With God in the World Part 6

[42] _See Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood, chap. ii._

Appendix

Where G.o.d Dwells[43]

There is no truth so thrilling as that which speaks of G.o.d's abiding presence, not merely _with_ but _in_ His creation, though He is neither limited by nor dependent upon it. Having created, He sustains, sustains from within, so that the most recent manifestation of energy, whether in the radiance of a sunrise or the smile on a child's face, is not the reflection of a far-off movement of G.o.d, but an indication of His present working. G.o.d is behind the world of things, controlling and using all that is visible, so that the voiceless speaks and the lifeless lives and imparts life. But His delight is among the sons of men. He dwells in men, making their bodies His temple and their souls His throne. He dwells in nature because He dwells in man, as well as dwelling in man because man is part of nature. What will help a man to honour his own body and to reverence the bodies of others, more than the thought that the Spirit of G.o.d fills the human frame as light fills the room, leaving no part untouched? It is not sufficient to think of G.o.d as being in some organ of the body--the most worthy part, such as the heart or the brain. G.o.d's Spirit fills His temple with His glory and His power, making the least comely parts n.o.ble. He sanctifies each member in the fulfillment of its proper function. To misuse or abuse any power or faculty, is to drive the Spirit of G.o.d from His chosen resting-place; whereas to surrender the members of the body and the faculties of the soul to His influence, is to lift up the whole man into increasing glory and beauty.

But it is not difficult to accept the truth that G.o.d lives within His wonderful creation. The earliest dawn of religion perceived Him in His works of beauty and majesty,--the sun, the stars, the river, the tempest. And if He is immanent in that which is less, it is only logic to say that He must of necessity be in that which is greater--if in the world of things, much more then in the world of men, in the individual and in society. But so deep is man's instinctive reverence, so abiding his sense of unworthiness, that it needed the Incarnation to convince man that he was destined to become the heaven of G.o.d. Yes, the heaven of G.o.d, for heaven is where G.o.d is rather than G.o.d where heaven is.

All this has become an elementary truth of religion. Only it has to be expressed in new terms from time to time. The thought has to be recoined as the edges of language wear smooth, that its force and value may be recognized. The immanence of G.o.d, as thus considered, is not difficult for men to accept, unless indeed they wander into the barren wastes of a deistic thought, which banishes G.o.d from life as we know it, and makes Him a transcendent unreality.

What _does_ stagger men is the existence in a world in which G.o.d dwells, of the dark mysteries from which none can escape,--the disastrous storms, the difficulties, the pains of life. If, they argue, G.o.d dwells in the world, why does He not sweep away these heavy shadows, this over-much grief? There is only one answer, and it is this: G.o.d does not annihilate these things because He has a high use for them; He cannot destroy that which He can inhabit; G.o.d dwells in the dark places, in the wilderness, in the storms; He has taken possession of them, and they are His just as much as the sunshine and the fertile land. In short, G.o.d dwells in everything short of sin, even in the fiercest, gloomiest penalty of sin. The angel of vengeance is the angel of G.o.d's blessing for all penitents who will accept him as such.

When our Lord came in the flesh, He entered into every human experience to abide in it all the days. He invested temptation, so that temptation is henceforth man's highest opportunity. He seized upon difficulty, and behold, it becomes a revelation. He invested responsibility till it became inspiration, duty till it became privilege. He wrapped Himself in sorrow, and sorrow is turned into joy. He explored the darkest recesses of death, and death is the gate to life immortal. And these transformations are for all time.

It is a process of transformation, let it be noted, which these mysteries undergo. It is not that the temptation in time is swept away and an opportunity subst.i.tuted in its place; but the temptation _becomes_ an opportunity, and man mounts upon it to a higher level of self-sacrifice, or purity or honour. It is not that the difficulty is burned up by G.o.d's fire and a revelation comes gliding in as a sunbeam athwart the ashes of the difficulty; but the difficulty itself becomes the revelation. The pain of Rebekah in child-birth as the children struggled in her womb, made her inquire of the Lord, and G.o.d flashed back the reply from the heart of her difficulty: "Two nations are in thy womb." Joseph brooded over the condition of Mary, his espoused wife, until, in the night vision, the angel of the Lord appeared, and said: "That Which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." His difficulty became a revelation. Similarly the dominant feature of responsibility becomes not its weight but its inspiration, of duty not its 'ought' but its 'may.' And so it is with sickness, and sorrow, and death. S. Paul's sickness, whether it was a malady of the eyes or Asiatic malaria is of little consequence, became to him spiritual health and power; "My grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness." As for sorrow, it is turned into joy,--the very thing that caused tears becoming the spring of smiles. And death, the king of shadows, is shorn of its horrors and becomes the entrance chamber to introduce into the presence of the King of Light.

The Bible is full of phrases (in the Old Testament, of course, they are prophetic, pointing to Messianic days) that tell of G.o.d's transforming power. Darkness shall be turned into light; the desert shall blossom as a rose; the barren shall be a mother of children; the glowing sand shall become a pool; and the thirsty ground, springs of water; the deaf shall hear, and the blind see; defeat becomes victory; and the instrument of shame and torture, the symbol of glory and joy. And all this, which, through the Incarnation, has become a fact in common life, is a revelation of G.o.d's power, not to say love, which far exceeds in wonder whatever we knew before. It is appalling to think of a power so strong that it can annihilate with the irresistible force of its grinding heel; but it is inspiring to consider an Almightiness that transforms the works of evil into the hand-maidens of righteousness and converts the sinner into the saint. And it is this latter power which eternal Love possesses and exhibits. He persistently dwells in the sinner until the sinner wakes up in His likeness and is satisfied with it; He enters into the shadows and holds them until they become first as the morning clouds fingered by the earliest rays of the rising sun, and eventually as the brightness of the noonday light.

But men must not accept this as a mere poetic fancy, beautiful but not of practical value. It is nothing, if not a source of power. We must experiment with our own difficulties, sickness, sorrows--yes, and our own death. There are those, Christian scientists and others, that espouse a false idealism, who meet the grim realities of life with a courage that is born of a lie. They deny the existence of everything they do not like, saying that sorrow and sin and death are not, that they are phantoms. They are not unlike the silly bird, which, finding itself hard pressed, buries its head in the nearest bush, and being unable to see its pursuers, deceives itself into thinking that it is not pursued. But "things and actions are what they are," so why should we desire to deceive ourselves? The Christian's course of action is to say that these dark mysteries are real, but the Spirit of G.o.d in us will enable us to find the Spirit of G.o.d in them.

Our Lord on the Mount of the Transfiguration, and later on in the Pa.s.sion, tells the whole story. Calmly contemplating His own approaching death, which He had just foretold, and bringing it before the Father in prayer, He sees the transfiguration of the king of terrors, and, in a blaze of spiritual exaltation, speaks of His own decease so soon to be accomplished. Then afterward in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the way of sorrow, and upon the Cross, He was in every detail the victor. These final experiences of life did not seize upon Him; it was He who seized them; He wrung them dry of all that they had to give and for ever changed their character. Frowning monarchs they can never be to the followers of our Lord, but, on the contrary, powerful servants. Christ's victory was not in the Resurrection any more completely than in the Pa.s.sion. It was in the former because it had been in the latter. Good desires brought to good effect, as the Easter Collect puts it, end in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. Victory is not only a thing of to-morrow; it belongs to to-day. The Christian's life is victory all along the line.

Let men, then, take their own hard, grim, specific pain or difficulty, and face it fearlessly and expectantly, and they will find that the "worst turns the best to the brave." Let them throw their arms about it, and say with Jacob: "I will not let Thee go except Thou bless me." And, lo! they will find that their arms are about G.o.d and His about them. If we pray G.o.d to sanctify our sickness, it is not that we expect Him to touch it from without. No, we look for more than that, much more. We expect Him to reveal Himself out of the depths of the suffering, so that the more earnestly we look at it the more clearly shall we see Him and His Face of Love. Men who have done this with the lesser of the dark mysteries will be quite ready when the time comes to act in the same way toward death, and say triumphantly: "Thanks be to G.o.d which giveth us the victory."

What is true of personal difficulties, perplexities and sorrows, is equally true of the sorrows of a world. Let men remember that those who hold back timidly or discouraged from hand-to-hand conflict with social, political and industrial difficulties, are forfeiting their share in the largest kind of revelation. G.o.d dwells there, in corporate sorrows, as well as in those of the individual experience, and, if one may say so, in a fuller measure. The world needs brave men to-day, men who are determined to see G.o.d wherever He is, and He is in everything, everything short of actual sin. There is no philosophy so false to facts as pessimism, except perhaps cheap and unthinking optimism. It is only the Christian philosophy that is equal to the situation, a philosophy which ignores nothing, howsoever gruesome, but which sees G.o.d master of His world, and nowhere in such complete possession as in its darkest corners.

When G.o.d's storms come sweeping along, it is the Christian alone who can lift his head, look up, and stand erect as they enshroud him, for a Christian cannot fear where G.o.d is. Elijah could not find G.o.d in the storm that swept by him. But the youngest Christian can do what the stern prophet of old could not; he can find G.o.d in all storms, for all storms are G.o.d's.

_LAUS DEO_

FOOTNOTES:

[43] _The Bishop of Ripon, under the t.i.tle of "Seeking and Finding,"

gives the following text and exquisite little poem as a Diocesan Motto for 1899_:

_Master, where dwellest Thou?--St. John i: 38._

THE QUEST

_O Master of my soul, where dwellest Thou?

For but one Sovereign doth love allow, And if I find not Thee, quite lost am I; Tell me Thy dwelling place: this is my cry._

_No travel will I shrink, no danger dread, If to Thy home, where'er it be, I may be led: Not where the world displays its golden pride, Only with Him, Who is the King, would I abide._

THE FINDING

_Nay, not in far distant lands, but ever near, Near as the heart that hopes or beats with fear; My Home is in the heaven, and yet I dwell With every human heart that loveth well._

_Not where proud perils are I place My throne, But with the true of heart, and these alone; So where the contrite soul breathes a true sigh, And where kind deeds are done, even there dwell I._

_And those who live by love need never ask, They find my dwelling place in every task; Vainly they seek who all impatient roam; If brave and good thy heart, there is My home._