(2) Now extend the same line of argument to the higher knowledge. It is noticeable that, as we approach the great leading principles and rules of life and conduct and the funda- mental thinking that underlies our action, the mind is thrown more upon its own native original powers and capacities ; it perceives, it seizes intuitively, in place of calling for laboured proofs and long deductions. For instance, take man himself, and what is good for him, what he ought to be, what type of character he ought to elaborate, how he ought to live and act ; or take the idea of God, the Supreme Being, His existence, disposition, and attributes ; or take nature, the external world of phenomena, its reality, its uses, value for man ; take these large general concep- tions that underlie all our life, and the nearer we approach them the more evident it becomes that if they are apprehended at all it must be by the quick instinct and native affinity of the mind for them. This was the origin of St. Paul's sanguine optimism. His conclusion was not a deliverance of any of the five organic senses ; it was not necessarily supernatural inspiration ; it was an inference from a set of rational premises. If there is a personal God, who loves rectitude, purity, goodness, then it follows that they also who love these things shall be at one with Him. This is surely a valid piece of reasoning, that God will not disown or ignore in the creature qualities which constitute His own essence
ROMANS VIII. 28 103
and glory. Such moral inconsistency is not conceivable in a being worthy of reverence and worship.
^ " We knov) " — we may say with St. Paul — with the cognition of faith ; that is to say, because God, absolutely trustworthy, guarantees it by His character, and by His word. Deep, even insoluble, is the mystery, from every other point of view. The lovers of the Lord are indeed unable to explain, to themselves or to others, how this concurrence of "all things" works out its infallible issues in them. And the observer from outside cannot understand their certainty that it is so. But the fact is there, given and assured, not by speculation upon events, but by personal knowledge of an Eternal Person. "Love God, and thou shalt know."i
^ Bishop Moal*.
The Inclusive Gift.
Literature.
Brown (H. S.), Manliness and other SermonSj 346.
Cunningliam (W.), Sermons^ 174.
Faithful (E. C), My Place in the World, 90.
Hoare (E.), Fruitful or Fruitless, 143.
Jay (W.) Short Discourses, ii. 253.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Romans, 191.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, xi. 57.
Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 251.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Christ in the Old Testament, 47.
„ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 255;
Ivi. (1910), No. 3204.
„ (Mrs.), Carillon of Bells, 1. Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, ii. 7. Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 296 (Pulsford).
The Inclusive Gift.
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things ? — Rom. viii. 32.
1. The chapter from which these words are taken is full of encouragement and comfort. The Apostle's object, at least in the latter part of it, is to point out the peculiar privileges of believers, and the certainty of the foundation on which their hopes and prospects rest.
2. St. Paul seems to have in mind especially the outward condition of believers, as if the meanness of their external con- dition, and the peculiar trials and afflictions to which they are often exposed, might be looked upon as an objection to the truth and reality of those spiritual privileges of which he has shown that they were possessed, and as inconsistent with the special love and favour which God has been said to bear to them. In opposition to this notion, the Apostle shows, with conclusive reasoning and impressive eloquence, that everything connected with even their outward condition is the result of God's sovereign and gracious appointment. The whole of their history, and everything connected with them, composes a great scheme, originating in infinite love, arranged from eternity by infinite wisdom and executed in time by infinite power ; and their various trials and afflictions, however numerous and remarkable, instead of being inconsistent with God's special love to them in Christ, are just proofs or expressions of it. For they are the means which infinite wisdom had selected as the best fitted, and which infinite power would certainly overrule, to promote the great object which God has in view in all His dealings with them, the bringing of them to that incorruptible and unfading inheri- tance which He has prepared for them that love Him.
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io8 THE INCLUSIVE GIFT
The Gift of His own Son.
** He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all."
1, " Spared not." — In this word we have an allusion to, if not a distinct quotation from, the narrative in Genesis, of Abraham's offering up of Isaac. The same word which is employed in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, to translate the Hebrew word rendered in our Bible as " withheld," is employed here by the Apostle and rendered " spared not." And there is evidently floating before his mind the thought that, in some profound and real sense, there is an analogy between that wondrous and faithful act of giving up, and the transcendent and stupendous gift to the world, from God, of His Son.