This
established order of things, in which we find ourselves, if it has a
Creator, must surely speak of His will in its broad outlines and its
main issues. This principle being laid down as certain, when we come
to apply it to things as they are, our first feeling is one of
surprise and (I may say) of dismay, that His control of this living
world is so indirect, and His action so obscure. This is the first
lesson that we gain from the course of human affairs. What strikes the
mind so forcibly and so painfully is, His absence (if I may so
speak) from His own world.
It is a silence that speaks. It is as if others had got possession of
His work. Why does not He, our Maker and Ruler, give us some immediate
knowledge of Himself? Why does He not write His Moral Nature in large
letters upon the face of history, and bring the blind, tumultuous rush
of its events into a celestial, hierarchical order? Why does He not
grant us in the structure of society at least so much of a revelation
of Himself as the religions of the heathen attempt to supply? Why from
the beginning of time has no one uniform steady light guided all
families of the earth, and all individual men, how to please Him? Why
is it possible without absurdity to deny His will, His attributes, His
existence? Why does He not walk with us one by one, as He is said to
have walked with His chosen men of old time? We both see and know each
other; why, if we cannot have the sight of Him, have we not at least
the knowledge? On the contrary, He is specially "a Hidden
God;" and with our best efforts we can only glean from the
surface of the world some faint and fragmentary views of Him. I see
only a choice of alternatives in explanation of so critical a fact:—either
there is no Creator, or He has disowned His creatures. Are then the
dim shadows of His Presence in the affairs of men but a fancy of our
own, or, on the other hand, has He hid His face and the light of His
countenance, because we have in some special way dishonoured Him? My
true informant, my burdened conscience, gives me at once the
true answer to each of these antagonist questions:—it pronounces
without any misgiving that God exists:—and it pronounces quite as
surely that I am alienated from Him; that "His hand is not
shortened, but that our iniquities have divided between us and our
God." Thus it solves the world's mystery, and sees in that
mystery only a confirmation of its own original teaching.
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