spiritual relation to God? God is light; true, but clouds and darkness are the habitation of His throne. When it is said that in Him is no darkness at all, the darkness is moral; there is in Him no deceit, insincerity, hatred. His character is light, but there are many things about His nature that are dark to us. And it is precisely His transcendent greatness that our trust lays hold upon. We want a Power to cling to whose greatness we cannot compass with our thought. A God whom we could comprehend we could not fully trust. And so it is that our faith turns away from the garish light of human wisdom toward the unfathomed depths of Deity. There is another resemblance here. The darkness is a symbol of God's infinity, of the veiling of His nature from our sight. But it is only by the help of shadows that we see. Look directly at the sun and you can see nothing. It is when your back is turned to the sun that you see most clearly. Our faith, like the tendrils, turns not only toward the darkness that hides God's infinity, but also toward the shadow because in that something of His nature is visible. The shadow not only conceals, it also discloses. You cannot conceive of absolute deity. Your mind is dazzled when you look God in the face, just as your eyes are dazzled when you look on the sun. And men have always found it necessary to learn what God is by looking toward the shadows and the types which He has given us. The Incarnation is God in the shadow. Our faith finds some. thing here that we can take hold of and cling to. 3. "Knowing," says Mr. Darwin, "that the tendrils avoided the light, I gave them a glass tube blackened within, and a well blackened zinc plate; but they soon recoiled from these objects with what I can only call disgust, and straightened themselves." Here we have not a likeness, but a contrast. Full often the tendrils of our desire fasten upon that which defiles us; and the faith that ought to bind us fast to God's righteousness and power is entwined about some grovelling superstition or some ensnaring sin. 4. "When a tendril," says our teacher again, "has not succeeded in clasping a support, either through its own revolving movement or that of the shoot, or by turning toward any object that intercepts the light, it bends vertically downwards and then toward its own stem, which it seizes, together with the supporting stick, if there be one." So when our spiritual instincts that reach out naturally after God and goodness do not lay hold on their normal support, they, too, are very apt to turn downward and inward, and to lay hold upon that self which it was their true function to bind to a firm support. And when this is done the affections are apt to be turned backward upon self; the man comes to believe only in himself and to worship himself, and the character that is developed is a most unlovely product of egotism and selfishness. 5. "If the tendril seizes nothing," says this naturalist, "it soon withers away and drops off." It is possible thus, by simple neglect, to destroy that part of our nature by which we take hold upon God. The extinction of the faith faculty is a possible calamity, and it is the direst. How can the climbing plant cling when the tendrils have withered and dropped off? It must thenceforth grovel in the dirt and be trodden under foot of men. And how can the soul lift itself up, when all the faculties by which it takes hold on God have fallen into decay? 6. Let us hear Mr. Darwin again: "Tendrils, soon after catching a support, grow much stronger and thicker and durable, and this shows how much their internal tissues must be changed. Occasionally it is the part which is wound round a support which chiefly becomes thicker and stronger." Is not this, also, true in the higher realm? The instincts of the soul that feel after God are wonderfully strengthened when they find Him, and take hold of His power. Faith grows by exercise. 7. "The tendril strikes some object," Mr. Darwin proceeds, "and firmly grasps it. In the course of some hours it contracts into a spire, dragging up the stem and forming an excellent spring. All movements now cease. By growth, the tissues soon become wonderfully strong and durable." The very character and quality of the tendrils themselves are changed as they thus fasten upon their support, and perform the function to which nature has assigned them. And so it is with these spiritual faculties of ours by which we lay hold upon God. Our trust, instead of being a tender and fragile thing, grows firm and strong and holds us fast to the throne of God with a grasp that the shocks of change cannot break nor the storms of adversity loosen. 8. Once more, "The tendrils and internodes of Ampelopsis have little or no power of revolving; the tendrils are but little sensitive to contact; their hooked extremities cannot seize their objects; they will not even clasp a stick unless in extreme need of support; but they turn from the light to the dark, and, spreading out their branches in contact with any nearly flat surface, develop discs. These adhere by the secretion of some cement to a wall or even to a polished surface. The rapid development of these adherent discs is one of the most remarkable peculiarities possessed by any tendril." I cannot help seeing in this an analogy of that phenomenon of the spiritual life which we so often witness, by which those natures which have but little power of comprehending religious truth — of reaching round it and getting hold of it by their understanding — do yet lay hold upon it in a way of their own, and hold fast to it very firmly too. There are Christians whose faith does not seem to need the leading strings of logic or theology, but mounts right up by its own sure-footed intuition. And it is a blessed thing that those to whom the paths of philosophy are thorny, and the steeps of speculation hard to climb, may thus, by a simple and direct confidence in the Christ Himself, who is to all who receive Him the Way and the Truth and the Life, ascend to the serene and tranquil heights of virtue. (Washington Gladden, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: |
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