At Derby Haven in the sweet Manx land
A little girl had written on the sand
This legend — "God is love." But, when I said —
" What means this writing ? " thus she answered —
"It's father that's at 'say,'
And I come here to pray.
And . . . God is love." My eyes grew dim —
Blest child ! in Heaven above
Your angel sees the face of Him
Whose name is love.^
(^Th%^ovidenee-oiJOu)d becomes a fact in Christ. We find within us an instinct which impels us to cry for some heavenly help or guidance or support in times of crisis and distress. Even the most sceptical will often give a practical denial to their doubts by the word of prayer which is wrung from their hearts under stress of some calamity, or under the shadow of an impending danger. In our heart of hearts, that is to say, we feel that God personally cares and provides for this world which He has made ; deep down in our being we believe that to pray is to touch the heart of the Eternal ; and in moments of anguish or of supreme joy we confide in an unseen Providence as we would in our closest friend. And then comes the cold analysis of reason, and —
Doubts will rise if God hath kept ' His promises to men.
What does it all amount to? we say. Instinct? — a delusion Providence ? — a fiction of the imagination. Think of it. What do I, as an individual, count for in a world so vast, itself but a speck in an illimitable universe ? How should God — if there be a God — have any personal care for me ? It is the old question of the Psalmist : " What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him ? "
» T. E. Brown, Old John and Other Foetns, 190.
2 COR. I. 20 37
The most casual glance at the life and character of Jesus will give us the answer. He saw the providence of God in the way- side flower, in the feeding of the birds, in the fall of a sparrow ; " the very hairs of your head are all numbered " ; He who clothes the grass of the field will much more provide for the needs of the children of men. Because He was thus conscious of God in the things about Him, Jesus was calm and free from care in the midst of an angry and a striving world. In the march of events and the sure progress of the ages, He recognized the all -controlling will of God, and so He lived and died that the Father's will might be accomplished. And then at the end, with a joy which all the cruelties of men could not suppress, He yielded Himself to the loving Providence which sent Him forth. "Father," He said, " into thy hands I commend my spirit."
^ " I cannot see, I cannot speak, I cannot hear, God bless you," was Newman's message to his old friend Mr. Gladstone in November, 1888. Newman's delight in men, in books, and in affairs had all his life been intense, and he had a strong desire that his life might be prolonged to its utmost possible span, if it was the will of God. " For myself, now, at the end of a long life," he wrote, " I say from a full heart that God has never failed me, has never disappointed me, has ever turned evil into good for me. When I was young I used to say (and I trust it was not presumptuous to say it) that our Lord ever answered my prayers."^
(.S) Pafdon is made sure in^brist. Every man of deep heart- experience has felt the necessity of having a clear certainty and knowledge about forgiveness. Men do not feel it always. A man can skate over the surface of the great deeps that lie beneath the most frivolous life, and may suppose, in his superficial way of looking at things, that there is no need for any definite teaching about sin, and the mode of dealing with it. But once bring that man face to face, in a quiet hour, with the facts of his life and of a Divine law, and all that superficial ignoring of evil in Himself, and of the dread of punishment and consequences, passes away. Then the only message that answers to the needs of an awakened conscience and an alarmed heart is the old-fashioned message that Jesus Christ the Eighteous has died for us sinful men. All other religions have felt after a clear doctrine of forgiveness, and all have failed to find it. Here is the Divine " Yea ! " And on it
' Alexander Whyte, Neumian : An Appreciation, 61,
38 THE YEA AND THE AMEN
alone we can suspend the whole weight of our soul's salvation. The rope that is to haul us out of the horrible pit and the miry clay had much need to be tested before we commit ourselves to it. There are many easy-going superficial theories about forgiveness predominant in the world to-day. Except the one that says, " In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin," they are all like the rope let down into the dark mine to lift the captives beneath, half of the strands of which have been cut on the sharp edge above, and when the weight hangs to it, it will snap. There is nothing on which a man who has once learned the tragic meaning and awful reality and depth of the fact of transgression can suspend his forgiveness, except this, that " Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." In Him the promise is Yea.