effectual way of teaching very little children, so as to give them accurate knowledge, is to present objects to the eye.
^ Kuskin believed the secret of life as well as of art to lie in a sort of heavenly obedience, a triumphant energy, a fiery contemplation. The reason why he clothed his message at first in terms of art is a mere question of faculty. To Ruskin the purest delight of which his spirit was capable came through the eye, through the mysteries of light and colour, of form and curve — the devices which make such a man say in a rapture of spiritual satis- faction, " Yes, it is like that ! " He had both the eye for effect and the eye for detail, sight at once extended and microscopical. He wrote of himself, " I had a sensual faculty of pleasure in sight, as far as I know unparalleled." ^
" I do beseech thee, God, show me thy face."
"Come up to me in Sinai on the morn!
Thou shalt behold as much as may be borne."
And on a rock stood Moses, lone in space.
From Sinai's top, the vaporous, thunderous place,
God passed in cloud, an earthly garment worn
To hide, and thus reveal. In love, not scorn,
He put him in a clift of the rock's base.
Covered him with his hand, his eyes to screen — •
Passed — lifted it : his back alone appears !
Ah, Moses, had he turned, and hadst thou seen
The pale face crowned with thorns, baptized with tears,
The eyes of the true man, by men belied.
Thou hadst beheld God's face, and straightway died!^
^ A poor Chinaman came to a missionary for baptism, and when asked if he had heard the Gospel, replied that he had not heard it, but he had seen it. His neighbour had been an inveterate smoker of opium and a man of violent temper. But he had become a Christian and his whole life was altered. He gave up opium, and became loving and amiable. " So," said the man, " I have seen the Gospel."
2. In the first clause of the text we find the root of Job's per- plexities. He had accepted implicitly the traditional belief of his day regarding God's providence; but, conscious of rectitude, he sees plainly that, in his own case, that belief does not square with the facts. And he is too honest and too fearless to shut his eyes
^ A. C. Benson, Huskin : A Study in Personality, 48. ^ George MacDonald.
152 HEARSAY AND EXPERIENCE
to the contradiction. He will neither be untrue to his own con- sciousness of integrity, nor yet will he " speak unrighteously for God." Let those trouble-bringing " comforters " press him as they may, he will not affirm the thing that is not. No ; amid the wreck of all else — stripped of all his possessions, ravaged in body by hideous disease, seized by the neck and dashed to pieces by God as a guilty and hateful thing, met by his former friends, not with the sympathy he had looked for, but with cutting moralizings and angry scorn — his noble manhood refused to cringe ; he would not gainsay his integrity. " There is no violence in mine hands, and my prayer is pure." Neither in his dealings with men nor in his walk with God had he done aught that could explain his overwhelming experiences. Here, then, was a distinct contradic- tion between his old religious belief — what he had heard of God by the hearing of the ear — and the facts of his personal experi- ence. Accordingly, like many a man after him, Job found him- self adrift on the surging waves of doubt.
^ Mrs. Humphry Ward's Bohert JElsmere is the story of a clergyman who had sadly to renounce his faith because, in the presence of enlightenment, it was no longer tenable. He is de- scribed as a man of noble character who followed truth whereso- ever it led him. And in following what he believed to be truth, he, of course, did well. But this has perhaps not been sufficiently noted : in the delineation of his character the beliefs from which he parted were really never his. He had been taught them as a child, he had received them by tradition, he had never turned them over in his mind, never sounded their depths. And so, when another aspect of truth was presented to him which he studied with earnestness, and which he found contained much that was helpful to his life, the old beliefs, which he had only fancied that he had believed, could not but fall away. The tradi- tion which we accept may be true in every detail, the authority before which we bow may be worthy of all veneration, but if, having attained to years and powers in which we are capable of making a decision for ourselves, our faith is still held on the frail and solitary tenure that, owing to the accident of our birth in a Christian country, we were taught it in our childhood, it will fail us in the time of trouble.^
^ P. M'Adam Muir.
JOB xLii. 5, 6 153
II.
The Direct Vision.
"But now mine eye seeth thee."