III.
Eemember the Leading of God.
The Israelites had been led through the wilderness. This was the great fact of their journey. And it is this fact beyond all others that they are now commanded to remember. Thou shalt remember all the way because it is the way by which the I^rd
thy God has led thee. ^^.*%^ J ^ •hvIv;'*'**^
1. Was God the leader of Israel only ? He who leadeth out the stars as a shepherd leadeth his flock is the sovereign leader of all the nations. He is the King of all the earth. The harps of psalmists and the lyres of prophets sounded forth the glorious truth that God is the God of all mankind, and that, even if they acknowledge Him not, He is guiding them, and He is controlling their affairs. And when St. Paul, standing on Mars' Hill, de- clared how God had to do with the seats and settlements of the
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DEUT.-ESTH. — 2
i8 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY
nations, he struck a blow at the polytheism of the time with its localized divinities, and also a blow at the narrow conception of God and His ways which some professing Christians are not ashamed to entertain. But if God be the God of nations, He is also the guide and leader of all those movements which from time to time have sprung up in the breasts of nations, having the elevation and the advance of mankind for their aim and their design. Surely we cannot exclude God from these! The chief of them undoubtedly is Christianity, because it had a Divine Person as its founder, and because it united in itself the sublim- est revelations of God with the noblest duties pertaining to man. But alongside of Christianity, and oftentimes by means of con- tact with it, there have been great movements originated and carried forward, and in every one of them are to be found the presence and the power of God. We can hardly imagine a greater affront to Divine Majesty than to deny this — to suppose that there can be goodness without Him ; to suppose that there can be blessedness without His blessing; to suppose that there can be rays of light, cheering the condition of man, which have not proceeded from God, the Father of lights.
^ In the year 1836, and in the month of January, devout men met in the city of Boston (United States) to consider what could be done to stay the ravages of intemperance in that country. They met in a house of prayer, and, having met, they prayed, deliberated, decided, and they also acted. They formed in Febru- ary " The American Society for the Promotion of Temperance." They did this in order that they might, as it were, give vent to a cry of anguish at the appalling evils that had come upon a Christian and civilized land from one direct and removable agency ; and they did it as a protest against that great neglect which had been allowed to continue for so many years — a neglect chargeable both upon the Churches and upon the State. And who gave this inspiration to these men ? Was it not God ? Did He not breathe into their souls of His own Spirit to move them in this enterprise ? Did He not give them the pity they felt and their earnest resolve to action ? Did not He Himself take the com- mand of the movement ? Was He not at the heart of it ? Was He not in the very front of it? And has not that been the place that He has occupied from that time down to the present hour ? ^
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DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 19
2. Is the way we have travelled the way the Lord has led us ? That is the great question. We have to confess, some of us, that it is not. It has been our own way ; we have mapped it out for ourselves, and we have been proud of the achievement. We have said, " My own wits and the might of my own hands have gotten me this wealth," have felt that we were self-sufficient men and women, and that we were not dependent on any. There are people who like to forget God's leadership, and in life as we know it in these days the sense of God's presence is very hard to keep before us, and very easily let slip. But life on any other terms than by God's guidance is a very unsatisfactory business at the best, and it is good for us to remember that the Lord our God is leading us, sometimes even when we are least conscious of it. Eehgion simply means the guiding of God in history and in the individual life. We want to get back to that old doctrine which is sometimes wrongly called the Puritan doctrine, the doctrine of Providence — that behind the things we can see, and touch, and handle there is the will of God; that, hidden from our mortal eyes, but present to our spiritual sense, there is the fact of God caring and leading ; that behind this personal will of ours there is another Will directing us, and that in this life there is a purpose being fulfilled, a purpose for which the Divine Will alone is responsible. .<•