' A. Striiidberg, Zones of the, Spirit, 111.
PSALM XXXII. 8 87
pleasures, their possessions, which fill as large a space as the higher things in the horizon round which they sweep their sight. They are not ungodly, they are not indifferent to the benediction of Heaven. But there is a great dead weight to be lifted, a great back-longing to be overcome. They have to be driven in the way which they say they love, and to the end which they profess to desire more than worlds. How many Christians have to be driven in the way of life, at a cost of pain to them, and patience to Him, which God alone knows !
^ It looks to me now like a kind of humble russet-coated epic, that seven years' settlement at Craigenputtock ; very poor in this world's goods, but not without an intrinsic dignity greater and more important than then appeared. It is certain that for living in and thinking in, I have never since found in the world a place so favourable. And we were driven and pushed into it, as if by Necessity, and its beneficent though ugly little shocks and pushes, shock after shock gradually compelling us thither ! " For a Divinity doth shape our ends, rough-hew them how we will": often in my life have I been brought to think of this, as prob- ably every considering person is ; and, looking before and after, have felt, though reluctant enough to believe in the importance or significance of so infinitesimally small an atom as oneself, that the Doctrine of a Special Providence is in some sort natural to man. All piety points that way, all logic points the other ; — one has, in one's darkness and hmitation, a trembling faith, and can at least say with the Voices, " Wir heissen euch hojfen," — if it le the will of the Highest.^
^ Do you at all recollect that interesting passage of Carlyle in which he compares, in this country and at this day, the under- stood and commercial value of man and horse ; and in which he wonders that the horse, with its inferior brains and its awkward hoofiness, instead of handiness, should be always worth so many tens or scores of pounds in the market, while the man, so far from always commanding his price in the market, would often be thought to confer a service on the community by simply killing himself out of their way ? Well, Carlyle does not answer his own question, because he supposes we shall at once see the answer. The value of the horse consists simply in the fact of your being able to put a bridle on him. The value of the man consists pre- cisely in the same thing. If you can bridle him, or, which is better, if he can bridle himself, he will be a valuable creature ' Carlyle, Reminiscences, ii. 244.
88 THE GUIDING EYE
directly. Otlierwise, in a commercial point of view, his value is either iiotliing, or accidental only. Only, of course, the proper bridle of man is not a leathern one ; what kind of texture it is rightly made of, we find from that command, " Be ye not as the horse or as the mule which have no understancjing, whose mouths must be held in with bit and bridle." You are not to be without the reins, indeed ; but they are to be of another kind : " I will guide thee with mine eye." So the bridle of man is to be the Eye of God ; and if he rejects that guidance, then the next best for him is the horse's and the mule's, which have no understand- ing ; and if he rejects that, and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there is nothing left for him than the blood that comes out of the city, up to the horse-bridles.^
3. There are those who desire and who willingly accept God's guidance. To such God says, " I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go : I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee." He will take a personal interest in them. For the guide of men is no Epicurean God, loftily serene and impassive, but one whose interest in the world, whose care for the world, brought Him to live in it that He might share its burden and pain. The gospel is the revelation of how much He cares ; of how much the happiness of His creation, the order of His government, and the satisfaction of His heart depend on the way man takes. He has created a being of wonderful and complex powers, capable, if guided aright, of doing godlike work in the universe, or capable of making it an Aceldama, a Gehenna of wailing and death. And the great work of Heaven is to guide him ; to make him know, trust, and love his guide. Truly " thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory." When Christ has won this trust from a human spirit, His redemptive work is done.
^ To obey the will of the Lord is the secret first of all, of safety — security. " All things work together for good to them tha't love God." From the moment a planet wheels into its path round the sun, there is nothing that can harm that planet, but just as soon as a star wauders from its orbit, and goes plunging headlong into the depths of space, it is liable to come into clash and crash with the universe of God. I have seen a great piece of machinery that would fill an immense building. Now, suppose » Ruskin, A Joy for Ever, §18 {Works, xvi. 28).