^ Let us bear in mind that a religion of mere Theism is now impossible. We are redeemed from our sin by Him who gave us being, and therefore the claims of God the Creator are enhanced and intensified by the new, wondrous, matchless claims of God our Saviour.
'Twas great to speak a world from nought, 'Twas greater to redeem I
And of all the universe the most significant and sacred place is the place of the Cross ; for there we hear a voice more full of constraining power than any voice that comes down to us from the everlasting hills, or finds an echo in the spacious heavens, even the voice of a love unto death ! '
Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name ? Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands ! What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands ?
' H. Gollancz. » T. F. Lockjer.
20 THE CREATION AND THE CREATOR
There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as
before ; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good
more ; On the earth the broken arcs, — in the heaven, a perfect
round ! *
iii. Three Encouragfements.
Now in this great thought of Creation involving Providence and Eedemption there are three things to encourage us.
1. First, there is the fact that the material world originated from the spiritual; the visible from the invisible. It is the unseen forces that give shape and form to the things which are. The phenomenal world is but the expression of invisible forces. The Unseen dominates and rules the seen. It would seem as if all force is, in the last analysis, spiritual, and has its seat and origin in God. The Unseen is the eternal and unchangeable ; the visible is temporal and perishable. A mighty truth is contained in that word of St. Paul, " All things work together for good . . . while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen ; for the things which are . . . not seen are eternal." And all those unseen verities and forces have their root in God.
When that my soul, too far from God,
In earthy furrows crawled about. An insect on a dusty clod
Wandering wingless in and out:
At deepest dusk I looked above
And saw a million worlds alight. That burnt the mortal veils of Love
And left it shining infinite:
I gazed and gazed with lifted head Until I found my heart had wings.
And now my soul has ceased to dread The weary dust of earthly things.'
2. Next there is the fact that the unity of God the Creator (carries with it the idea of the unity of the Creation. And here
' Browning, Abl VogUr, * Kaohel AnnaDct Taylor.
GENESIS I. I 21
arises the grand conception of the universe as a cosmos. One law. the law of gravitation, pervades the whole material creation, and binds it into one vast and glorious system. And that law of gravitation, what is it but the expression of one omnipotent Will, the exertion of one infinite Energy ? Here the poetry of the Psalmist is seen almost as a physical truth : " Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? " May we not most surely conclude that as physical law pervades all space, so also does moral law reign over the whole creation in unchanged majesty ? John Stuart Mill thought there might be a place in the universe where two and two do not make four. That position is unthinkable. Truth here is truth everywhere, because God is the same everywhere. Nothing can really hurt the good man. " Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him."
^ Professor Henry Jones, in his book on Browning, points out how Browning differs from two others of his great contemporaries — Emerson and Carlyle. Speaking of Emerson's always rose- coloured view of things, he says : " Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts, was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle which reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the serene philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London at midnight, asking him with grim humour, at every few steps, ' Do you believe in the devil now ? ' Emerson replied that the more he saw of the English people the greater and better he thought them. This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the universal murk ; to the other the pure white beam was scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt ; he fought his great battle in its strength, and won ; but ' he was sorely wounded.' Emerson was Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail ; his armour spotless white, his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his race won without the dust and heat. But his optimism was too easy to be satisfactory." Now, in opposition to the pessimism of Carlyle on the one hand, and the " too easy " optimism of Emerson on the other. Browning — seeing the worst, as Carlyle saw it, and seeing also the best beyond, as Emerson saw it — reveals a true, unfailing, and glorious optimism, which grounds itself upon the only sure, immovable basis — a conviction resulting from the vision of the loving, powerful, regnant God ! Evil may exist, does exist — paint it, if