H The word " thought " would have no more meaning for me than the words " red " or " green " to a man born blind, if it were not that I have the key to it in the principle of thought or intelligence within me, and that when anything is asserted or denied of the thoughts of God, the proposition is intelHgible only because it
^ John Caird.
392 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
tacitly implies that thought in God is essentially the same with that which I call thought in me.^
2. All knowledge of Divine things begins in a sense of our kinship with God. It is impossible to gain any strong, soul- dominating impression of the Eternal unless we recognise that in the stupendous presence which fills heaven and earth, there is a centre of personal consciousness, not unlike that upon which the sense of our identity rests. God thinks His counsels, chooses His lines of action, loves, and also welcomes the love which is offered to Him, according to the self-same scheme upon which human nature is constituted, and its functions proceed.
This opening up of the mind of God to the mind of man, with the very assurance that, worms of the dust though we be, we are reading the thoughts and exploring the ways of the Creator, is at once the starting-point and the goal of all human know- ledge, in the treasure of history, the consecration of science and philosophy, the inspiration of religion natural and revealed, so that whoever cuts off this intercourse between God and man, through the manifestation of His very mind and heart tc us, involves all things in darkness, and covers us with the shadow of death.
H This is the method of the Old Testament, and Jesus also followed it. We see it in His parabolic teaching, which rests on the assumption that, as the Son of Sirach says, "all things are double one against another," and the spiritual world the counter- part of the natural, as Mrs. Browning says,
Consummating its meaning, rounding all To justice and perfection, line by line. Form by form, nothing single nor alone, The great below clenched by the great above.
And we see it also in the name which He gave to God. He called Him " the heavenly Father," and I like to regard this as a remini- scence of His sweet and happy childhood in the house of the carpenter of Nazareth. The Evangelist describes Joseph as "a righteous man," and the term means rather, in Biblical phraseology, " a kindly man," as St. Chrysostom explains it, " kind and sweetly reasonable (xp^srog xal ImsixTig)." Jesus remembered gratefully the fatherly goodness which had sheltered and sustained His helpless
* Jolin Caird.
ISAIAH 393
childhood, and, searching the whole domain of human experience, He could discover no fitter emblem of the infinite goodness of God.i
3. With respect to the very matter of J)iYme forgiveness of which the text particularly treats, and which it seems to represent as altogether different from human forgiveness, the Bible is full of representations which seem to imply the very reverse. When it is declared that " As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him " ; when it is said, " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him " ; when we are told to pray, " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors " ; and when our Lord sets forth as the type of that love and tenderness which, in our furthest aberrations from goodness, God bears to us, the love which no ingratitude has been able to exhaust, no depth of infamy to render hopeless of its object, the mingled sorrow and pity and joy of an earthly father over his prodigal yet penitent child — what have we in all this if not the assurance that we may know God by human analogies, that if we would learn what love and pity and forgiveness are in God's heart, we have only to look into our own ; so that, even as regards that very characteristic of the Divine nature of which the text treats, there is a sense in which we must not deny, but assert, that God's thoughts are as our thoughts, and God's ways as our ways,
IT I was told once of an old man in a Yorkshire village, whose son had been a sore grief to him. One day a neighbour inquired how the lad was doing. " Oh, very bad ! " was the answer. " He's been drinking again, and behaving very rough." "Dear, dear!" said the neighbour. "If he was my son, I would turn him out." " Yes," returned the father, " and so would I, if he was yours. But, you see, he's not your's ; he's mine." ^
1[ Think of the parable of the Prodigal Son, or that great saying of His, that triumphant argument a fortiori: "What man is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone ; or if he shall ask for a fish, will give him a serpent ? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him ? " (Matt. vii. 9-11). The