Believing. Horton Davies
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for mercy.” Does he write this? No. He writes: “Hallelujah! Babylon is fallen, is fallen.” And why? At the back of the visible world, behind all his pomp and pride and power, he had seen something which Caesar had never seen, something that spelt the doom of Caesar and of all tyranny; he saw a throne up reared above the earth and, sitting on the right hand of the throne of God, the risen and reigning Christ.
And yet Davies insists that the battle is not won for ever. In “Wanted . . . ” Davies uses a nautical image to show the demise and rebirth of the church. It is depicted as an old ship lying down in the shipyard on the Clydebank in Scotland, a place familiar to Davies who had worked many summers as a purser on the Clyde steamers. Revamped, the vessel sails the seas again. Then the Christian church becomes a flotilla of ships, according to each denomination, to serve, as he is called in “Terminus becomes tunnel,” “Christ the explorer,” who fulfills God’s offerings in his covenant with men by three alliterating words: “power, pardon and peace.”
Life, for Davies, can only be expressed in poetry, as in hymns and vivid images. He says: “Life is a rare poem from a foreign land” in “The Divinity of our Lord.” He uses his eyes as a painter both for description and evocation of living tableaux: such as a vivid portrait of Jesus’s physical appearance or showing Christ in action. In “The living union of Christ and his disciples” we see Jesus ambling along the dark streets and entering the precinct of the Temple Court. Then follows symbolic scenery: “gleaming in the light of the full moon was the great Golden Vine that trailed over the Temple Porch . . .” In “The Harvest of the Spirit” Davies describes the ruby-red love of Christ: “What was this new love? It was a love such as was exhibited by our Lord, a deep, constant, sacrificial love for the sons and daughters of men, love with the blood-red stamp of cross upon it.” The image is contrasted to the simplicity of the followers, by the use of simple phraseology: “The disciples and the apostles knew that God was always like that.”
Finally one has to sense the rhythm of Davies’s prose, at times, not unlike that of the Baptist preachers. In “Why I Believe in the Catholic Church” we hear the quick pace of the conquering church:
More facts also amaze me about the church. It stretches across space; it stretches across time. Its mighty span reaches across the five continents. It embraces the pale-faced Eskimo in his igloo and the swarthy African in his kraal. There is in Christ no East or West; no North nor South.
And in “Victorious faith conquering prejudice” one could almost hear Martin Luther King in the delivery of the force of his convictions:
When my brother for whom Jesus Christ died, suffers insults, and the Jews and the Negroes and Africans are the races that Christians (so-called) have insulted most in the modern world, when my white brethren who are suffering for Christian color-blindness are jailed or have heart-attacks or are kicked out of the ministry, I am insulted; but more, this nation is insulted and supremely God is insulted.
And:
Next time, recall Jesus was a Jew, Paul was a Jew, Peter was a Jew, Einstein was a Jew, Ann Frank was a Jew, and Arthur Miller is a Jew.
lord, i believe, help my unbelief
Immediately, the father of the child cried out and said: “I believe; help my unbelief.”
—Mark 9:24
I wish you could see a famous picture by the Italian master Raphael. It would preach a more memorable sermon on this text than I can. It depicts a great contrast. On one side of the canvas, it shows the mountain of Transfiguration, with our Savior on its summit surrounded by an area of light; on the other side and below on the plain a confused concourse of people, like sheep without shepherd, wrangling and arguing amongst one another; a motley assembly of bystanders of Scribes and Pharisees, disciples and bystanders. In the midst is a man grievously anxious, trying to control his son who is in the midst of a convulsive fit.
Convert the static oil-painting into a moving picture and you see our Savior descending in to the center of the world’s confusion and healing the boy possessed by a demon. But first hear their conversation: the boy’s father and Jesus translated into modern terms:
Jesus seeing the disputants asks: What are you discussing so hotly? What is the point at issue?
The man: It’s like this, sir. I’ve really come to see you about my epileptic son; something is torturing him badly; sometimes he cannot speak; sometimes, he foams at the mouth and seems to snarl just like a wild animal; and sometimes after one of these fits, he’s left limp and lifeless. I brought him first of all to your assistants and asked them to cure him. But they couldn’t.
Jesus to the crowd: You skeptical people! I haven’t much longer to remain in your midst. Will you never learn the lesson of faith? Bring the boy to me.
As they brought him, he was again seized by a fit and dropped to the ground, foaming.
Jesus to the father: Has he been like this for long?
The Father: Ever since he was a youngster. It’s been very dangerous; it made him throw himself into the fire and into the river; just as if he wanted to kill himself. But if you can do anything about it, take pity on us and help us.
Jesus: If you have complete faith in me, anything is possible.
The father immediately cried in reply: Lord I believe; help my unbelief.
With the story as a whole, I am not concerned; I want to direct your thoughts to this honest reply of the boy’s father: “Lord, I believe; but help my unbelief.”
These words show that a struggle was going on in the man’s soul for certainty against the ever-present forces of doubt and unbelief. His cry is the cry of everyman confronted by the obstacle to belief. It is your cry.
I. First consider the words: “help my unbelief.” That is your problem, isn’t it? Facing doubts.
My first piece of advice is to do as this man did. Don’t pretend that you can believe everything, if you cannot. Don’t make believe that doubts aren’t there. That will have no better effect than pulling the bedclothes over your head when you hear a strange noise in the house at night. The fact is that you will go on listening for it even when it isn’t there. You will still keep wondering what it is, and your fear will become more intense, until in the end, you have to get up and investigate. It would have been far better to do this at the beginning. Remember, whatever doubts you may have had, others have experienced them before you and come through to a stronger faith. Christianity stands by the truth that makes us free and it is not a shame-faced impostor, who must hide his head in the corner. If it is the truth, then it can stand up to criticism.
Christianity calls for no pretense but for honesty. As the principal of Richmond College, Dr. E.S. Waterhouse says: “Our religion calls us to believe, but never to make-believe.” In this judgment he was following our Master who realized the sheer honesty of the confession of our text. How easily he, the father of the boy, could have pretended that he believed entirely; it would have been so convenient because then Jesus, he must have thought, would have cured the boy without hesitation. But no, honesty dictated a wiser policy.
The first thing, I say, is: Face up to your doubts. I think that doubts are not only a sign of honesty in our thinking, but they show that our faith is not a dead thing of tradition, but a rediscovered, vital experience. So much for honest doubt and our duty to face it.
But there are also the wrong kinds of doubts: Doubts are sinful if they are of these two kinds. First they are sinful if they are the result of mental laziness which prevents us from thinking things through as far as we can. To love God with your whole mind is not to exaggerate the evil in the world, but to admit the good in it as well. Secondly, the worst kinds of doubts are those which are a defense we have set up, to prevent the invasion of God into some parts of our lives. If we want to deal honestly with our doubts, we must ask ourselves unflinchingly: “Is this doubt that I have an excuse for not facing up to God? Is God making some demand on me which I will not stand up to? Is he requiring me to put something right that is wrong in my relationship to someone else? Is he asking