The Power Behind The Throne ( F W Boreham)

Thinking maturely about the Christian faith

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The Power Behind The Throne ( F W Boreham)

By Rowland Croucher and others ⋅ January 5, 2003 ⋅ Post a comment

(From F.W. Boreham, The Ivory Spires (Epworth press, 1934) pgs 135-146)

The card-face is an artificial face, an unnatural face, a mere mask. It frustrates the very purpose for which faces were created. In the lounge of a hotel, in the saloon of a ship or in a compartment of a railway train I sometimes see a man, engrossed in a game of cards, looking for all the world like a statue of Julius Caesar. His countenance is utterly destitute of all expression; never a gleam of excitement, never a glimmer of satisfaction, never a shadow of disappointment. I know that that man is fighting, and fighting desperately, against Nature. Nature would wreathe his face in glee when things are going well and would pucker his brows in annoyance when the luck turns against him. But, for reasons of his own, he refuses to let Nature have her way.

The beasts of the field and the fowls of the air display, in their hairy or feathered faces, little or no evidence of joy or grief; but we humans are built on a very different plan. We are endowed with faces so sensitive that, like the seismograph, they reflect and register the slightest internal tremor or disturbance. There is an appropriate outward expression for each inward emotion; and any attempt to prevent that facial mechanism from fulfilling its proper function is a defiance of one of the basic laws of life.

The soul was equipped to carry very few secrets. Its impulses readily become both visible and audible. In moments of ecstasy, the face lights up, and, in speech or song or laughter, the gladness becomes vocal. In moments of gloom, the countenance clouds, and, in murmur, lamentation or weeping, the sorrow makes itself heard.

Herein lies the subtle significance of Paul’s declaration: ‘We believe and therefore speak’. The master-passions must become articulate. If a man receives news of some happening on which his entire weal or woe depends, it is the most natural thing in the world for him to talk it over with somebody. If a man sincerely believes in the tremendous verities of the everlasting gospel, silence is practically impossible. The adoption of the principle of the card-face will stultify-and eventually slay-the finest instincts of his soul. Believing, he must speak; and the intensity of his faith will be the measure of his eloquence

I

A man may, of course, preach, in a languid, perfunctory, professional kind of way, a gospel that has never made any profound appeal to him-a gospel about which he has no strong personal convictions. In his Up from Slavery, Booker Washington says that when the educational institutions that he had established for the benefit of the newly-emancipated slaves began to turn out their first crop of students, it was difficult to decide upon the vocations that they should then adopt. Naturally, most of them, exulting in their freshly-acquired erudition, aspired to become preachers and teachers. But, whilst some were eminently fitted for these responsible callings, others embraced them merely as an easy way of earning a living. “I remember one,” adds Mr. Washington, “who was asked as to the shape of the earth. What would he teach the children on this important subject? He explained that he was quite prepared to teach either that the earth was flat or that it was round, according to the preference of the majority of the parents!” The trouble about this sort of thing-both in teaching and in preaching-is that, as passion becomes articulate in speech, so does the absence of it.

Many years ago, after a visit to England, I so far forgot myself as to prepare a lecture on my experiences overseas. I suppose I delivered Afloat and Ashore at least a hundred times. Whenever I accepted an invitation to give this lecture, I suggested that, half-way through, an interval should be taken during which somebody should sing The Dear Homeland.

As a result I heard that particular solo some scores of times in the course of a year or two. And, hearing it so frequently, I developed a faculty which never once failed me. I could tell, before the soloists were half-way through, whether they had emigrated from the Old Country or had been born and reared under the Southern Cross. The words and the music were in every case the same, but a certain indefinable undertone of poignant emotion was sometimes present and sometimes absent. And the presence or absence of that subtle quality could be readily sensed. The pew quickly acquires the knack of submitting the pulpit to the same searching test.

At the bar, I know, it is necessary that a man should sometimes argue along a line in which he has no personal confidence. The question is often asked: Can an advocate conscientiously defend a prisoner whom he strongly suspects, or secretly believes, to be guilty? I frequently marvel that the question is so consistently stated in this way. We are never asked : Can an advocate conscientiously prosecute a prisoner whom he strongly suspects, or secretly believes, to be innocent?

Yet, if I were a barrister-and, failing the ministry, no calling would more powerfully attract me-this second question would give me far greater uneasiness than the first. All the most compassionate impulses of my soul would lead me to place before the Courts, in the least unfavourable light, the case of the poor wretch who had possibly yielded to a more terrible temptation than I myself had ever known. But I should encounter a good many internal scruples in setting myself to besmirch the character of a man who was very possibly as innocent of the crime with which he was charged as I was. I wonder why it is always the defending, and never the accusing, advocate whose probity we question.

But between the case of the barrister and the case of the preacher there is all the difference in the world. If I were a barrister I should feel no hesitation whatever in defending a man whom I strongly suspected to be guilty. To begin with, my private suspicions have nothing whatever to do with the case and ought not to be allowed to prejudice in any way the man’s position. Experience has taught me that I have frequently suspected people to be guilty of offences of which they were-as was subsequently proved-entirely guiltless. This man whom I am asked to defend is in a terrible position. He is charged with a shocking crime. Obviously, he ought not to be punished for that crime unless his guilt is established beyond all reasonable doubt. But how can the Court be sure that his guilt has been so proven if only one side has been heard? In fairness to the Judge and jury, the man’s own case should be presented to them as effectively as it is possible to present it. How can the Court feel that there is any element of finality in the evidence and speeches presented by the prosecution unless somebody, skilled in such matters, has had the opportunity of rebutting that evidence and replying to those speeches? You cannot be sure of a thing until it has been adequately tested; the jury cannot estimate the strength of the case for the prosecution until it has been tested by an able defence. In the case of a guilty man, the prosecution is strengthened and the duty of the Court simplified, by the ability of the defending barrister. In the interests of justice, therefore, and in order that the Court might be absolutely sure that no miscarriage was taking place, I should feel it my duty-apart altogether from my pity for the prisoner-to defend any man whose case was committed to my care.

But the point is that, whilst the Court thoroughly understands that a defending barrister does not commit himself to a personal conviction of the innocence of his client, a congregation has every right to assume that the preacher is presenting a case in which he has the most implicit confidence. They take it for granted that he is preaching a gospel of which he himself has had vital and personal experience. Without absolute certainty concerning the virtue of his message, he has no right in the pulpit. The pulpit, it has been said, is the preacher’s throne. That being so, his own secret delight in the sweetness and grace of his gospel is the power behind the throne. We believe and therefore speak.

II

Again, a man may preach, and preach with sincerity and fervour, a gospel that holds for him all the glamour of an impressive and encrusted tradition. He believes because others, by whose personal charm he has been captivated, or whose honoured names he has learned to venerate, have believed before him. Some of the most eminent thinkers and preachers have frankly adopted this intellectual attitude. Newman is a case in point. Cardinal Newman possessed one of the most acute end penetrating minds known to ecclesiastical history; yet he ingenuously confessed that a good deal of his faith was founded on the faith of others. How, for example, could he believe in the crude and grotesque miracles attributed, in some of the Italian or Spanish churches, to certain medieval saints? How could he believe that the blood of St. Pantaloon, preserved in a bottle at Ravello, becomes liquid of its own accord whenever, in the month of June, the holy day of the saint is celebrated? How could he believe that the house that he visited at Loreto was the very house in which the Holy Family dwelt in Palestine, having been magically transported thither in three hops? Yet Newman firmly believed all this and much more of the same kind. “If,” he says, “if you ask me why I believe it, it is because every one believes it at Rome, cautious as they are and skeptical about some other things.”

There is something very childlike, and therefore very beautiful, about all this; but there is also something very dangerous. Dr. Stalker says that the most solemn and appalling circumstance in the whole tragedy of the life of Christ is that the men who rejected, hunted down and murdered the Saviour were the best men in the nation-its teachers and examples, the zealous conservators of the Bible and of the traditions of the past, men who thought they were obeying the dictates of conscience and doing the will of God in treating Jesus as they did. And the reason? The reason simply was that they had become the victims of a second-hand faith.

Jewish history, Dr. Stalker shows, passed through two distinct stages. In the first stage, its peril had been the peril of idolatry; the chastisement of the Exile corrected that tendency for ever, and thenceforward the Jews, all the world over, were uncompromising monotheists. In the second stage-the stage that immediately succeeded the Exile-the peril became the peril of orthodoxy. There sprang up the synagogue with its rabbis. The rabbis brought into existence an ever-growing hoard of sacred tradition. Little by little, this increasing store of tradition came to be regarded as of equal value with the inspired oracles themselves.

Now the trouble about “believing because everybody believes” is the trouble that arises in a child’s copybook. The top line-the line nearest the copy- is approximately like the copy. The second line is approximately like the first; the third approximately like the second-and so on. But, with all these approximations, there is a constant leakage of exactitude. The lines get less and less like the copy at the top. My son, believing because I believe, will believe just a little differently. Between my faith and my grandson’s faith there will be a still greater discrepancy. Therein lies the treachery of tradition.

The scribes handed the Jewish traditions from generation to generation; but with each generation there was some addition, or some subtraction, or some slight departure from the original type. It is proverbial that a tale loses nothing in the telling. Like a snowball, it grows as it goes. And so it came to pass that when, in the fulness of time, the Messiah appeared, the very people to whom the sacred oracles had been committed rejected and crucified Him. He came unto His own but His own received Him not. He was cast out, not because of any failure on His part to conform with the descriptions given by the prophets, but because His teaching and behaviour ran counter to the vast mass of tradition that had gathered around those prophetic documents.

The history of the English Puritans offers a striking illustration of the singular circumstance that orthodoxy often waxes as faith wanes. In the golden age of Puritanism no two Puritans thought exactly alike. It did not occur to any man to adjust his beliefs to the creed of other people. As a result it happened that a great body of ideas came to be held in common, whilst, on minor matters, those who held those ideas differed widely. There was no such thing as orthodoxy; but faith was general. Then came the tragedy. The spirit of Puritanism vanished : the body alone remained. The later Puritanism consisted, not in a beatific vision and a glowing faith, but in an inflexible creed and an intolerant spirit. Each separate Puritan was required to believe as all other Puritans believed, and had to express his faith in the same phraseology and even in the same tone of voice. When orthodoxy came in at the door, faith flew out at the window.

So was it with Judaism. Like a fungus that over-spreads and buries the root from which it sprang, the rabbinic orthodoxy battened upon and eventually smothered the sublime revelation that gave it birth. And the result was-Calvary! The tragedy of the Cross is the supreme condemnation of the tendency to believe a thing, not because of a firmly-grounded conviction of the rightness or the authenticity of that thing, but merely because faith in that thing is the mode of the moment. A man endangers his everlasting soul-and other people’s-whenever he believes a thing in order to conform with the general attitude. Nietzsche used mockingly to say that religion is ruled by the natural law that ordains that animals shall take the colour of their environment. And, whenever a Christian man adapts his faith to the prevailing fashion, he proves himself worthy of that ugly jibe.

The history of the Scribes and the Pharisees, the history of the ecclesiasticism of the Middle Ages, the history of the Puritans and the story of men like Newman prove conclusively that a man whose faith is grounded in tradition may nevertheless preach with extraordinary intensity and fervour. But his passion is the passion of party prejudice rather than the passion of personal conviction. It is the enthusiasm of a scholar for his own school. It is the expression in religion of the Conservative temper. Not thus, Paul says, must the preacher preach. Before venturing into a pulpit, let him possess a faith of his very own; a faith at which he has arrived by reasoning of his own; a faith that he expresses in ways of his own ! We believe and therefore speak.

III

From all this I turn with relief to the thought of my old friend John Broadbanks. In many respects John was an ideal preacher. He was a plain blunt man; he had few tricks of rhetoric; his style was purely a conversational style; yet he held the congregation spellbound from the first word to the last. He never shouted or screamed, never resorted to dramatic gestures, and very seldom betrayed any external evidence of passion or emotion. Yet somehow he made you feel that he was speaking from the very depths of his soul, that every word he uttered meant all the world to him, and that he was longing to communicate to you the treasure in which he himself was luxuriating.

Although not cocksure, he was always perfectly certain. There is a difference. In the privacy of our heart-to-heart talks as we sprawled in the grass on the banks of the Silverstream, he would tell me of his doubts and uncertainties. There were many points on which he was extremely hazy. He could never be sure as to the part played by evolutionary processes in the creation of the world; he had theories of his own as to the authorship of some of the books of the Bible; and he was very much at sea as to the precise significance of many of the apocalyptic visions. But he never carried his doubts up the pulpit-steps. He carefully eschewed there the subjects on which he was not himself perfectly clear. On the greatest themes of all-the matters on which human happiness and human destiny depend-he was sublimely confident. And, infecting his hearers with his own fine faith, he exercised through all the years a vigorous, inspiring and effective ministry. He radiated faith, peace and comfort; and his people blessed him for it.

It is for such ministries that human hearts are aching. In his Darkened Doors, Sir Philip Gibbs has given expression to this thought. Adrian Mallard, K.C., a brilliant though sceptical lawyer and sportsman, who finds that he is a victim of angina pectoris is chatting with his friend. Professor Boyd, a distinguished psychologist. The Professor is singing the praises of the open mind.

“Is that good enough?” asks Mallard, rather impatiently. “An open mind is all very well, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. I’m beginning to want- certainty!” Boyd is amused by this desire, which seems to him hopelessly unscientific.

“Certainty?” he replies, “Certainty! I’m surprised at you ! What do you want to be certain about?”

Mallard answers without flippancy. “About life- about death-about what happens afterwards. What’s the good of you scientists if you can’t tell us that?”

In this tense morsel of dialogue. Sir Philip Gibbs sets his finger on one of the nerve-centres of our human make-up. There is no craving in the human heart more persistent or more passionate than the craving to lay a firm hand upon something-something vital, something real, something eternal. And only the preacher whose eyes are lit by the inner fires of profound conviction, and in whose voice men catch the accents of serene and unwavering assurance, can hope to lead those groping pilgrims to their shining goal.