^ The following letter was written by Canon Liddon to Dr. King, Bishop of Lincoln, one of his oldest friends, in the second week of his illness, which was destined to proved fatal : " God has laid His hand very heavily upon me ; and I have been through the fire — I greatly needed it. Nothing [is] more wonderful in Him tlian His goodness to such as I am. Pray for me, tliat I may
PSALM XXXIV. 8 loi
learn how to be humble and patient, and that this visitation (in the Day of Account) may not be seen to have been as nothing — or worse than nothing — instead of a great means of grace." ^
Lifelong our stumbles, lifelong our regret, Lifelong our efforts failing and renewed, While lifelong is our witness, " God is good,"
Who bore with us till now, bears with us yet.
Who still remembers and will not forget,
Who gives us light and warmth and daily food ; And gracious promises half understood,
And glories half unveiled, whereon to set
Our heart of hearts and eyes of our desire ; Uplifting us to longing and to love,
Luring us upward from this world of mire, tfrging us to press on and mount above Ourselves and all we have had experience of,
Mounting to Him in love's perpetual fke.^
I.
The Appkoacii to God.
1. The Psalmist invites us to put God to the most practical of tests. " 0 taste and see." Of our five senses taste is the most homely ; of our five senses taste is the most personal ; for what we see, and hear, and smell, and touch, we share with others, but in a peculiarly personal sense the taste is our own. As the proverb says : " There is no disputing about taste." ]\Ioreover, the sense of taste is a peculiarly gracious gift of the Creator to us, for, so far as we can tell, we might easily be nourished with food which we did not taste, and all those processes of digestion might go on unconsciously, like the feeding of an engine. But He has given us this faculty of taste, by which we discriminate the different flavours of the food we eat, and get a relish from variety. Now, it is this one of the senses — the most homely, the most personal, and the most gratuitous — that is taken as the image to be used for urging upon us the experience of God. " Taste " is the command. It is as if God came to us with this generous proposal, " I would not have you choose Me until you have tasted Me, nor would I force Myself upon you unless your
^ Life ami Letters of H. P. Liddon, 384. * Christina G. Eossetti.
I02 THE GOODNESS OF GOD
taste decide." In a marvellous way He puts Himself at our dis- posal for us to try, " Taste and see that the Lord is good."
^ There is an Indian story of a queen who " proved the truth by tasting the food." The story tells how lier husband, who dearly loved her, and whom she dearly loved, lost his kingdom, wandered away with his queen into the forest, left her there as she slept, hoping she would fare better without him, and followed her long afterwards to her father's court, deformed, disguised, a servant among servants, a cook. Then her maidens came to her, told her of the wonderful cooking, magical in manner, marvellous in flavour and fragrance. They are sure it is the long-lost king come back to her, and they bid her believe and rejoice. But the queen fears it may not be true. She must prove it; she must taste the food. They bring her some. She tastes and knows. And the story ends in joy. " 0 taste and see that the Lord is good," ^
2. The secret of goodness can be found only by personal ex- perience. Men know what sin is, by experience. They do not know what holiness is, and they cannot obtain the knowledge of its secret pleasure, till they join themselves truly and heartily to Christ, and devote themselves to His service — till they " taste," and thereby try. One may ask, Of what value, of what distinct force and bearing, as an evidence of truth, is this appeal to ex- perimental proof ? To this we may answer, first, that while the mere fact of any religious or ethical system making such an appeal would by no means prove its truth, for a false system might profess to do the same, still no system could be true which shrank from it. It would argue a consciousness of being untrue to the realities of things, otherwise it would not fear the ordeal of ex- perience. So far, therefore, it is a fair presumption in favour of the Bible that throughout its language, expressed or implied, is " Taste and see." And this presumption, it is next to be observed, rises into positive inductive proof, in proportion to the duration, extent, and diversity of the trial. As in experimental philosophy we arrive at a general law by an induction of particular instances, and the result is satisfactory in proportion to the multiplication of concurring instances and the absence of antagonistic ones, so is it with the argument for the Bible as derived from experimental proof. In tliis case the induction is overwhelming, ' Amy Wilson Cariuichael, Tilings as they are vn India, 253.