^ Trederick Lucian llosiner.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiii. 27 71
uttermost." Here is another : " All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." Have you plunged into nearly every kind of sin ; have you gone into " all manner of blasphemy " ? Even if you have, it may be forgiven, so that this promise goes underneath you. The love of God, the power of the blood, and the prevalence of the intercession, are deeper down than sin with all its hell-born vileness can ever sink the sinner, while breath is in his nostrils.
I dare approach that Heaven Which has not bade a living thing despair. Which needs no code to keep its grace from stain. But bids the vilest worm that turns on it Desist and be forgiven.^
^ " Underneath are the everlasting arms." That means Personality. That means an all-enfolding, all-embracing love. That means power, the power of the right arm of the Most High. That means redemption, an arm that is not shortened that it cannot save; not "shortened" by any material limitations or physical obstacles. It is not shortened that it cannot save. It can reach down through all defects of being, through all taints of blood, through all grossness of the flesh, through all warpings of the will, and corruptions of the mind and heart ; it can get within, to the mysterious soul and core of all character, the springs of all conduct—" underneath are the everlasting arms." ^
2. The word " underneath " has never been used in the Bible before, and it is never used again. It is of its own order; a word big with meaning and suggestiveness. It is the index to a whole system of thought, philosophical and theological. No solitary word, perhaps, could imply more than this. It opens to us the attitude of wonder and reverent faith in which the deepest minds have pondered what we call to-day the pheno- menal; the things that are seen, that strike upon the senses of touch and taste, sight and sound. Such deep minds, brooding over phenomena, have never been satisfied with merely regis- tering those properties and qualities of the material world which they can test and know. They have divided and sub- divided matter till they have reduced it to its tiniest possible elements, and then have been conscious that their world and
^ Browning, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon. ^ C. S. Home.
72 GOD WHO IS OUR HOME
thought end in a note of interrogation after all. It is all summed up, let us say, in this word "underneath."
^ It has been said that " the great contribution of science to the sum of modern belief has been that underneath phenomena is that which is everlasting." During " the wonderful century " the men of science cleaved the rocks, penetrated the skies, scanned the hidden depths, looked into the secrets of nature, brought to light strange knowledge, and set much wisdom in order ; and the strangest and most wonderful discovery of all is that the temporal rests on the eternal, that every commonest thing we see, and every commonest thing we handle, has beneath it the everlasting which becomes clear to patient thinking.
I heard my father say he understood it was A building, people built as soon as earth was made Almost, because they might forget (they were afraid) Earth did not make itself, but came of Somebody. They laboured that their work might last, and show
thereby He stays, while we and earth, and all things come
and go. Come whence? Go whither? That, when come and
gone, we know Perhaps, but not while earth and all things need our
best Attention : we must wait and die to know the rest. Ask, if that's true, what use in setting up the pile ? To make one fear and hope : remind us, all the while We come and go, outside there's Somebody that stays. ^
3. When do we most need to know that underneath are the everlasting arms ?
(1) When we have reached a state of special joy and exaltation in our religious life. — Sometimes God takes His servants and puts them on the pinnacle of the temple. Satan does it some- times : God does it too — puts His servants up on the very pinnacle, where they are so full of joy that they scarce know how to contain themselves, whether in the body or out of the body they cannot tell. Well, now, suppose they should fall! for it is so easy for a man, when full of ecstasy and ravish- ment, to make a false step and slip. They are safe enough, as
' Browning, Fifn-f. at the Fair.
DEUTERONOMY xxxiii. 27 ^^^
eafe as though they were in the Valley of Humiliation, for underneath are the arms of God.
^ Suffering has been long acknowledged as an indispensable factor in the building up of souls ; the place of love and happiness is less secure. It is at least possible that there are stunted souls who cannot converse fully with the Divine Father till they have had ampler draughts from the breasts of natural joy. ^
It's 0 my heart, my heart.
To be out in the sun and sing! To sing and shout in the fields about,