ii. They hid themselves.
The attempt to hide oneself may be made in different ways. 1. One way is by careless living, by such levity as that of the Athenians who scoffed at St. Paul when he spoke to them of the
' A. Smellie. ' E. Morgan.
8o FELLOWSHIP
resurrection of the dead. Men who are devoured by a foolish appetite for the last new thing, the last word of science and philosophy, have ceased to care for truth, and have become worshippers of idols. To such, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ must remain for ever an unknown God. They have for- feited the power of seeing the Invisible, and of worshipping in spirit and in truth. There was no Church at Athens. There never can be a Church, in the real sense, composed of men and women who make of a merely intellectual interest in science and literature, in the burning questions of the day, an excuse for shirking the serious aspects of life and the spiritual facts that lie at the foundation of religion. " Let not God speak with us, lest we die." This reluctance to hear the deeper chords struck, this desire to run away from the deeper thoughts and experiences that pierce the conscience and trouble the mind, is deeply em- bedded in human nature. The dearest wish of many among us is to be let alone ; to be allowed to live our lives out to the end in a sort of enchanted garden, where no voice from the deeps may reach us, and we may catch no glimpse of the Cherubim and the flaming sword.
1[ " How now, Sir John 1 " quoth I : " what, man ! be o' good cheer." So a' cried out, " God, God, God ! " three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a' should not think of God. I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet.^
2. Another way of hiding from God is the refusal to listen to the voice of conscience when it condemns us, the ingrained habit of slipping away from reminders of duties neglected and obligations left unfulfilled, so finely delineated by George Eliot in the character of Tito Melema. Wherever sincerity is, the quality of perfect openness and clearness of soul, the word of Christ will reach and penetrate the heart. To hear the voice of God calling us with joy and gladness we must be clear from vice, clear from self-indulgence and self-satisfaction. It is our sins, and nothing else, that separate us from Him ; our sins, too, that make us shun those who are to us a sort of embodied conscience. " I was obliged to get away from him as fast as I could," said a notorious profligate of the saintly F^nelon, " else he would have made me
* Mrs. Quickly in Henry y., Act ii. se. iii. 1. 17.
GENESIS in. 8, 9 81
pious." Here speaks the " natural man," the Adam whose blood runs in our veins. Which of us does not blush to think how often wcf have shunned the company of the wise and the good because their moral purity shamed us ?
H I can think of no more telling instance of the evasion of spiritual influence than one that is to be found in the incom- parable pages of the great master of Greek philosophic thought. Twenty-three centuries ago there was no more brilliant figure in Athenian society than Alcibiades, soldier, statesman, and leader of fashion — the most daring, the most versatile, the most un- principled of men. Well, Plato has put him, as it were, into the confessional And this is what he represents bim as saying of the effect produced on his mind by the character and teaching of Socrates. After bearing his personal witness to the strange and almost magical power over the heart of the words of the great Athenian master, he goes on to say, " No one would imagine that I could ever feel shame before any one, but before him I do stand rebuked. For when I hear him my heart throbs, and tears gush from my eyea For he compels me to confess that, in intriguing for place and power, I am neglecting my real self, and all is ill within me. I cannot deny that I ought to do what he bids me, but I go away, and other influences prevail over me. Therefore, I shut my ears and run away from him like a slave, and whenever I see him shame takes possession of me. So I am in a strait betwixt two. Often I feel that I should be glad if he were no longer in the land of the living. Yet, if anything should happen to him, I know full weU that I should be the more deeply grieved." ^
3. A third way of attempting to hide from God — and it is perhaps the most evasive of all — is hj flattering ourselves that we are seeking Sis face. Even religion may be so perverted as to become a deadening influence when we identify it with opinions, or party views, or zeal for dogma, or external things like ceremonies, or forms of worship, or matters of Church order and discipline. How many among us live and move in these surface questions, while shrinking from the deeper problems of what we are to think of God, and how we are to school ourselves to learn what is His will, and how we are to do it. Yes, it is quite as easy to hide from God among the pillars of the sanctuary as among the trees of the garden. Multiplied services, religious discussion,