torm, the lightning, and the
earthquake, but they only reflect his own stormy mood. The Lord is not
in them. Then, within his heart, there speaks that voice which is at
once speech and silence, and it says to him: "What doest thou here,
Elijah," and behold, the man is convicted. For when he {188} reflects
on it he is doing nothing at all. He is sitting under a tree,
requesting that he may die. He has fled from his duty and is hiding in
a cave. Then the voice says to him: "Get up and go and do your duty.
You might sit here forever and get no light on your lot. The problem
of life is solved through the work of life. The way out of your
despondency is in going straight on with the work now ready to your
hand. Answers to great problems are not so likely to come to people in
caves, as along the dusty road of duty-doing. Not to the dreamer, but
to the doer come the interpretations of life. Elijah, Elijah, what
doest thou here?"

{189}

LXXVI

THE DIFFICULTIES OF UNBELIEF

_Matthew_ xxiii. 24.

We are often very much impressed by the difficulties of religious
belief. It seems hard to attain any absolute, convinced faith. There
are doubts and obscurities which every one feels, and these
questionings are often stirred into activity by the mistaken efforts of
the defenders of the faith. There is even a special department in
theological teaching known as Apologetics, or the defense of faith; as
though religion had to be always on the defensive, and as if the
easiest attitude of mind, even of the least philosophical, were the
attitude of denial. But did you ever consider the alternative position
and the difficulties which present themselves when one undertakes
absolutely and continuously to deny himself the relations of the
religious life? Did you ever fairly face the conception of a logically
completed unbelief, a world stripped of its ideals, with no region of
spiritual hopes or of worship, a {190} world absolutely without God, a
permanently faithless world? What is the difficulty here? The
difficulty is that these aspects of life, though they are often hard to
maintain, are harder still to abandon. Faith has its perplexities, but
no sooner do you eliminate the spiritual world than you are confronted
with a series of experiences, emotions, and intimations which are
simply inexplicable. That was perhaps partly what Jesus had in mind
when he met the Pharisees. "You find it hard to believe in me," h