^ The Doctor must keep his temper : this is often worse to manage than even his time, there is so much unreason, and ingratitude, and peevishness, and impertinence, and impatience, that it is very hard to keep one's tongue and eye from being angry; and sometimes the Doctor does not only well, but the best when he is downrightly angry, and astonishes some fool, or some insolent, or some untruth doing or saying patient ; but the Doctor should be patient with his patients, he should bear with them, knowing how much they are at the moment suffering. Let us remember Him who is full of compassion, whose compassion never fails ; whose tender mercies are new to us every morning, as His faithfulness is every night; who healed all manner of diseases, and was kind to the unthankful and the evil ; what would become of us, if He were as impatient with us as we often are with each other ? If you want to be impressed with the Almighty's infinite loving-kindness and tender mercy, His forbearance, His long-suffering patience, His slowness to anger, His Divine ingeniousness in trying to find it possible to spare and save, think of the Israelites in the desert, and read the chapter where Abraham intercedes with God for Sodom, and these wonderful " peradventures." ^
^ My fear is not of expanding, but of contradicting, the Gospel which we are sent to preach ; not of seeing too strong a testimony in the Bible to the will of Him in whom is light and no darkness at all, but of limiting its testimonies to meet my narrow conceptions ; not of exaggerating the duty of the Church to be a witness against all hard and cruel conceptions of our Father in Heaven, which lead to a confusion between Him and the Spirit of Evil, but of not perceiving how manifold are the ways in which that duty should be fulfilled. I am sure that if the Gospel is not regarded as a message to all mankind of the redemption which God has effected in His Son; if the Bible is thought to be speaking only of a world to come, and not of a Kingdom of Eighteousness and Peace and Truth with which we may be in conformity or in enmity now ; if the Church is not felt to be the hallower of all professions and occupations, the bond of all classes, the instrument of reforming abuses, the admonisher of the rich ^ Dr. John Brown, Hora Suhsedvce, ii. 35 (appendix).
124 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
the friend of the poor, the asserter of the glory of that humanity which Christ bears — we are to blame, and God will call us to account as unfaithful stewards of His treasures.^
11.
The Faithfulness of God.
"Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies."
God's faithfulness is in its narrowest sense His adherence to His promises. It implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, and definite words from Him, pledging Him to a certain line of action. He hath said, and shall He not do it? He will not alter the thing that is gone out of His lips. It is only a God who has actually spoken to men that can be a " faithful God." He will not palter with a double sense, keeping His word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope. And not only His articulate promises, but also His own past actions, bind Him. He is always true to these ; and not only continues to do as He has done, but discharges every obligation which His past imposes on Him. The ostrich was said to leave its eggs to be hatched in the sand. Men bring men into positions of dependence, and then lightly shake responsibility from careless shoulders. But God accepts the cares laid upon Him by His own acts, and discharges them to the last jot. He is a " faithful Creator." Creation brings obhgations with it — obligations on the creature, obligations on the Creator. If God makes a being, God is bound to take care of the being that He has made. If He makes a being in a given fashion, He is bound to provide for the necessities that He has created. According to the old proverb, if He makes mouths it is His business to feed them. And He recognizes the obligation. His past binds Him to certain conduct in His future. We can lay hold on the former manifestation, and we can plead it with Him. "Thou hast been, and therefore Thou must be." "Thou hast taught me to trust in Thee ; vindicate and warrant my trust by Thy unchangeableness." So His word, His acts, and His own nature, bind God to bless and help. His faithfulness is the
' Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, ii. 227.
PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 125
expression of His unchangeableness. " Because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself."
^ I believe that love and righteousness and justice in God mean exactly the same thing, namely, a desire to bring His whole moral creation into a participation of His own character and His own blessedness. He has made us capable of this, and He will not cease from using the best means for accomplishing it in us all. When I think of God making a creature of such capacities, it seems to me almost blasphemous to suppose that He will throw it from Him into everlasting darkness, because it has resisted His gracious purposes towards it for the natural period of human life. No, He who waited so long for the formation of a piece of old red sandstone will surely wait with much long-suffering for the perfecting of a human spirit.^