The Threshold Grace | Page 4

with which we learn it, but the ease with which we apply it. The measure of conscious effort in our faith is the measure of our faith's weakness. When faith has become a spontaneity of our character, when it turns to God instinctively, when it does its work with the involuntariness of habit, then it has become strong.
_Pour out your heart before Him._ How this singer understood the office and privilege of the 'all times' trust! He knew that there is a fullness of heart that is ill to bear. True, in more than one simple way the full heart can find some slight relief. There is work. The full heart can go out and do something. There is a brother's trouble in which a man may partly forget his own. There is sympathy. Surely few are so lonely that they cannot find any one ready to offer the gift of the listening ear, any one willing to share with them all of pain and burden that can be shared. Ah! but what of that which cannot be shared? What of the sorrow that has no language, and the shame and confusion that we would not, and even dare not, trail across a friend's mind? So often the heart holds more than ever should be poured out into another's ear. There are in life strained silences that we could not break if we would. And there is a law of reticence that true love and unselfishness will always respect. If my brother hath joy, am I to cloud it with my grief? If he hath sorrow, am I to add my sorrow unto his? When our precious earthly fellowship has been put to its last high uses in the hour of sorrow or shame, the heart has still a burden for which this world finds no relief. But there is another fellowship. There is God our Father. There is the ear of Heaven. We may be girt with silence among our fellows, but in looking up the heart finds freedom. In His Presence the voice of confession can break through the gag of shame, and the pent-up tide of trouble can let itself break upon the heart of Eternal Love.
_God is a refuge for us._ That is the great discovery of faith. That is the merciful word that comes to be written so plainly in the life that has formed the habit of faith. God our refuge. It may be that to some the word 'refuge' suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. But the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. A thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. And you cannot find it easily if it be not at hand. The peasant built his cottage under the shadow of his lord's castle walls. In the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. 'Trust in Him at all times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in Him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you into the innermost safety.

III.
THE ONE THING DESIRABLE
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.
Ps. xxvii. 4.
_I have desired ... I will seek._ Amid the things that are seen, desire and quest are nearly always linked closely together. The man who desires money seeks after money. The desire of the world is often disappointed, but it is rarely supine. It is dynamic. It leads men. True, it leads them astray; but that is a reflection on its wisdom and not on its effectiveness. Among what we rightly call the lower things men do not play with their desires, they obey them. But amid the unseen realities of life it is often quite otherwise. In the religious life desire is sometimes strangely ineffective. It is static, if that be not a contradiction in terms. In many a life-story it stands written: One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I dream of, that will I hope for, that will I wait for. Many things help to explain this attitude, and, explaining it, they condemn it also. We allow our surroundings to pass judgement on our longings. We bring the eternal to the bar of the hour, and postpone the verdict. Or it may be in the worldliness of our hearts we admit the false plea of urgency and the false claim of