Many think that the chief end of life is to secure ease and happiness, and they say that the object of all our social and political endeavours should be to provide the greatest possible amount of happiness for the greatest number. That may be good utilitarianism, but it is not Christianity. It is not the Divine idea. If this world had been intended mainly to make the people who live in it perfectly happy, we can only say that it has been constructed on wrong principles. We can easily conceive of a world in which there would be much more happiness than there has ever been, or ever will be, in this. God has a higher purpose. , It is to make the world a moral school, a training-place for / character ; a place in which patience may be learned, and righteous- / ness and strength of soul, and Christ-likeness ; a training-place which is to prepare for a better and fuller life hereafter. Those who are called after God's purpose are called for this — to be con- ^ formed to the image of Christ. And St. Paul was thinking of this end, and of this end only, when he used the words, " All things work together for good to them that love God."
^ For some of us, perhaps, those words may be associated with a feeling of impatience. We may have heard them used with a narrow view of good, and of the lovers of God, or with a deficient sense of the demand that is being made for faith and farsighted- ness, or with some lack of that deep and burning reality whereby heart speaks to heart, and wins an answering of assent. But they .are among the words that experience fills with light — the words that are real to us in proportion as we ourselves are real Only
94 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
let us try to have a right judgment as to what good is, and we shall ]/' find tha,t there is no sort of trouble that may not work for good to those whose hearts are set, though it be but timidly, towards God ; to those who love Him, though it be but vaguely, and who long to know and love Him more. If good meant only comfort and success and security and satisfaction with one's self, and a life without harassing or pain, the words would be false in principle and in fact. But if good means that for which men were made ; if it means purity of heart, and unselfishness, and nearness and likeness to God and liberty and peace, and the power to help others, and the beginning or faint forecast of the life of heaven amidst the things of earth, then one need not live long to see how the words come true. Even the strangest miseries, the 4 saddest hours, the bitterest disappointments, do work for good in this, the one true sense. God sees to it that those who want to serve Him better are not blinded or overborne by these things ; in His pity He shows them what the trouble really means, He releases for them the blessing that is hidden in it. And so that great love of His, which no violence can wrench aside from the souls He seeks, fulfils itself in many ways; even the wildest tumult of this world is constrained and overruled to do Him , service ; and men look back to the days that were full of anguish and perplexity as the very time when He did most for them — the dawn of clearer light within their hearts, the awaking to truer thoughts of life and higher aims, the first guiding of their feet into the way of peace.^
^ Have you seen that beautiful play called Eagerheartl The little heroine of the piece has set her heart on entertaining the King in her little room. When she has got everything ready, a poor tired workman comes with his wife and child, very badly dressed, looking very worn and footsore, and says: "Will you take me in for to-night?" Poor little Eagerheart, who has prepared everything for her King, says : " Not to-night ; any night except to-night." " Oh," says the poor man, " that is what they all say ! I have been all through this city, and they have all said ' Any night except to-mght.' " Then the poor little woman's heart melts. " Oh, well, come in, come in ! Farewell, my idle dream ! " she cries, disappointed, broken-hearted, to think she has lost her chance. Then follow the shepherds and the wise men, and, to her astonishment, they come in their search for the King — to her door ; and she says : " But there must be some mistake. This is my poor little humble dwelling; there is no King here." " Yes," the wise men say, " he is here." And there,
* Francis Paget, The Eedem.ption of War, 66.
ROMANS VIII. 2$ 95
in a blaze of glory, was the infant King of Kings, whom she had taken in in her disappointment.^
II.
Keciprocal Lovb.
"Them that love God." "Them that are called,"
Here St. Paul presents the two complementary aspects of the religious life. There is the human side of the relation, "love," and the Divine side, "the call." While St. Paul has already spoken of the love of God to us, he has not before mentioned our love to God, and this is the only instance in Eomans. He speaks several times of love to others (xii. 9, 10 ; xiii. 8, 9). He has mentioned faith again and again ; hope has just been his theme ; and now he completes the trinity of graces by mentioning love. It has been noted that he says much more about faith in God than love to God ; but, in laying the foundation doctrines of the Christian life, faith must necessarily be more prominent, and faith in God must surely be accompanied by love to God. The grace which faith grasps shows and gives the love of God, and God's love must needs awaken in man its own likeness, man's love, which cannot be directed merely outward to his fellows, but must also return upward to the Giver.