3. " His will." — If there is one thing more than another which is more personal to the Christian, more singularly his than God's love or God's interest — one thing which is a finer symbol of God's love and interest, it is the knowledge of God's will — the private knowledge of God's will. And this is more personal, just inasmuch as it is more private. My private portion of God's love is only a private share in God's love — only a part — the same in quality and kind as all the rest of God's love, which all the others get from God. But God's will is a thing for myself. There is a will of God for me which is willed for no one else besides. It is not a share in the universal will, in the same sense as I have a share in the universal love. It is a particular will for me, different from the will He has for any one else — a private will — a will which no one else knows about, which no one can know about, but me.
(1) God has a life-plan for every human life. In the eternal
* K. Moody-Stuart, Brownlow North, 265. 2 H. Drummond, The Ideal FA/e, 309.
ST. JOHN VII. 17 309
counsels of His will, when He arranged the destiny of every star, and every sand-grain and grass-blade, and each of those tiny insects which live but for an hour, the Creator had a thought for each of us. Our life was to be the slow unfolding of this thought, as the corn-stalk from the grain of corn, or the flower from the gradually opening bud. It was a thought of what we were to be, of what we might become, of what He would have us do with our days and years, our influence and our lives. But we all had the terrible power to evade this thought, and shape our lives from another thought, from another will, if we chose. The bud could only become a flower, and the star revolve in the orbit God had fixed. But it was man's prerogative to choose his path, his duty to choose it in God. But the Divine right to choose at all has always seemed more to him than his duty to choose in God, so, for the most part, he has taken his life from God, and cut out his career for himself.
(2) It has happened, therefore, that the very fact of God s guidance in the individual life has been denied. It is said to give life an importance quite foreign to the Divine intention in making man. One life, it is argued, is of no more importance than any other life, and to talk of special providences happening every hour of every day is to detract from the majesty and dignity of God ; in fact, it reduces a religious life to a mere religious caprice, and the thought that God's will is being done to a hallucination of the mind. But the Christian cannot allow the question to be put off with poor evasions like these. Every day, indeed, and many times a day, the question arises in a hundred practical forms. What is the will of God for me ? What is the will of God for me to-day, just now, for the next step, for this arrangement and for that, and this amusement, and this projected work for Christ ? For all these he feels he must consult the will of God ; and that God has a will for him in all such things, and that it must be possible somehow to know what that will is, is not only a matter of hope, but a point in his doctrine and creed.
4. How may we assure ourselves that this willingness to do God's will is ours ?
(1) We may judge our primary bias by our treatment of the light which we have already received. Our inclinations are
3IO THE WILL TO KNOW
reflected in our ways ; our inclinatious are the moulds in which our deeds are shaped. What, then, have our deeds to say about our incHnations? What have we done with the light wliich has already been given ? For God has nowhere and at no time left Himself without a witness. In no man's life, however imprisoned and bewildered, is there ever a heaven without a twinkle of guiding light. On the darkening wastes of every life, with all its moors and fens and torrents, there is a kindly gleam. Many things are hidden, but all things are not obscure. Some things are clear, and what have we done with them ? We are praying for larger days, and there is a little glow-lamp at our feet; what have we done with that? Are we asking for stars and at the same time despising candles ? Are we waiting for light upon unknown continents, and disdaining the proffered lamp that would guide us down the street ? We are, perhaps, waiting for the sun to rise upon the dark and awful mysteries of the Atonement, while in our immediate presence there shines the light of a vivid and neglected duty. The text makes one thing plain, and we shall do infinitely well to heed it — that sunrises are not for those who neglect candles, and that we need never expect to enter into the illumined recesses of sacred truth if the con- demnatory light of despised lamps is shining in our rear. " If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know," and we are pathetically and tragically fooHsh if we are seeking the knowledge by any other road. The way to firm, fine perception, and therefore to the rich unfolding of truth and glory, is not through metaphysics, or by the towering aspirations of philosophic Babels, but by the humble commonplace road of reverent moral obedience.