The splendours of the Summer sunset-glow Shot blood-red through the intercepting trees: And, fretful that my vision could not seize
Unblurred, the hues beyond, or fully know
The gorgeous scene that was obstructed so, In haste my discontentment to appease I climbed my tower, when lo ! I missed the trees !
Too dazzling was the sight ! The charm did go !
I must not seek all things to understand: i
If 'mid the tangled mystery of my days, i
And cares that mar delights on every hand, j
I catch but gleams of glory through the maze, '
I'll wait till in the All-revealing Laud
The full effulgence meets my tutored gaze ! ^
(1) The intellect by itself is utterly at fault in the search for God.
^ Jacob begged that he might kuow his Benefactor's name, but it was not conceded to him. God wraps Himself in mystery. He partly reveals and partly conceals Himself. His purpose is to keep man, not in ignorance, but in lowly reverence. Wonder is an element of worship. God is not angry with man for his reverent curiosity; He rather stimulates it to the utmost; but there are limits which He will not let us overstep. He says, " Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." We have no line with which to measure the Infinite. " Who can by searching find out God ? who can find out the Almighty unto perfection ? "
No answer came back, not a word, To the patriarch there by the ford ; No answer has come through the ages To the poets, the saints, and the sages,
* George Tyrrell. - Thomas Crawford, Horae Serenae, 65.
26 THE DEEPS OF GOD
Who have sought in the secrets of science The name and the nature of God But the answer that was and shall be, " My name ! Nay, what is that to thee ? " ^
Yet God does reveal Himself. He is not the unknown and unknowable. His revelations come to the heart and the con- science ; they come in the experiences of life ; and they come really rather than verbally. When God has wrestled with Jacob and blessed him, Jacob knows God, although His name is with- held. He knows His power and His grace ; knows Him as the source of blessing ; knows how wonderful and adorable He is. For the rest, mystery does not repel men from God, it attracts them to Him ; and in view of the infallible assurances of the soul we may reverently say even of God, " What's in a name ? " If the Hebrews could do nothing better, they could at least now call upon the " God of Jacob." They could encourage one another by saying, " The name of the God of Jacob defend thee." The contents of that designation, the experience which it recalled, were full of inspiration. " Therefore, to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? " ^
^ It is really time for men of science to be warned off the grounds of philosophy and psychology as peremptorily as they warn religion off the territory of science. A purely materialistic student of the facts of science is simply impudent when he applies his scientific methods to things spiritual. It is as absurd as the old application of theological methods to science. Let him say what he knoios about his " atoms," but when he attempts, as Tyndall says he attempts, " to leap beyond the bounds of experi- ment" and guess at the cause of his "atoms" he is just in the position in which Tyndall places us — " that of a man attempting to lift himself by his waistband." But after all what a testimony to the need of a revelation is all this ! What is it all but what Job said long ago, " Who can by searching find out God ? " The last word of science must be atheism, if science denies all that is not scientifically demonstrable ; and just for that reason when science has said her last word, religion says her first, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." I look on Stuart Mill's "Life" and Tyndall's manifesto as two valuable contributions to the evidence of Christianity ; the one showing man's moral need, the other his intellectual need of a revelation ab extra?
^ J. Hay, Israel. ^ J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 67.
" The Life of Archbishop Magee, ii. 11.
JOB XI. 7 27
(2) Our knowledge of God is a recognition by our whole personality.
^ God is for me that after which I strive, that the striving after which forms my life, and who, therefore, is for me ; but He is necessarily such that I cannot comprehend or name Him. If I comprehend Him, I would reach Him, and there would be nothing to strive after, and no life. But, though it seems a contradiction, I cannot comprehend or name Him, and yet I know Him — know the direction toward Him, and of all my know- ledge this is the most reliable.
You know God not so much by means of reason, not even by means of your heart, as by the complete dependence felt in relation to Him — something like the feeling which a suckling babe experiences in the arms of its mother. It does not know who holds it, who warms and feeds it ; but it knows tliat there is somebody who does this, and, moreover, loves this person.^