TALK THIRTY-FIVE. THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF RELIGION
The sun was slowly sinking toward the western horizon while I wended my way up the rugged hillside. As I ascended the winding path ever higher and higher, my horizon broadened. When at length I reached the summit and turned to gaze back over the valley, the city lay spread out like a great picture at my feet. The winding river, with a steamer slowly moving along on its bosom, shimmered in the evening sunlight. The sounds from the city were softened and blended until they rose to me like the musical strain of far-away melodies. The low-hanging sun glorified the drifting clouds with the hues of the autumn mountain-side. Crimson and orange and gold, they burned in that western expanse. I gazed upon the scene, and its influence seemed to exalt and enrapture my spirit. There stole into my being a sense of rest and peace and joy that lifted me out of the monotony of ordinary things. I sat there and drank in the beauties of the scene until the sun sank out of sight behind the hills and the stars began to twinkle overhead. The lights flashed out in the city beneath. The quiet hush of the evening seemed to settle down over me, and it seemed good to be alive and to be there.
The mountain-top is a delightful plate. There the soul reaches heights and depths such as it reaches at no other time. Preachers love to preach and poets love to sing of the mountain-tops of life. How delightful are these times in our spiritual life, and how naturally we long for these seasons! How often they are pictured up till one would suppose that they are the principal things in the Christian life! Some people have fancied that when they became Christians the mountain-top experience would be their constant portion. They may have been led to expect this from hearing preaching that exalted the emotional side of religion. It may be that when they were converted their new-born joys seemed to be unending. They thought that this exaltation of spirit was the normal state of a Christian. They gloried in it as the days passed by. The time came, however, when this emotional glow subsided. As the barometer of their feelings fell, they began to question themselves thus: “What is the matter with me? Have I done something wrong? Am I mistaken in thinking that I was saved?” Thus, their faith fell with their emotions. After a while their emotions rose again, and their faith rose with their emotions. Now they knew that they were all right.