Week 43—Tuesday Psalm 71:14-15
Week 43—TUESDAY
“SUFFERING FROM A HALLUCINATION?”
I recounted yesterday how God burned into my inmost soul the deepest lesson of my life: I was to be God’s witness—the word of experience become flesh. In my first book, The Christ of the Indian Road, I said, “Just as family training cannot rise above family character, so Christian preaching cannot rise above the Christian preacher.” I determined I would be a witness. So I have witnessed before high and low, kings and peasants, what Christ has done for a bankrupt life.
I was asked to speak before the psychologists of Columbia University. And they assigned me my subject: “Your personal religious experience.” Of all the places where I did not want to bare my soul it was before those mechanistic psychologists of Columbia, for I knew what they would do. They would put me on the operating table and practice mental vivisection. And when they got through I would be a museum specimen, ticketed and labeled. But I was not on trial, the reality of the thing I held was on trial, so I would let them break it if it could be broken. The hall was filled, and for an hour I told them what Christ had done for a bankrupt life. They began to ask questions at the close. One man asked, “Isn’t it possible that you are suffering from a hallucination?” “Yes,” I replied, “it is possible. But if it is a hallucination then it is in spite of the attitude I’ve taken, for I’ve put my faith out before the non-Christian world, and I’ve said, ‘Brothers, break it if it can be broken. If it can be broken it must be broken. I don’t want to live in a paradise if it turns out to be a fool’s paradise.’ So they have smitten on it for a quarter of a century but the more it is smitten upon the more it shines. Besides if it is a hallucination it has given me exactly what I’ve needed so that it has done me more good than my former sanity.” They broke out in applause. The questioner, surprised, said: “It looks as though I’m in a minority here tonight.” He was, for some psychologists do survive being psychologists and do remain persons.
O Christ of the Emmaus Road and of Every Road, our hearts burn within us as we talk to you and companion with you by the way. You are Reality and to experience you is to experience self-verifying Reality. My heart burns now. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: What my eyes have seen and my heart has known, shall my tongue refuse to tell?