1. The deep means mystery. We cannot escape the mystery in life, it is true, just as we cannot explore all ocean's secrets. But it is not wisdom to think we have touched bottom because the plummet ceases to descend. The plumb line slackens in our hands. But that may mean only that life is too deep for our pessimists' soundings, which have never gone deeper than the shifting surface tides. What is the obscurity of the sea ? Not that which comes from mud, or anything added, but that which comes from depth. As far as a man can see down into its blue-green depths they are clear and translucent ; but when the light fails and the eye fails, there comes what we call obscurity. The sea is clear, but our sight is liinited.
^ Here towers Vesuvius ; there at its feet lie the waters of the bay. So the Righteousness springs up like some great cliff, rising sheer from the water's edge, while its feet are laved by the sea of the Divine judgments, unfathomable and shoreless. The mountains and the sea are the two grandest things in nature, and in their combination sublime; the one the home of calm and
PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 135
silence, the other perpetual motion. But the mountain's roots are deeper than the depths of the sea, and though the judgments are a mighty deep, the righteousness is deeper, and is the bed of the ocean.i
2. The righteousness of God is seen in His judgments. In God's nature the mountain height answers back to the sea deep ; the great deep of judgment reflects the mountain summits of righteousness in its clear calm. We need to remember this great truth of the unity of God's purpose in the world; for the age which disputes most passionately the justice of God's judgments is the age which most completely ignores or opposes His com- mands. A man on the cliff can look much deeper into the ocean than a man on the level beach. The farther we climb the farther we shall see down into the " sea of glass mingled with fire " that lies placid before God's throne. Let us remember that it is a hazardous thing to judge of a picture before it is finished, of a building before the scaffolding is pulled down ; and it is a hazardous thing for us to say about any deed or any revealed truth that it is inconsistent with the Divine character. Let us wait a bit ! " Thy judgments are a great deep." The deep will be drained off one day, and we shall see the bottom of it. Let us judge nothing before the time.
^ If we believe in the Father and His good purpose towards us, what we require of atfliction and of suffering, what we have a right to require, is this, that it should be felt to be helping us and purifying us. God gives us a natural sense of justice, implanting it deep in our hearts ; and it is through this sense of justice that all the best victories of humanity have been won. . . . The Father cannot have it in His heart that we should merely be crushed and silenced by our punishment ; that we should submit, simply be- cause there is no way out, as a little bird submits to be torn by a hawk. If our submission is like that, it is worth nothing ; it only plunges our spirit in deeper darkness.^
^ One night when I was recently crossing the Atlantic, an officer of our boat told me that we had just passed over the spot where the Titanic went down. And I thought of all that life and wreckage beyond the power of man to recover and redeem. And I thought of the great bed of the deep sea, with all its held
^ A. Maclaren.
'AC. Benson, Thy Rml and Thy ^'faff, 106.
J
6 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
treasure, too far down for man to reach and restore. " Too far down!" And then I thought of all the human wreckage en- gulfed and sunk in oceanic depths of nameless sin. Too far gone ! For what? Too far down! For what? Not too far down for the love of God ! Listen to this : " He descended into hell," and He will descend again if you are there. " If I make my bed in hell, thou art there." "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." " He hort our sin " ; then He got beneath it ; down to it and beneath it ; and there is no human wreckage lying in the ooze of the deepest sea of iniquity that His deep love cannot reach and redeem. What a Gospel ! However far down, God's love can get beneath it ! ^
1 J. H. Jowett, Things That Matter ifoa^ (1913), 17.
Life and Light.
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Literature.
Benson (E. W.), Boy-Life, 32,
Brooks (P.), Sermons Preached in English Churches, 89.
Cooke (G. A.), The Progress of Revelation, 3.
Creighton (M.), The Heritage of the Spirit, 185.
Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 192.
Morrison (G. H.), The Unlighfed Lustre, 30.
Stone (D.), The Discipline of Faith, 31.
Thackeray (F, St. John), Sermons Preached in Eton College Chapel, 105.