^ The longer we live the less we are inclined to be hero- worshippers, seeing more failings in the men and things we revered in the enthusiasm of youth. " I have seen an end of all perfection " ; but it is well if we can add, " thy commandment is exceeding broad." The more, however, we get to know the temptations and trials of men, and feel how our own accomplish- ment falls short of our ideal, the more charitable we become.^
One day I grieved because our greatest gain
Grows pale beside the smallest loss we feel;
One hour of wrong can years of right repeal; One faulty link can spoil the strongest chain; One little thorn can cause a cruel pain
That twice ten thousand roses cannot heal;
One harsh discordant note can straightway steal All harmony from e'en the sweetest strain. To these my doubts there came an answer sure —
" God's laws are right if rightly understood !
Man's patent of perfection lies in this. That nought imperfect can his soul endure:
The highest natures seek the highest good
Till they are perfect as their Father is."^
^ Life and Letters of J. G. Whittier, ii. 657.
* John Ker, Thoughts for Hecurt and Life, 13.
' Ellen Thorneycioft Fowler, Verses, Wise or Otherwise, 189.
PS. XXV. -CXIX. — 29
450 LIBERTY IN GOD'S LAW
IL
The Satisfactoriness of God's Law.
1. Everything earthly is only partial; it covers only a part of life. Whether it be wealth, fame, knowledge, power, it has a limit ; its territory is not commensurate with the whole life of man. Though I have all knowledge, said the Apostle, and under- stand all mysteries, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Knowledge is measurable. There are heights and depths of spirit which it cannot fill. There is a limit to it. The only thing immeasurable is love, for love is the Infinite Himself. Nothing can endure for ever except that which touches the deeps of life, for that which is only fragmentary and partial must pass away. So there is an end to it also in the sense of termination because the limited must terminate ; and, because there is an end to it, it will not satisfy us. We must have something without an end, because the spirit of man is larger than time, larger than any finite period ; and, however man may have sometimes tried in the perverseness of his heart to deny it, he is still a child of immortality, and nothing less than immortality filled to the brim with possession will ever satisfy the yearning of man. " Broad is thy command exceedingly." That is, it is immeasur- able, it has no limit. This must be the Psalmist's meaning, otherwise the contrast fails, and the command of God, being limited, must be declared inadequate like all other perfections. But the word of God has no limit whatsoever. Immeasurable ! As soon as we touch the command of God with our heart and soul and spirit, at once we know that we are at the centre of immeasurableness. It reveals to us straight away the infinite God, the soul, and immortality.
^ " There are two things," said Kant, " that fill me with amazement, the starry heaven above me, and the moral law within me." Both of them immeasurable, stretching away into infinity, with man at the centre of them ; yet God's word is higher than the heavens, and when the moral law has touched the life of man he knows that he belongs to the infinite vast, and cannot be satisfied without it.^
» J. Thomas.
PSALM cxix. 96 451
^ Man feels capacities within him that ask an eternity for bloom and fruitage. There is in nature something that sends him iin yearning search beyond and above nature.
That type of perfect in his mind In nature can he nowhere find. He sows himself on every wind.
In the entire universe, as revealed to man by his senses, there is nothing perfect ; and the central impulse in all man's noblest striving is derived from the aspiration of his spirit towards a perfect truth, a perfect beauty, a perfect happiness, which are exemplified nowhere in the world. Art, religion, and the im- petuous career of the race towards a higher grade of civilization, depend alike upon universal imperfection of the material world and the impossibility that a God-related spirit, which man is, should be contented therewith.^
2. Our advance is towards this infinite. It is in an unbroken advance towards it that human excellence consists. The standard of perfection lifts itself on new heights with the march of each new day and month. The perfection of yesterday ceases to be the perfection of to-day, because the commandment is ever adding increments to the demands it makes upon us, and binding the conscience with fresh sanctions. As men are emancipated from the senses and ushered into more delicate spheres of perception and experience, they find themselves face to face with new laws that have to be kept, new decalogues that must be reverently obeyed, new obligations that must be strenuously fulfilled.
^ The law which the God of righteousness, and the Father of all the families of the earth, may impose upon the children of men is obviously larger in its range of applications than the law congruous to the sovereignty of one known chietiy as the Lord of Hosts, and the Defender of an isolated group of clans. The precepts breathed into the conscience by One who has come into immediate converse with His worshippers exceed in scope and surpass in fine discriminations the precepts enjoined by a Divine King who dwells apart and is adored from afar by a people smitten with fear because of His majesty. To know the length and breadth, the depth and height of the love which surpasseth know- ledge means that the soul is brought face to face with ranges of the commandment hitherto unexplored by human thought. The