That last phrase sums up one of the deepest needs of human life. We
are in constant want of spiritual repair; we are lost without a fresh
influx of inward power; we desperately need to have our souls restored.
A young British soldier once came in from the trenches where his
aggressive powers had been in full employ and, having heard one of the
finest concert companies that London could send out, he wrote in a
letter to his family: "I have just come down from the trenches, and
have been listening to one of the best concerts I ever attended. It
makes one feel that perhaps there is a good God after all." The two
aspects of life which that soldier discovered in himself all men
possess. One takes us to life's trenches; the other throws us back on
some revelation of grace and beauty that we may be sure of God. With
one we seek aggressively to master life; with the other we seek
receptively to be inspired. Every normal man needs these two kinds of
influence: one to send him informed and alert to his tasks, the other
to float his soul off its sandbars on the rising tide of spiritual
reassurance and power. Every normal man needs two attitudes: one when
he goes into action determined to do his work and to do it well, and
the other when he subdues his spirit to receptivity and with the
Psalmist cries,
"My soul, wait thou in silence for God only;
For my expectation is from him."
When science has given us all the power it can, we still need another
kind of power which science cannot give.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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