Reverence

Reverence is defined as that spiritual susceptibility of our nature by which we touch and realize the sacred in life. Comparing reverence with awe, there is the element of fear in both. Fear enters into reverence, and fear enters into awe. But there is this important difference: the fear in reverence is born of love. The child that reveres its father fears because it loves. But reverence has in it, respect as well as fear. A lad respects his mother, but you cannot respect a mountain or the sun. You can admire these. So that in awe there is admiration, while in reverence there is respect; and respect can only be moral in its nature and personal in its object. Now, what are those objects which alone can inspire true reverence, objects in which the age has too truly lost faith, and in the going of faith there has been the going of reverence?

1. There is the highest of all objects — God. But what has been the teaching of the age? The answer is "Material Science." The age has produced vivisection (in the interests, of course, of science), and not, only physical but literary vivisection, and this has made for irreverence. The most sacred things in life are cut up on the dissecting-tables of our literature, such as marriage, chastity, woman, truth, the Sabbath. The result of all this is that the age has lost real faith in God — I mean such a faith as Oliver Cromwell had. Much of the faith which remains is half-hearted, unreal, and semi-atheistic or semi-agnostic.

2. From the Divine Being — the highest possible object — we come to the revelation of this Infinite Being contained in the Holy Scriptures. The only fitting reverence, according to the notion of too many people, is to put the Holy Book on a shelf by itself, and never to commit the sacrilege of opening its pages with unholy hands; and when the dust gathers thick on its covers, not to commit the sacrilege of removing the dust with so secular a thing as a duster. That is the way too many people show their reverence for this holy Book. Besides, in this generation there has grown up a great Biblical literature — i. e., a literature on the Bible, books of exposition and commentary and theology on the different books of the Bible, and the result is that even the student of the Bible is face to face with a great temptation — a temptation peculiar to our times — viz, of reading those books on the Bible, and neglecting to read the Bible itself. Furthermore, we no longer believe — to put, the matter extremely — that this Book dropped from the sky, as the Koran is said to have done. The spirit of the age has convinced us that it is the production of earth. Man, under Divine inspiration, was the penman; man as prophet, priest, psalmist, apostle; man in many places, at many times; man with his powers lifted to the highest — but, still man, exhibiting everywhere the human hand; man, real man, and not a mere machine. We have the treasure in an earthen vessel. Our day has brought out into bold relief the sarthenness or the earthiness of the vessel, that there is danger in us forgetting the treasure, or in making the treasure to be earthen too.

3. After the object of the Bible we come to the object of man. Man ought to inspire reverence in man. But our age is essentially democratic, and while we heartily believe in democracy, this spirit, nevertheless, has been making for irreverence. Democracy preaches the doctrine of the rights of man on the broad basis of manhood, irrespective of his place in society. And in transferring the emphasis from mere place, birth, station, belongings, rank to character, sterling worth, brains, service, wisdom, it has tended to destroy reverence based on the former things, and to create a reverence based on the latter things. But while the democratic spirit has been tending thus, teaching us that brain and heart, life and character, spirit and service, hitherto underrated perhaps, or even entirely neglected when not linked to social status, ought to be, wherever found, the object of our respect and homage, and that no man with a spark of self-respect should bemean himself to act the snob, and bow down to wealth and position for their sole sake, at the same time this democratic spirit has had an unhealthy tendency in many, unable to discriminate between man and man. You hear the phrase, "Jack is as good as his master," and "One man is as good as another." All this tends to the destruction of faith in man, and therefore of reverence to man. When faith in man disappears, reverence to him cannot continue. How can I reverence man if every man is on my own level? To reverence man I must be able to look up to him, and neither down upon him nor at him on my own level.

4. The fourth object is human nature, and this comes after that of man; and I ask, Is not the temper of the times cynical? What faith is there in disinterestedness? The question of Satan is constantly repeated, "Does Job fear God for nought?" The pure and disinterested motivity of Christian service is questioned. The cynical spirit is fatal to any faith in human nature. We cannot reverence that in which we have no faith. But we ought to reverence human nature, and therefore we ought to have faith in it. Degraded human nature may become — as it often has become — redeemed, sanctified human nature. No man is so low in the pit that he cannot be dug out. The worst we need not despair of. Disinterested goodness is a grand possibility to every man, as it is a blessed actuality to some. When we think of the great souls of the earth like Francis or Elizabeth Fry or John Howard, who readily renounced ease and comfort and refinement and civilized life, and even life itself, because they had a passionate love for Christ and for men, we are filled with a new "respect for our nature, and a new hope for the world."

5. The last object I will mention as a legitimate source of reverence is the past. The mighty past ought to call forth in me the feeling of respect; not all the past, for much there was in the life of yesterday which we can only renounce and denounce in our life to-day. Still the roots of our life to-day are in the soil of yesterday. The present always has its roots in the past. Let us remember —(1) That our day is not perfect. There is very much to deplore all round; there are dangerous tendencies in the air.(2) What good there is in our life to-day has its roots in the life of yesterday. The knowledge that the life of our day is better than the life of yesterday ought not to rob us of respect for the day of our beginnings. But our real beginning is God. God is our source as well as our goal. Religion goes backward as well as forward. Behind us are the reformers, the fathers, the apostles, the prophets, the patriarchs, God.