He would thus bear, graven on his memory, a tried image against which the last agony would not prevail and from which
1 Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Brovming, 198.
328 A MEETING WITH GOD
the phantom-stricken eyes would draw fresh comfort. Instead of the terrible prayer of the dying, which is the prayer of the depths, he would say his own prayer, that of the peaks of his existence, where would be gathered, like angels of peace, the most lucid, the most rarefied thoughts of his life. Is not that the prayer of prayers ! After all, what is a true and worthy prayer, if not the most ardent and disinterested effort to reach and grasp the unknown ? *
II.
1. The words " Prepare to meet thy God ! " taken in their general and not merely historical signification, are commonly used to warn men of the fact that they must meet God in the judgment to come. It is natural that the words should be applied in this manner. The reasonableness, one may say the necessity and the certainty, of such judgment can hardly be disputed by any who acknowledge the existence of a God, and the principle of man's responsibility to God. In this world neither vice nor virtue meets with its due reward ; in many cases the worst men suffer least, and the best men most. It is to little purpose that dramatists, novelists, and poets so often represent retribution as falling upon the wrong-doer and vindicating the innocent. Such representa- tions utter what we feel ought to be rather than what is. They are confounded and contradicted by the hard facts of history and of everyday life, which show that wrong is often triumphant to the last, and that the sinner is often spared, not only everything in the form of outward calamity, but also the uneasiness of a guilty conscience. The more we think of these wrongs that are never in this world rectified, the more does our moral sense cry out for a judgment to come.
Amos knew — as we Christians should know — that the ever- swelling tide of rebellion against the Ruler of the universe is, by a law which cannot fail to assert itself, bringing judgment nearer and nearer. It is not merely in the obedience of saints, in the conversion of sinners, in the extension of the Divine Kingdom, that we see the tokens of the approaching Advent ; it is in the contemptuous rejection of the claims of God, it is in the resolute exclusion of the King of kings from large departments of human
1 M. Maeterlinck, Our Eternity, 7.
AMOS iv. 12 329
thought and life ; it is in the coarse blasphemies which meet the eye and the ear in our streets, but yet more in the refined ungodli- ness which underlies the graceful sentences of well-educated in- fidelity ; it is in the placid indifference to God, as if He had had His day, and it were high time to forget Him.
Tf M. Eenan says that a good deal of his gentleness is probably due to a bottom of indifference, — and, on the whole, I agree with him. Complacency with himself, a sentiment of kindliness to the world at large, a deeply-rooted horror of the selfishness of ex- clusive friendships, a vague feeling of gratitude to some one, "without exactly knowing to whom I ought to be grateful," — this last naturally enough, as M. Kenan is deeply convinced that there is no appreciable trace of the action of any Will in the world superior to that of man, — such is the stock of moral virtues of which M. Eenan has made salvage, after the wreck of his faith. In fine, they do not leave me with any very deep respect for this smooth, humorous, learned, industrious, imaginative man, who has slipped so easily along the "charming promenade" of his ex- tremely sentimental existence.1
2. Is there not something startling in the reflection that it is a Being of a perfect holiness and a most absolute justice who is to be our Judge ? Who can uncover his heart even to a friend without a sense of shame ? And yet what is the holiness of the holiest saint compared with the holiness of God ? But add to the thought of God's holiness the idea of His omnipresence; think of Him as about our path and about our bed, no secret sin not set in the light of His countenance, no thought too transient to escape His notice, no desire veiled in the darkness of our in- most soul, but telegraphed at once upon His pure intelligence; and who will not be solemnized by the thought that his Creator must be his Judge ?
Not only are our hearts awed ; we are afraid to go near to God. Why is it so? Why is a child that has disobeyed his parent in his absence afraid of that parent's return at eventide ? Why does he think the afternoon hours are posting very fast away ? Why is a scholar who has committed some offence against rule afraid to meet the, teacher's eye ? Why is a servant who has been unfaithful to his master afraid to be called to give account of his stewardship? Why is a man hiding from the