2. Wonder rises into admiration as we contemplate things that are grand and beautiful. There is a chord in the human heart to which the beautiful and sublime respond, whether these appear in the material or in the spiritual world. If we could only take men away for a little out of the dull, dead round, and from the corroding and often debasing things that draw them down in their common life, there are objects such as these appealing to them daily and hourly, and asking them if they have not a soul. Eich sunsets and moonlit skies are there, only requiring eyes to see them, and acts of self-devotion and heroism are being per- formed, and lives of patient suffering led, under our sight, which are as capable of thrilling us as anything recorded in history.
^ At a later time the Mar^chale delivered addresses in other cities of France — such as Nimes, Marseilles, Havre, Rouen, Lyons — and she was everywhere astonished to find that the French, who seem the most thoughtless, are yet among the most thought- ful people in the world. The result of such Conferences as these cannot be tabulated. For one thing, they made the Mar^chale more than ever a mother-confessor and spiritual director. The thoughts of many hearts were revealed to her at private inter- views of which no record was kept, and in letters, one of which may be given : —
" Your marvellous faith, your simple and powerful eloquence so deeply moved me that I cannot but thank you. I thank you
^ Euskin, Schools of Art in Florence, § 90 ( Works, xxiii. 250).
432 THE WONDROUS LAW
AS an artist, as a sincere admirer of beautiful work, of great char- acters ; I thank you as a man blas6, sceptical, benumbed and deadened. As a child I adored Jesus, and now, after having thought much and suffered infinite pains which you cannot understand, I have said adieu to faith and also adieu to hope! I have become one of those you call sceptics. Ah ! do not say ' terrible ' sceptic, but unfortunate, pitiable, unhappy sceptic. You are, Madame, a great, beautiful, generous heart, and if ever earnest good wishes have been worth anything, I have cherished them for you, your work, and those who fight by your side. You will believe me, an unbeliever, who envies you, admires you, and ideally loves you." ^
3. Wonder and admiration deepen into awe as we realize the mystery of life. A reflective mind can take but a very few steps in thinking till it comes upon this. It is not so much that there are things unknown around us as that there are things unTcnowdble, that there is an infinite and a mystery in the universe which we cannot now penetrate, and which may for ever stretch beyond us. The tokens of man's highest nature lie not in his being able to comprehend but in his ability to feel that there are things which he cannot comprehend, and which he yet feels to be true and real, before which he is compelled to fall down in reverent awe. It is here, above all, that man comes into contact with religion, with a God, with an eternity ; and he in whom there is little sense of wonder, or in whom it has been blunted and degraded, will have a proportionately feeble impression of these grand subjects which the soul can feel to be real but can never fully grasp.
^ I can call my Father a brave man (ein Tapferer). Man's face he did not fear; God he always feared: his Keverence, I think, was considerably mixed with Fear. Yet not slavish Fear ; rather Awe, as of unutterable Depths of Silence, through which flickered a trembling Hope. How he used to speak of Death (especially in late years) or rather to be silent, and look of it! There was no feeling in him here that he cared to hide : he trembled at the really terrible ; the mock-terrible he cared nought for. — That last act of his Life ; when in the last agony, with the thick ghastly vapours of Death rising round him to choke him, he burst through and called with a man's voice on the great God to have mercy on him : that was like the epitome and concluding
' Jauies Strahan, The Maridiale (1913), 123.
PSALM cxix. 1 8 433
summary of his whole Life. God gave him strength to wrestle with the King of Terrors, as it were even then to prevail. All his strength came from God, and ever sought new nourishment there. God be thanked for it.^
II.
1. There is nothing so wonderful as God's law; indeed, it may justly be said to include in itself all that is most wonderful — all that truly merits our admiration — all that will really reward our curiosity. For what is it? The Psalmist here was not thinking merely of the law given to Moses or of the words written in any book, however sacred. He was not thinking of spoken words or written characters, but of eternal realities. He was an earnest man, and his mind sought to be in contact with truth itself ; he was a pious man, and his heart longed for nothing less or lower than communion with the living God. He felt himself in the Divine presence, and he felt that the Divine law was within and around him. The Bible tells us much about the law of God, but it is only by a figure of speech that we call it the law of God or even that it contains the law of God. In the Bible and other books we have the statements of God's laws, but these laws themselves are far too real to be in any book.