1 A. Maclaren. 2 J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 25.
ROMANS v. 8 313
sudden tornado a whole city is swept away; when from your arms your dearest joy is torn away ; when those who would not harm a living creature are bowed for years under intolerable pain, and when the wicked and the coarse seem to get all they wish, who has not cried, " Can God be love if He permits all this ? How can God say He loves me, and yet deal with me as I could never have the heart to deal with one I loved ? " We have only to look into our own lives and to look round upon the awful sights that fill the world to make the robustest faith in the good- ness and love of God stagger, unless it can stay itself against the upright stem of the Cross of Christ. Sentimentalists may talk, but the grim fact of human suffering, of wretched, helpless lives, rises up to say that there is no evidence broad and deep and solid enough, outside Christianity, to make it absolutely certain that God is love.
Tf The things which to-day are our seeming friends, become to-morrow our real foes. The brook which this morning supplies us with the water of life and charms our ear by its babble, may to-morrow become a raging flood, and bring desolation to our fields and ruin to our homes. The sun in whose brightness and warmth we bask to-day, may in a short time scorch our fields, dry up our fountains, and thus become our destroyer. The clouds which spread such delicious coolness over our cities and plains and inspire us with new energy, may suddenly gather and blacken, and by their thunder and lightning lay us low with terror or blast our existence. Who in face of all this shall trust that
God was love indeed And love Creation's final law — Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed?
In all ages men have had the feelings so beautifully expressed by Tennyson :
The Gods are hard to reconcile:
'Tis hard to settle order once again.
There is confusion worse than death,
Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,
Long labour unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.
3i4 GOD'S OWN LOVE
(4) The conscience, when it is awake, protests against such a notion as this, that God is a God of love. For every one who honestly takes stock of himself, and conceives of God in any measure aright, must feel that the fact of sin has come in to disturb all the relations between God and man. And when once a man comes to say, " I feel that I am a sinful man, and that God is a righteous God ; how can I expect that His love will distil in blessings upon my head ? " there is only one answer — " While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
Whence has the world her magic power ?
Why deem we death a foe ? Eecoil from weary life's best hour,
And covet longer woe ?
The cause is Conscience — Conscience oft
Her tale of guilt renews : Her voice is terrible though soft,
And dread of Death ensues.1
III.
God commends His own Love to us in that, while we were yet Sinners, Christ died for us.
1. There are only two ways in which the human mind can get the assurance that love is not merely its own ideal, but in very deed the ultimate law and final goal of the world. The one way is that it should attain to such perfect insight into the course of the world's history as to convince itself that, notwithstanding all appearances to the contrary, everything is really working to- gether for good. The other way is that it should be inspired with a confidence in the Creator and Pailer of the world strong enough to enable it to feel sure that all must come right in the end, however dark and dense the clouds may be which now encompass Him and conceal His ways — in a word, the way of faith, which sings :
Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary, And the heart faint beneath His chastening rod ; Though rough and steep our pathway, worn and weary, Still will we trust in God.
1 Cowper.
ROMANS v. 8 315
These are the only two ways open to us: the way of exact hnovAedge and the way of faith.
2. Now there appears to be at first a ready answer to the inquiry, How shall man be taught that God loves him ? It will naturally suggest itself to our mind to reply, God has only to reveal Himself to us, He has only to appear in some form that we can apprehend, He has only to speak to us as God in terms that we can understand, leaving us no longer in any degree of uncertainty about His relations with us, but directly asserting this fact in a distinctly supernatural manner, and then we shall be j)ersuaded readily enough of the truth. But here we are first brought face to face with the difficulty that, in order to make such a revelation of Himself, God would first of all have to contravene the fundamental principles of His government on earth. From that time forth we should be walking by sight, no longer by faith ; and in ordering things thus He would also, so far as we can judge of the circumstances of the case, be with- drawing from us that splendid purpose, that grand design, in the fulfilment of which the human race is to reach its true destiny and receive its crown.