Than ever pray one selfish prayer I'-
* Cincinnatus Hiner Miller.
Love's Prosperity.
Literature.
Albertson (C. C), The Gospel According to Christ, 127.
Banks (L. A.), Sermons which have won Souls, 144.
Bell (C. D.), The Name above every Name, 124.
Burrell (D. J.), The Cloister Book, 262.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, v. 250.
Dix (M.), Christ at the Door of the Heart, 27.
Forson (A. J.), The Law of Love, 3.
Gardner (C. E. L.), in A Book of Lay Sermons, 181.
Greenhough (J. G.), The Mind of Christ in St. Paul, 165.
Ingram (A. F. W.), The Mysteries of God, 66.
Jones (J. S.), The Invisible Things, 112.
Liddon (H. P.), Christmastide Sermons, 306.
Livesey (H.), The Silver Vein of Truth, 9.
Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 9.
Meyer (F. B.), Present Tenses, 132.
Moinet (C), The Great Alternative, 263.
Moule (H. C. G.), The Epistle to the Romans, 235.
Pearse (M. G.), Parables and Pictures, 59.
Potts (A. W.), School Sermons, 253.
Pulsford (W.), Trinity Church Sermons, 93.
Robinson (C. S.), Studies in the New Testament, 14
Selby (T. G.), in Great Texts of the New Testament, 153.
Tullocb (J.), Some Facts of Religion and Life, 106.
Wellbeloved (C. H.), in The Outer and the Inner World, .'03.
Wilberforce (B.), Feeling after Him, 65.
British Congregationalist, Jan. 16, 1908, 60 (Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, Ix. 294 (Norton) ; Ixxiii. 56 (Marshall) ; Ixxvii
170 (Ingram) ; Ixxix. 101 (Barson). Homiletic Review, lii. 65.
S8
LOVE'S Prosperity.
We know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose.— Rom. viii. 28.
I.
All for Good.
"All things work together for good." i. All things.
The phrase is to be taken in the widest possible sense. It includes everything mentioned in verses 35, 38, 39. We naturally think of " all things " as sharply divided into two parts. There are the dark things of life and there are the bright things. But St. Paul says " all things work together for good."
1. The dark things. — The reference of the text is perhaps more especially to the dark side of things, because the early Christians were more familiar with this aspect. Now, St. Paul's philosophy of the facts of life is this, that, amid these earthly scenes, the upright, the humble, the pure are in process of being prepared for the power and glory of an endless life. This is his explanation of the world so far as the children of God are concerned with it. Bodily pain, mental disquiet, the secret grief, the burden, bitterness, heaviness that lies upon the heart, behind the mask, often, of a smiling face, the whole complement of experience, is steadily and surely leading up toward a day of interpretation.
^ When Jacob's sons returned to Canaan, and told him what had befallen them in Egypt, they seemed to infect him with their own fear. He refused to see anything but the dark side of things. There is a plaintive cadence in his words —
Me have ye bereaved of my children:
Joseph is not, and Simeon is not.
And ye will take Benjamin away:
All these things are against me. (Gen. xlii. 36.)
«9
90 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
And he adds forebodings of mischief, grey hairs, sorrow, and Sheol (ver. 38). Melancholy Jacob's faith is not yet perfected. Nursing his sorrow, saturating his mind with self-pity, he finds a dreary pleasure in counting his troubles, and inferring that they are all (the grand total is three !) against him ; while we, who know how the drama is unfolding, perceive that all the things in question, and many more, are working together for his good, and that he will live to confess that God has redeemed him out of all evil, God conceals " His bright designs " in order that His servants may learn to trust Him in the dark as well as in the light. It has been finely said, by George Macdonald, that " the secrets God keeps must be as good as those He tells." And as our knowledge of Him increases, we find, with Whittier,
That more and more a providence
Of love is understood, Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good.^
Hours there will come of soulless night, When all that's holy, all that's bright,
Seems gone for aye: When truth and love, and hope and peace, All vanish into nothingness,
And fade away.
Fear not the cloud that veils the skies, 'Tis out of darkness light must rise,
As e'er of old: The true, the good, the fair endure, And thou, with eyes less dim, more pure,
Shalt them behold.^
The Apostle does not ignore or belittle the disorder and evil that exist ; he concedes that the constitution and course of things is not perfectly satisfactory, that man is born to trouble, and that society is full of confusion and sin; he only asks uh to postpone sentence upon the facts until the time when an intelligent decision will be possible. The philosophical doctrine called Pessimism, — that the world, if not the worst possible, is worse than none at all — finds no countenance in the Bible. Nevertheless the Bible recognizes the deep and awful disorder that J,revails, and the evil that clings to both man and nature.