Spiritual Energies in Daily LifeJones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Religion
Spiritual Energies in Daily Life
Jones, Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew)
Spiritual life
We are so accustomed to the use of the word in a spurious sense that
we are slow to apprehend the immense significance of this human energy
which lies potentially within us. Unfortunately trained young folks and
scientifically minded people are apt to shy away from the word and put
themselves on the defensive, as though they were about to be asked to
believe the impossible or the dubious or the unprovable. Faith in the
sense in which St. Paul uses it does not mean _believing_ something.
It is a moral attitude and response of will to the character of God
as He has been revealed in Christ. It is like the act which closes
the electric circuit, which act at once releases power. The dynamic
effect which follows the act is the best possible verification of the
rationality of the act. So, too, faith as a moral response is no blind
leap, no wild venture; it is an act which can be tested and verified by
moral and spiritual effects, which are as real as the heat, light, and
horse power of the dynamo.
Faith has come to be recognized as an energy in many spheres of life. We
know what a stabilizer it is in the sphere of finance. Stocks and bonds
and banks shift their values as faith in them rises or falls. _Morale_
is only another name for faith. Our human relationships, our social
structures, our enjoyment of one another, our satisfaction in books and
in lectures rest upon faith and when that energy fails, collapses of the
most serious sort follow. We might as well try to build a world without
cohesion as to maintain society without the energy of faith.
We have many illustrations of the important part which faith plays in
the sphere of physical health. The corpuscles of the blood and the
molecules of the body are altered by it. The tension of the arteries and
the efficiency of the digestive tract are affected by it. Nerves are
in close sympathetic _rapport_ with faith. It is never safe to tell a
strong man that he is pale and that he looks ill. If two or three persons
in succession give him a pessimistic account of his appearance, he will
soon begin to have the condition which has been imagined. Dr. William
McDougall gives the case of a boy who was being chased by a furious
animal and under the impulse of the emergency he leaped a fence which he
could never afterwards jump, even after long athletic training. The list
of similar instances is a very long one. Every reader knows a case as
impressive as the one I have given. The varieties of “shell-shock” have
furnished volumes of illustrations of the energy of faith, its dynamic
influence upon health and life and efficiency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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