XVII.

THE IMPROVIDENCE OF LOVE.

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord.--_Isa._ lv. 8.

How often I kneel here before the tabernacle and make my genuflection and my act of faith without realising in the very least what I believe, what I adore. How little I heed that where I stand is holy ground. That a few paces from me lies the most mysterious of all mysteries, “the mystery of faith,” the mystery of love--love that with infinite wisdom and infinite power at its service has here reached its limits, has found bounds which God Himself cannot overpass.

And yet _is_ the Eucharist after all the greatest of mysteries? Has it not its source in a deeper mystery still? Is anything wonderful after the Incarnation? Does not the marvel of God made Man outstrip all other marvels? If the Creator out of love for man must needs annihilate Himself so far as to assume a created nature, where will such love stop? Into what further extravagances of love will it not be betrayed?

But how was it, my God, that Your infinite wisdom did not fear the consequences of such prodigality; did not remember who those are with whom You have to deal; did not consider that too great lavishness blunts the edge of our appreciation and our gratitude? Had You taken counsel of us, O loving Lord, we should have bid You in the very interests of love not to overdo its manifestation, not to make Yourself too easy of access, lest familiarity should endanger reverence. Daily Communion; the easy, easy conditions on which You come to us; the tarrying day and night in every church throughout the world--this we should have said would bring about a contempt of these sacred mysteries and deprive You of the love which is the end of their institution. You would have had to own to the justice of our remonstrance, to acknowledge that such fears were well grounded. It was not safe to ask counsel--except of Your own Heart. “Who hath known the mind of the Lord? and who hath been His counsellor?”[50] Only His Heart. O Sacred Heart, how sadly You have laid Him open to every sort of indignity--to indifference, coldness, outrage, sacrilege. Yet, in spite of all, this Gift of God is without repentance,[51] “for My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways My ways, saith the Lord”.

[50] Isa. xl.

[51] Rom. xi.