3. God's protection does not mean exemption from outward calamities^ But there is an evil in the calamity that will never come near the man who is sheltered under God's wing. The physical external event may be entirely the same to him as to another who is not covered with His feathers. Here are two partners in a business ; the one is a Christian man, and the other is not. A common disaster overwhelms them. They become bank- rupts. Is insolvency the same to the one as it is to the other ? Here are two men on board a ship, the one putting his trust in God, the other thinking it all nonsense to trust anything but him- self. They are both drowned. Is drowning the same to the two ? As their corpses lie side by side, you may say of the one, but only of the one, "There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any
1 A. S. Renton.
252 GOD'S INNER CIRCLE
plague come nigh thy dwelling." For the protection that is granted to faith is to be understood only by faith.
^ " If you believe in God," wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, " where is there any more room for terror ? If you are sure that God, in the long-run, means kindness by you, you should be happy." Fighting a losing battle with death, he wrote: "The tragedy of things works itself out blacker and blacker. Does it shake my cast-iron faith ? I cannot say that it does. 1 believe in an ultimate decency of things ; aye, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it." Let us thank God for the faith of that high and brave soldier of sutTering, going up and down the earth in quest of health, and singing as he went :
If to feel in the ink of the slough,
And sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men,
To go on forever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not
seen with the eyes: With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night; That somehow the right is the right And tlie smooth shall bloom from the rough : Lord, if that were enough?
4. But the promise is absolutely true in a far higher region — the region of spiritual defence. For no man who lies under the shadow of God, and has his heart filled witli the continual consciousness of that Presence, is likely to fall before the assaults of evil that tempt him away from God ; and the defence which He gives in that region is yet more magnificently impregnable than the defence which He gives against external evils. For, as the New Testament teaches us, we are kept from sin, not by any outward breastplate or armour, not even by the Divine wing lying above us to cover us, but by the indwelling Christ in our hearts. His Spirit within us makes us " free from the law of sin and death," and conquerors over all temptations. Every step taken into a higher, holier life secures a completer immunity from the power
PSALM xci. t 253
of evil. Virtually therejsjio temptation^ to those_jYho climb high enoughj they still suffer the trial of their faith and principle, but they have no evil thought, no affinity with evil ; it exercises over them no fascination ; it is to them as though it were not. Never deal with temptation on low utilitarian grounds of health, reputation, or interest. If you have a vice, convict it at Sinai ; arraign it at the bar of the Judgment Day ; make it ashamed of itself at the feet of Christ; blind it with heaven; scorch it with hell ; take it into the upper air where it cannot get its breath, and choke it.
And chok'st thou not him in the upper air His strength he will still on the earth repair.
^ Migratory birds invisible to the eye have been detected by the telescope crossing the disc of the sun six miles above the earth. They have found one of the secret places of the Most High ; far above the earth, invisible to the human eye, hidden in the light, they were delightfully safe from the fear of evil. Thus it is with the soul that soars into the heavenly places ; no arrow can reach it, no fowler betray it, no creature of prey make it afraid: it abides in the shadow of the Almighty.^
How good it is, when weaned from all beside, With God alone the soul is satisfied,
Deep hidden in His heart ! How good it is, redeemed, and washed, and shriven. To dwell, a cloistered soul, with Christ in heaven,
Joined, never more to part ! How good the heart's still chamber thus to close
On all but God alone — There in the sweetness of His love repose,
His love unknown ! All else for ever lost — forgotten all
That else can be ; In rapture undisturbed, 0 Lord, to fall