1 J. H. Jowett
I KINGS XIX. II, 12 453
^ If we ask what gives us assurance of the truth and justice of God, the answer is, the life and death of Christ, who is the Son of God, and the Kevelation of God. We know what He Himself has told us of God, and we cannot conceive perfect goodness separate from perfect truth; nay, this goodness itself is the only conception we can form of God, if we confess what the mere immensity of the material world tends to suggest — that the Almighty is not a natural or even a supernatural power, but a Being of whom the reason and conscience of man have a truer conception than imagination in its highest flights. He is not in the storm, nor in the thunder, nor in the earthquake, but " in the still small voice." And this image of God as He reveals Himself in the heart of man is " Christ in us, the hope of glory " ; Christ as He once was upon earth in His sufferings rather than His miracles — the image of goodness and truth and peace and love.^
2. There is the voice of the risen Lord.
(1) This voice drmvs. Other religions have books: Muham- madanism has a book, and a grand old book it is, called the Koran. Some of its stories are almost equal in beauty to the stories of the Book of Genesis, But Muhammadanism has no voice. Muhammad is dead, and his voice is silent in the tomb. Hinduism has books, and interesting books they are, called the Veda and Shaster. They are full of hymns and precepts. Some of them are almost equal in purity and spirituality to some of the Old Testament Psalms and Proverbs. But Hinduism has no voice. The great prophets of Hinduism who thought out the books are dead, and their voices are heard no more. Christianity also has a book. It is more beautiful than the Veda or Shaster. But the book of Christianity is also a voice. The Prophet of Christianity is not dead. Christ is alive, and fills all the words of the Bible with a living voice. He speaks again, through His Spirit, the very words which He spoke when on earth. Herein is the great difference between the Bible and every other book. Other books contain the thoughts of their authors at a particular period in their life, but they may have changed their opinions after writing them, or they may have died. Their voices cannot speak the very words they have written. We read Shakespeare and Milton, but we do not hear them. We hear Christ; His opinions are un-
1 B. Jowett.
454 A STILL SMALL VOICE
changeable, and He is ever living. He speaks the sweet words of mercy to every generation.
^ When I have seen an idol arrayed in traditionary terrors, and magnificently paraded through the streets of a large native town, and in the night too ; and when ten thousand human beings have pressed near to worship amid the gleaming of innumerable torches of coloured light, and rockets and candles of every device shooting up into the air ; and when the priests have sung in solemn cadence, and the multitudes have shouted their acclama- tions, I have caught the prevailing awe. With all my better knowledge I could not resist the terror and beauty of the spectacle. But the Lord was not there. The multitudes returned to their homes with an intoxicated sense and a fevered imagina- tion; yet with no silent voice to instruct and win them to God. But I have taken one of those Hindus whom the wind and the earthquake and the fire had dazzled, but not changed ; I have drawn him away from the three signs and invited him to wait with me for the fourth ; and while we listened, a still small voice spoke in our hearts ; and when he heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, and cried, " What must I do to be saved ? " And the effect of that voice was a new heart and a new life. It was the silent winning of Calvary, and not the fiery testimony of Carmel: it was not Moses or Elijah thundering forth the Law upon the senses, but Jesus breathing truth and grace into the soul.^
(2) It i^ a voice which guides. There was and still is in the soul of every man who has not by long-continued sin succeeded in stifling it that which the early Friends called the " Light Within," or the " Divine Seed " ; that which we in our generation, by a mode of expression which comes more naturally to us, call the Voice of the Lord speaking to the soul of man. "Do you mean the conscience ? " is a question which is often asked when we plead for the continued existence of this Divine gift. Yes, the conscience, which has certainly had a mighty part to play in the drama of the re-making of man; but also something much more than the conscience ; the existence in man of a hearing ear, which has often enabled him to distinguish which of two modes of action, neither in itself wrong, it is his Lord's will that he should choose ; in short, that which our forefathers so often spoke of as "the perceptible guidance of the Holy Spirit,""