o"-
Because Love is the fountain, I discern
The stream as love : for what but love should flow From fountain Love ? not bitter from the sweet !
I ignorant, have I laid claim to know ?
Oh teach me. Love, such knowledge as is meet
For one to know who is fain to love and learn. ^
^ C. G. Kossetti.
ROMANS — 7
98 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
ii. God's love to us.
1. Those who simply and geuuinely love God are also, on the other side, purpose- wise, His called ones. They are not merely invited, but brought in; not evangelized only, but converted. In the case of each of the happy company — the man, the woman, who came to Christ, came to love God with the freest possible coming of the will, the heart. Yet each, having come, had the Lord to thank for the coming. The human personality had traced its orbit of will and deed as truly as when it willed to sin and to rebel. But lo, in ways past our finding out, its free track lay along a previous track of the purpose of the Eternal ; its free " I will " was the precise and fore-ordered correspondence to His " Thou shalt." It was an act of man ; it was the grace of God.
2. With this lesson of uttermost humiliation, the truth of the heavenly Choice, and its effectual Call, brings us also an encourage- ment altogether Divine. Such a " purpose " is no fluctuating thing, shifting with the currents of time. Such a call to such an embrace means a tenacity, as well as a welcome, worthy of God. " Who shall separate us ? " " And no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." That is the motive of the words in this wonderful context, where everything is made to bear on the safety of the children of God, in the midst of all imaginable dangers.
^ Have you not stood sometimes amidst the scene of an awful tragedy ; some ancient castle to whicli has clung the story of dreadful wrong ? And, lo, about the walls the ivy creeps, and in the crevices the flowers cluster ; and the happy song of the birds and the cooing of doves has gladdened the loneliness ; and forth from the ancient towers you have looked across the meadows where the cattle lie, and past the winding river to the silvery sea. Over all the scene was sunshine, stillness, and beauty. Nature had bent in pity and covered up the shame, and breathed about it all a perfect peace. So is it that our Heavenly Father transforms us by His unceasing love and unwearied patience. He doth not slumber nor sleep. It means that no possibility of advantage is sufiered to pass unused ; no budding promise within us is neglected or withered by the frost; no lightest chance or opportunity of gain is thrown away. Ever watchful, ever careful,
ROMANS VIII. 28 99
ever eager for our greatest good, He that keepeth thee shall neither slumber nor sleep.^
On easy terms with law and fate, For what must be I calmly wait. And trust the path I caniiot see, — That God is good sufficeth me.
III.
Knowing.
"We Know."
f
In a life like this, where nobody seems able to do more than conjecture, surmise, suppose, imagine, or speculate, it is a comfort to find even one man who can honestly declare he knows. And it is still more remarkable, and still more comforting, to find that what he knows is exactly that about which we have had most doubt. Hence no words in the Bible come to us with more welcome or more wonder than the words of the text. We often quote the words, not so much because we believe them as because we should like to believe them. We may envy the man who could announce them, as St. Paul did, with unhesitating, un- questioning conviction. His grand certainty really startles us, as well as the sweeping universality of the statement : " We know that to them that love God all things work together for good." If he had said " most things " we might have given a reluctant consent; but the "all things" puts a tremendous strain upon our faith.
^ There is an old German tale which might be a parable of the purpose in our life of the unintelligible things. The story is told of a baron who, having grown tired of the gay and idle life of the Court, asked leave of his King to withdraw from it. He built for himself a fort on a rugged rock, beneath which rolled the Ehine. There he dwelt alone. He hung wires from one wing of the fort to the other, making an .^olian harp, on which the winds might play to solace him. But m.any days and nights had passed, and winds had come and gone, yet never had there been music from that harp. And the baron interpreted the silence as the sign of God's unremoved displeasure. One evening the sky was torn with
' M. G. Pearse.
100 LOVE'S PROSPERITY
wild hurrying clouds, the sun was borne away with a struggle, and as night fell a storm broke out which shook the very earth. The baron walked restlessly through his rooms in loneliness and disquiet. At length he went out into the night, but stopped short upon the threshold. He listened, and behold the air was full of music. His ^olian harp was singing with joy and passion high above the wildness and the storm. Then the baron kneio. Those wires, which were too thick to give out music at the call of common days, had found their voice in a night of stress and storm.^