The strict revenge of its calamities,
Since in and of ourselves, perforce, are scored Exact effects for every deed and word, — Nor life, nor death forego the least of this!
Nothing effects our destinies save we:
Ours is the seed we sow, the fruit we reap — Yea, and the heart's one flame of ecstasy,
And the soul's vigil we are sworn to keep, And life's low average of strife and sleep, And, 0, the best we are and dare not be!^
^ John Watson, The Cure of Souls.
^ George C. Lodge, Poems and Dramas, ii. 141.
250 KNOWING AND TRUSTING
^ There is no power to generate trust in any philosophy that identifies God with the order of the universe. There is no pity for the weak and the wicked. Tennyson does not put it too strongly when he represents Nature as not only careless of the single life, but as crying, from scarped cliff and quarried stone —
A thousand types are gone; I care for nothing, all shall go.
And philosophical theism, deifying reason and moral law, can rise no higher than the moan —
Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, sins of will.
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood.
Even so much as that no classic poetry or philosophy had ventured to utter. It had no such dream. And whence Tennyson brought it becomes clear when Christmas bells are ringing —
Eing out the darkness of the land, Eing in the Christ that is to be ! ^
^ In his Jungle Boohs, Kipling gives us his view of the order in which we have our place, and it is all summed up in this stanza with which he closes his description of the Jungle —
Now these are the laws of the jungle,
and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the law,
and the haunch and the hump, is — Obey !
3. The supreme name of God is Love — not love merely as good- will, but love as active, seeking the lost until they are found, seeking all until they are found. That converts the poet's dream into a blessed certainty, and the faintness of his trust into solid assurance. The omnipotence of God does not make Him attrac- tive to me. The omniscience of God sounds the death-knell of my hope. The justice of God thrusts me into the dungeon of despair. In such an atmosphere there cannot be the first breath of faith. But when you make it clear to me that this omni- potent, omniscient, holy God is also infinite in His tenderness, that He loves me and wants me, that He is my Father, and that in Christ His Fatherhood has become incarnate, so that when I 1 A. J. F. Behrends.
PSALM IX. lo 251
see Him I see the Father, my faith is kindled and my trust knows no misgiving. Here, in God's love for me, sealed by manger, cross, and open grave, is the Ariadne thread which leads me out of the cave of darkness, despair, and death.
^ When David Gray, the young poet of Kirkintilloch, lay dying in his cottage home by the banks of the Luggie, about which he had sung so sweetly, his last words, whispered in the ear of his mother, were, " God has love, and I have faith." With this sweet utterance upon his lips, and this blessed confidence in his heart, he " fell asleep."
^ Another instance of the effect of his preaching is given in the story of how, during a confirmation which he was holding in an East-end church, a poor hawker of infidel literature strolled into the church, and listening to the Bishop's address was struck by his assertion of the Fatherhood of God. At the close of the service the man asked a church-worker at the door, with much earnestness, " Is what the Bishop says true ? Is God indeed the Father of men ? " " Of course it is true," said the lady. " Then," said he, " my occupation is gone ; I have been teaching the reverse of this for years, but I can do so no more." ^
II.
Tkust in God.
1. In its literal force the term used by the Psalmist means " to flee to a refuge." Elsewhere we read, " Be merciful unto me, 0 God, be merciful unto me ; for my soul trusteth in thee : yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge." The words recall the time when David betook himself to the cave of Adullam for shelter from his persecutors. In imagination we can see the rough sides of the cavern that sheltered him arching over the fugitive, like the wings of some great bird, and just as he has fled thither with eager feet and is safely hidden from his pursuers there, so he has betaken himself to the everlasting Eock, in the cleft of which he is at rest and secure. To trust in God is neither more nor less than to flee to Him for refuge, and there to be at peace. The same presence of the original metaphor, colouring the same religious thought, is found in the beautiful words with ' Life of Bishop WcUahain How, 170.