The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Samuel — Section 269

ascribed to God, or e\"en those known, without question 1 to result from his appoint• me!1ts: But some light ~hines around the "clou~s and darkness," and here iind there- i n nft m the awful co\"ermg appears. 1. There is an awf1tl as well. as a mild aspect qf th.e Dimne 1uu1tre. Christianity is no doubt mildness, tenderness peace love- all th~t is precious to the _sor_rowing, perplexed spi!·it. 'l'he tendency. ~f s~e, how-. e'"er, 1s to overlook the s1gmficant fact that all tins becomes real to us in virtue of the awfol sufferings and death of the Son of God. The fact and the evident neces- ~ity of the fact, for otherwise it would not occur, of his unut'terable woe1ds ·perhaps the most stupendous of all terrible acts known by man. There was the love that gare him for man; :i:es, and the awful righteousness which had so originally consti• t 11ted the moral relations of me~ to a holy God that love could only effect its work t hro1;1gh a. . catastrophe, on which angels must have ga~ed with perp)ex~ty, .and possibly pam, greater than any we know when contemplatmg a ruined Amalek or a . world swept by deluge. It is an imperfect Christianity which 'eliminates the ' niajesty of righteousness in L'.1w.. He who sai~, ." Come unto me, all ye that labow·, md are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, 1s the same who one day will say "Depart.'' "These shall go away into everlasting punishment." The II wrath of. the Lamb'' is as re_al as his love. 2. 1'h.e evenu_ whicli confo'!f,nd our th,ought are not,, confined to the Scripture record. Who shall estimate the p11ms of dea,th experienced, during the succession of catastrophes incident to the history of our globe? .It .ii.i probable that the number of Amalekites who fell under the judgment of. God .was less than t~e s?-m of young and old who _in one day experience the '' pnµis of d~ath ,,· by the ordmation of God. The destruction caused by .the deluge, the fire on Sodom , the waters on the Egyptians, is not greater in the number of lives c.u.t o:ff .th1m what.· befell the thousands cut off by events not mentioned il),the 'Bible. What. though. thC: .• events-the sweeping calamities of famine, plague, earthquakeh and floo,d, ,and the ' daily sufferings and death of thousands of young and 914:-:--be t e outco_me of law I. God is the Author of that law, and, therefore, the events. are ii;t a significant sense his, as truly as were the ruin of Sodom and the doom of the Amalekites. ;No doubt, the sum of enjoyment in the lives of creatures cut off by catastrophes was. far in excess of the sum of misery experienced in the. cutting .of them off, and so 1a philo- , sopher can still rest in the benevolence of God. Sudden destruction is no~ ideµtical • with a whole existence given up only to angui8h. 3. So jar as we can see, the. great woes that come by ordinary law and by special command. are alike subordinate tl) an ulterior issue. Although we speak of some events occurring by ,the actipn of. natural law,-e. g. earthquakes, floods, famines, and plagues,-yet those iIJ whicµ thl), , specific command appears are also according to law. The difference lies in the :f;act of the Divine origin of the arrangement which issues in destruction being brought out and emphasised. T·he laws that work ruin in fire and . tempest and flood .ure_ subordinate to the higher laws involved in the perfect economy of the world. Laws. involving incidental disasters subserve the conservation of the who.le sys_tem of which they are a part. The laws which ~ring destruction to men who have ei1;m~~, and because they have sinned, are subordmate to the moral laws that govern ma,n s relation to God. They are so inter-related, in these instances, as to be parts of onll' great system, and to subser~e the final supremacy of th~ law _o~ right~ous!I~~s on, which the hcalth and well-bemg of the world depend. It JS a Divine ordmat1on, and is incorporated with the physical and mental constitution of man, that the sin of the fathers shall be visited, not to the exclusion from woe of the parent, but intensq:ying it, on the third and fourth generation. We see this )aw at work _ev~ry day. A~ul as it is we can even now see its value as subservient to the nghteousness winch alone ~akes men blessed; for it is a most potent check t? vice. Irrespective ~f their own immoral condition, the cutting off of the Amalelutes. for the, sm of their ancestors is analocrous to the shortened lives, the wretched health, the filthy poverty, a11d other mi;,erie; which are the inevitable lot of the offspring of the desperately "icious • and this for ulterior issues. 4. Nations have no posthumous existence. For individ~als judgment is often reserved till ~nother. life. Nati~ns,, i! visited with judgment at all, must suffer here. In the mstrucbon of the _md1v1dual, the fact of the coming punishment of the individual sinner b<'ars an important part as a deterrent. In the instruction of nations as Bll"h, the signal and conspicuous pm1ieh- CH. XV. 1-35.) THE FIRST BOOK OF SA:\IUF.L. 271