^ It was the consciousness of something eternal, within and without him, that made Green what he was. His wife once told him that he was like Sir Bors in the " Holy Grail," and the likeness holds in more senses than one. A " knight of the spirit " he assuredly was ; not Galahad, " crowned king far in the spiritual city " ; not Percivale, sadly resolved " to pass away into the quiet life " ; not Lancelot, with " the fire of madness in his eyes " ; but
Sir Bors it was Who spake so low and sadly at our board; And mighty reverent at our grace was he: A square-set man and honest; and his eyes. An out-door sign of all the warmth within, Smiled with his lips — a smile beneath a cloud. But heaven had meant it for a sunny one.
And if we had asked him whether he had seen the Divine vision, we can fancy that, like Sir Bors, he would have answered,
"Ask me not, for I may not speak of it; I saw it." 3
^ M. Maeterlinck, Treasure of the. Humble, 192.
2 Ruskin, in E. T. Cook's Life, ii. 205.
* R. L. Nettleship, Memoir of Thomas Hill Green.
158 HEARSAY AND EXPERIENCE
III.
The Eesult of the Vision.
"Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
1. The vision of God reduces Job to self-humiliation. — In seeing God he saw himself. The glory of that light streamed upon him, disclosing the recesses of his nature, permitting him with horror to behold imperfections and weaknesses which the darkness had hitherto hidden from his view. It was so different estimating himself in the light which the criticism of his friends threw around him and estimating himself in the light which searched the thoughts and intents of his heart. So long as he had brooded over his sorrow, and had listened to the attempts of his friends to explain the purpose of the Almighty in sending it, so long he could not detect any unrighteousness in himself, he could declare himself to be guiltless of the evil imputed to him as the excep- tional cause of his exceptional misery. But when he looked from himself to God, when he saw the Eternal Holiness and Purity, the new sight awoke within him a knowledge of himself which all his self-inspection had been unable to produce. The greatest earthly wisdom became as foolishness, the greatest earthly virtue became as vileness by the contrast. He might exculpate himself before men, he could not exculpate himself before God; He had been uttering words which he ought not. He had been defiant where he ought to have been submissive; he had been mis- interpreting the Divine Law ; he had been rushing forward where he ought to have held back. He was face to face, not with the jjrejudiced, partial judgment of men which he might well resent, but with the impartial righteous judgments of God from which there was no appeal; and the knowledge of that judgment removed all pride in his own integrity. All that he could now say — he the upright, he the resolute — in his own justification, was, " I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."
^ Those who ascend the Mount of Purification have learnt 80 to hate the corruptions of the first kingdom, that linger as scales before their eyes, preventing their vision of God, that they welcome with joy any pain, even, that shall deliver them from
JOB XLii. 5, 6 159
these hindrances. When their longing for the beatific vision, or perfect union with their true Lord and country, overmasters their personal sense of defilement and unfitness for His presence, they rise upwards to their goal, for they find no prison walls or barriers to keep them in any school of discipline.^
^ There are, perhaps, twelve cases in the Bible that are very conspicuous, in which men have had a vision of God, more or less intense, more or less truly glorious. But in every case they have been prostrated, and humiliated and overwhelmed, and the more intense the vision of God, the more intense the humiliation and the more utter the prostration.^
2. The vision of God awakens rejjentancc. — One glimpse of God with the eye of the heart does for Job more than all the harangues of his friends. They had charged him falsely, and his pride was only hardened by their unjust accusations. God had not charged him at all, but the very vision revealed at once his mistaken position. He saw his error, and sought to correct himself.
^ When the electric light was first discovered, I was in a large hall where the gaslights were shining brightly and seemed perfect, but the moment the electric light shone, all the rest seemed as if they were put out. And so it is when God's light shines into us. It discloses the dimness of our light, the imperfection of our perfection. God would not have witnessed to the uprightness of Job if it had not been real ; but this did not hinder it from ap- pearing as nothing in the Light of God. This is the repentance of the righteous. It is not that their righteousness has been no righteousness, but God, perhaps in a moment, has shown to them greater heights, deeper depths, more earnest convictions, and so old attainments seem as if they were not.^