IV.
His Peovidence.
1. "I shall not want." Coverdale's translation, used in the Prayer Book, is better, " Therefore can I lack nothing " ; still better, as more literal, is Kay's, "I shall have no lack." The word is used in Deut. ii. 7 of Israel's " lacking nothing " during its passage through the wilderness ; and in viii. 9, of the provision to be made for them in Canaan.
% " Want " was preferred by the translators of the A.V. because the word " lack " had in the meantime sufl'ered deprecia-
* J, Culross, God's Shepherd Care, 19.
\96
A PERSONAL PROVIDENCE
tion from the use of it as a common interpellation by stall-keepers to passers by : What d'ye lack, what d'ye lack ?
We may observe by a comparison of other passages that lack is much rarer in the Bible of 1611 than in that of 1539. Thus in Judges xviii. 10; Luke xv. 14 —
1539.
A place, which doth lacke no thyng that is in the worlde.
And when he had spent all, ther arose a greate derth in all that lande, and he began to lacke.
1611.
A place where there is no want of any thing, that is in the earth
And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he beganne to be in want.^
2. The shepherdly care of Jehovah makes every life a Divine plan. It redeems it from caprice. The tendency of our day is to reduce everything to law. Scientific men tell us that in the world of matter there is no such thing as chance. The unexpected does not happen. The universality of law is an accepted fact. The air we breathe, the water we drink, are composed of gases which, if mixed in slightly different proportions, would work our destruction. If the laboratory of nature were turned into a playgrou.nd for lawless forces, what a chaos we should see ! But there is no such thing as chance ; and everything, from a molecule to a sun, is marshalled under law. But shall suns and systems have their appointed orbits, and human life be left to accident and caprice ? Shall the soulless worlds of matter that drift through the infinite spaces have the personal leading of Jehovah, and all the hosts of men be allowed to wander uncared for and untended in the barren wilderness of time ? No. Even of the stars it is said, " He calleth them all by name " ; and we are of more value than many stars. They are but the furniture of His choice and many- chambered palace, but we are the children of His heart and His home. They are but waxing and waning splendours which come and go in the pauses of His breath, but we shall endure through all the years of the Most High.
3. But how shall we reconcile this care of God with what is called " natural law " ? It is a conclusion of science that the order of nature is fixed and invariable ; how can we reconcile this fixed- ness with the doctrine of present care ? We neither can do this,
1 J. Eai-le, Tlie Psalter of 1539, 267.
PSALM XXIII. I 397
nor lued to do it. On the one side, science rests on its own proper basis, which is that of sense. Science receives nothing that does not rest ultimately on the evidence of sense, and knows only of the " natural." Take even astronomy, which is in some respects the grandest of the sciences, and you will find that it has no other foundation than this. On the other hand, the assurance of Divine loving-kindness and care rests on a spiritual foundation, of which the senses know nothing. We are brought in among things which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." The assurance of Divine loving-kindness and care rests on Divine revelation ; and when men endeavour to destroy our confidence in the reality of the care by an argument drawn from science, that is to say, resting ultimately on sense, we can only reply, in the words of Jesus to the Sadducees, " Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God."
^ Never did I realize the power of Providence over human destiny as when I perceived how little man himself is able to control the act which most affects his own fate. For I cannot conceal from myself the fact that all my meditation can serve but little to guide me, seeing the future, which alone could give me a fixed point for my inquiry, is mercilessly hidden from my view. True indeed it is that we are led. Happily the Christian may add, " We are well led ! " This indeed is our only true and logical consolation.^
*[| " And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the Lord God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word." Your modern philosophers have explained to you the absurdity of all that : you think ? . . . Do these modern scientific gentlemen fancy that nobody, before they were born, knew the laws of cloud and storm, or that the mighty human souls of former ages, who every one of them lived and died by prayer, and in it, did not know that in every petition framed on their lips they were asking for what was not only fore-ordained, but just as probably ioxe-done ? or that the mother, pausing to pray before she opens a letter from Alma or Balaclava, does not know that already he is saved for whom she prays, or already lies festering in his shroud ? The whole confidence and glory of prayer is in its appeal to a Father who knows our necessities before we ask, who knows our thoughts before they rise in our ' Brother and Sister (Memoir of Ernest and Henriette Ecnan), 131.