(1903), No. 22. Whincup (D. W.), The Training of Life, 21. British Weekly Pulpit, iii. 401 (W. Sanday). Treasury (New York), xx. 722.
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The Wondrous Law.
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold Wondrous things out of thy law. — Ps. cxix. i8.
This is a very uncommon idea — that wonder should be the result of intellectual development or the " opening of the eyes." The prevailing notion is the reverse — that wonder belongs to the primitive age alike of the individual and of the race. We say colloquially, " I opened my eyes in astonishment " ; the Psalmist's expression is the converse, " I became astonished by opening my eyes." What the Psalmist says is that the marvels of life escape us by reason of our ignorance. His prayer is just the contrary of the common prayer. The common prayer is, " Make me a simple child again that I may feel the mystery of all things and bow with reverence before them." But the Psalmist says, " Emancipate me from the ignorance of childhood, for it is only when I shall see with the eyes of a man that I shall behold the mystery, the marvel, the unfathomable depth, of that ocean on whose bosom I live and move and have my being."
^1 Do we find that the sense of wonder belongs to children ? Not so. The sense of mystery is precisely what a child does not feel. He asks many questions; but he will accept the crudest answers as quite adequate explanations. He has not a conscious- ness of limitation. He has a feeling of power beyond his strength ; he will put out his hand to catch the moon. He does not at an early date inquire where he came from. He does not ask who made a watch or who made the sun. To him the watch and the sun are both alive — moving by their own strength, upheld by their own power. His eyes are not opened, and therefore his wonder is not awake. To wake his wonder you must unbar the door of his mind. The mystery comes with his experience — not with the want of it. I do not read that man marvelled in Eden ; I do that they marvelled in Galilee. Eden was as wonderful as Galilee ; but the eyes were not opened. Knowledge is the parent
of mystery. Experience is the forerunner of reverence. Only
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430 THE WONDROUS LAW
they who have let down the pitcher can utter the cry, " The well is deep." ^
"[j Mr. Morley, in his Life, of Gladstone, speaking of his entrance into college life at Oxford, says : " It was from Gladstone's intro- duction into this enchanted and inspiring world that we recognize the beginning of the wonderful course which was to show how great a thing the life of a man may be made." So with Christian. Here, in the Interpreter's House, his spiritual experiences really begin. He is no longer in the outer circle of the world's empty life ; he has come within the circle of God's direct purposes and protecting power. Dangers he will have to meet, trials of faith and courage ; the Hill of Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation, the Castle of Giant Despair, the struggle with Apollyon — all this is before him. But he is on the pilgrim-road to Zion. There is the sweet companionship; there are the wonders by the way — the Interpreter's House, the Cross where the burden is removed, the Palace Beautiful, the sight of the Delectable Mountains, the Eiver of the Water of Life. So whatever might be the difficulties, Christian was on enchanted ground. He was near to God. He was on the path whose end was heaven. The wicket gate admits him to the rich field of Christian experience : the only experience that has any lasting value.^
I.
1. The sense of wonder is one of our most useful emotions. The mind cannot remain long in a state of monotony without something like pain, or if it does, it is a sign of the low level to which it has sunk. It has a craving after what is fresh, and God has provided for this in the form of the world. He has made the works of nature pass before us with a perpetually diversified face. He has created summer and winter, and so ordered the sun that it has probably never set with the same look since man first saw it. Those works of nature are constantly turning up new subjects of thought and study, and will do so, during the world's existence; while, at the same time, the world itself is weaving an ever- shifting and many-coloured web of history. In all this there is a stimulus to man to lead him to look and think.
^ Not by " mathesis," not by deduction, or construction, not by measuring, or searching, canst thou find out God, but only by the
' G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, 242.
» D. W. Whincup, The Training of Life, 21.
PSALM cxix. i8 431
faithful cry from the roadside of the world as He passes — " Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law." In that prayer you have literally expressed to you, not in any wise as we too carelessly assume metaphorically, the two functions of the exercised senses, of which you have so often, I fear incredulously, heard me affirm the necessary connexion — the discerning of what is beautiful and of what is right. " Wondrous things out of thy law." Wondrous, not as to the uneducated senses they are in terror, but wondrous to the educated senses in gentleness and delight ; so that while to the modern demonstrator of the laws of Nature they become mysterious as dreadful in their tyranny, to the ancient perceiver of the laws of Heaven they be- came lovely no less than wondrous: in the tenderness and the voice of the Borgo Allegri, at the feet of the Mother of Christ, was joy no less of allegiance than wonder — " Oh, how love I thy law."i