IF The grand feature of the Old Testament is that it recognizes the moral idea in the government of the race. An Egyptian historian, a Greek historian, or a Eoman historian simply gives a number of pictures, pictures of kings, camps, marches, cities, battles won and lost ; and when he has done that, he comes to the end of his knowledge and his task. It is the great merit of the Hebrew law-givers and prophets that they go behind the pictures, and seize the fact that the world is ruled to a distinct end, and that end moral and righteous.
2. All great thinkers feel that at the back of this visible sphere there is a Divine Architect building with a plan, a Divine Artist who is working out a distinct plan and idea, a Divine Dramatist who fits the various parts into a perfect drama. It is impossible to look at this planet with its orderliness, its harmony, its evolution, without believing in a Divine and Supreme Euler. It would be difficult to believe anything else, and it is not difficult to believe in the government of God, if we look into the history of the human race. It would be as difficult to resist the conception of government in respect of the human race as it is to resist the conception of government in regard to the material Universe.
^ It is not difficult to believe in the Divine government when you look at the career of extraordinary men. When you look at Cyrus or Caesar, when you think of Paul or Luther, it is very easy to believe in the supernaturalism that shapes the ends of these magnificent and influential lives. If you will only take a wide theatre, if you will only regard the evolution of a race, you can scarcely escape from the conception of an overshadowing supernaturalism, of a sovereign and a shaping Head. I will tell you where the difficulty begins. The difficulty begins the very moment that you begin to think of that supernatural order taking care of ordinary people like us and the trivial interests
DEUTERONOMY viii. 2 25
that we represent. A man is not a sceptic looking at the starry firmament — not when he takes cognizance of the planet, not when he regards the sweep and evolution of the race — the scepticism comes in when a man begins to think of that magnifi- cent order embracing him, shaping his lot, and commanding his trifling interests.^
^ Astrologers and physicists, who, shut out from the know- ledge of God, ascribe changes and events to the stars and to nature, resemble an ant that, seeing a pen making marks upon paper, should be overjoyed and cry out, " I have found out the secret of the effect. It is the pen that causes the marks." A second ant, looking on with attention, sees that the pen does not move of itself, but rather by the will of the hand, and says to the first ant, " You were mistaken, you did not perceive the real nature of the thing ; you thought the marks and movements were caused by the pen. It is not so; the whole influence proceeds from the fingers, and the pen is subject to the fingers." This ant resembles the astrologer, who ascribes effects to the constellations. He does not know that he also is mistaken, that the stars and the constellations are subject to the angels, and that the angels can do nothing without the command of God.^
3. What was the purpose of the leading of the Israelites ? It was humiliation and probation — "to humble thee and to prove thee."
(1) Humility is a great Christian virtue, and the humbling discipline to which men and women are subjected under God is a Christian commonplace. And just because it is a common- place of our spiritual furniture we think so lightly of it. People talk about the rarity of Christian charity, but Christian humility ^jt is much more rare, and if there is one thing that men an(I7 women want to-day it is a little humbling. We are all so proud of ourselves, we are all so sure that if we were left to ourselves we could do things so well. God teaches us with absolute certainty that we cannot stand alone.
^ There has been a discussion going on of late whether all talk in the Bible about sin is not a mistake, whether our ordinary, respectable congregations ought to be spoken to at all about sin, whether the language of humiliation, which is so often used in Christian services, is not misused. All this is wonderfully characteristic of to-day. People are all so sure of everything; this life has become so safe, so pleasant, so easy, that any notion 1 W. L. WatkiusoD. 2 ^j Ghazzali.
26 REMEMBER ALL THE WAY
of humiliation or any note of weakness strikes them as being altogether foreign — a thing that need not be enter tained.^
Hear me, 0 God !
A broken heart
Is my best part : Use still Thy rod,
That I may prove
Therein Thy love.
If Thou hadst not
Been stern to me,
But left me free, I had forgot
Myself and Thee.
For sin's so sweet,
As minds ill bent
Karely repent, Until they meet
Their punishment.^