3. No book can adequately express God's word. What God had to say to men, what God at last actually did say to men, was something too great for human words to record. " God," we read in the Bible itself, " God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." " By his Son" — revelation was consummated in Christ. "The Word be- came flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth," and Christ, in all the fulness of His grace and truth, is God's last word to man. Could anybody produce an adequate record of Christ ? Could any words that man could use ever tell all the wonderful meaning of that manifestation of God ? Evangelists, after they had done their best, declared that half had never been told. You remember how the last of them, John, says at the end of his Gospel, after he had tried to tell everything : " The world itself would not contain the books that should be written." No human word, the most wonderful or searching or patient, could ever tell out for men everything that God meant when He sent His Son to save the world.
^ You do right to call it " The Book," but you must not forget that it is a book. It has the limitations of a book, the mistakes of a book, the obscurities of a book, the impotence of a book. And while it is the treasury of the most profound and unquestion- able and authoritative in books, it is still only a book. There is something more than the Book. There is a life, a living passion, a moulding faith, a lifting hope ; and they are greater than the Book.i
^ What is a word, a sentence, a book, a library ? What are all libraries ? A mere peep into the inexpressible. The best writers know this, and are not surprised if they find out their most important things in between the lines, and the best readers soon learn where to look for them. The best speakers know this,
» P. C. Ainsworth, A T/wriUess World, 15,
PSALM cxix. 130 23
and feel when all is done that they have left their most impressive thoughts unspoken because they are unspeakable. However, the best hearers understand perfectly well, perhaps better than if they had been spoken. The poets know best how to use language. They often express their most inexpressible, or evanescent thoughts by means of repugnant, or somewhat paradoxical epithets ; as, for example, Coleridge when he says :
The stilly murmur of the distant sea Tells us of silence.
The belief that it is easy to speak plainly on these great subjects is at the bottom of nearly all the mistakes which divide men in religion, and, it may be added, of nearly all the scepticism which has ever existed.^
4. Multitudes are unconscious of the highest truths, incapable of them. They lack a sense, the sublimest sense of all, the faculty to discern the reality of the Divine and eternal. Clever enough in the arts of this life, they are stone-blind to the higher. Stand- ing beneath the visible world, patent to us all, is an invisible under- world of atoms, ether, colours, and subtle movements, which only the disciplined sense of the scientist can detect and measure ; all around us is another world of beauty, music, and poetry, perceived and appreciated only by those possessed of the artistic sense ; and again, above us is a supreme world of which God is the everlasting light and glory, a realm evident only to those whose senses are exercised in holy thought, constant purity, and willing obedience.
We say that the eye creates half that it sees : but no eye is nearly so creative as a blind one ; and the proud critic, knowing nothing as he ought to know, enlarges copiously and confidently on his speculations. It is the astronomy of the blind. Competent on questions of the lower spheres, these talkers are of no account in regard to the reality and blessedness of personal godliness. Their astronomy is the veriest superstition set forth in the language of philosophy. The least in the Kingdom of God is greater than these. Only men born again see the eternal light clearly and steadily. Only as we experience the truths Divine do we com- prehend them. Only as we do the will of God in daily obedience do we know the doctrine. As Carlyle puts it : " He who has done nothing has known nothing." Then do we see light in God's light,
' S. Hall.
24 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD
and know the secret of the world, of life, of the future when we believe in our heart and obey in our life.
That Thou art nowhere to be found, agree
Wise men, whose eyes are but for surfaces;
Men with eyes opened by the second birth.
To whom the seen, husk of the unseen is,
Descry the soul of everything on earth.
Who knows Thy ends, Thy means and motions see;
Eyes made for glory soon discover Thee.
^ Not very long ago The Times newspaper contained a corre- spondence on the desirableness of science lecturers making their great themes more clear to the ordinary audience. In defence the lecturers maintained that it is almost impossible to make lucid the problems of nature to listeners so entirely destitute of knowledge and sympathy as the majority are. More difficult still is it for certain minds to grasp mathematical or metaphysical problems. How completely the ungifted and undisciplined stand away from the mysteries of music ! While Glinka was writing his immortal work, his wife complained before everyone that " he was wasting ruled paper." The obtuse content themselves with the sarcasm that "music is a noise costlier than other noises." And as to the arts, the critics declare that genuine work is un- intelligible to the crowd. " The beautiful is what your servant instinctively thinks is frightful." ^