XXXVII.
GOD’S WAYS.
Wherein hast Thou loved us?--_Malach._ i. 2.
My God, I may tell You anything and everything. All I have to tell interests You, more especially the difficulties and troubles which do not easily come out to others, and are not for the most part very helpfully met when they do come out. “For what man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man that is in him?”[113]
But “the Spirit (of God) searcheth all things.”[114] You know me through and through, and I am only owning to what You see and understand perfectly when I tell You of repinings aroused by gifts and opportunities bestowed on others, but denied to me. I find myself questioning, if not Your wisdom, at least Your love, in that I am less richly dowered than others with the happy temperament, the talents, the moral and social qualities that we reckon among the better gifts of life, that render life not a duty merely, nor a source of merit, but a continual joy. I do not see that “the lines are fallen unto me in goodly places”; rather I ask petulantly, “_Wherein hast Thou loved me?_”
The source of such disquiet is selfishness. This is the dismal consolation I should get were I to confide my trouble to the most indulgent of friends. But have You no better comfort for me, my Creator and my Father? To whom shall I go in my pains if not to Him Whose “hands have made me and formed me”;[115] to my Father “that hath possessed me, and made me, and created me”;[116] Who says to me, “I will have mercy on thee more than a mother”?[117] There is no humbling avowal I may not trust to You, and trusting it be sure of sympathy. “Why hast Thou done so to us?” was the meek remonstrance of the most submissive of handmaids. “Wherein hast Thou loved us?” was said by the most cross-grained and thankless of peoples. And to both questioners You vouchsafed a reply. I too, then, may ask: Why, Father, hast Thou done so to me? In withholding what is good in itself, what would have made me happier, _Wherein hast Thou loved me?_
Your answer might be: “Shall the thing formed say to Him that formed it, why hast Thou made me thus?”[118] But in place of rebuke You silence my trouble by an invitation: “_Come up hither_”.[119] I am to take my stand by Your side, and from that height look around on the design framed from eternity. Parts of a plan can be viewed aright only in connection with the whole. To consider them independently is to miss not only the meaning and grandeur of the scheme in its entirety, but particular excellence also. This I know. Yet the tendency of selfishness is to contract the vision, and let the tiny portion assigned to itself in the universal design absorb the interest and warp the judgment. I am too near to earth, too involved in its passing interests to preserve the relative proportion necessary for viewing things aright. I must move further off--look forward a few years--plant my feet, not on this transitory world, but on the eternal shore, and from that standpoint look out upon creation.
“_He hath begotten us ... that we might be some beginning of His creature._”[120]
What an unsealing of eyes awaits me the moment after death! What a vista all but infinite will open out before me as the divine plan unfolds! All this human race, which because it encloses my lot is apt to engross my whole interest--if indeed my interest extends to the race and is not absorbed by the little miserable me--all this vast assemblage of human souls to be--but _some beginning of His creature_!
In eternity I shall see the part assigned to this beginning in the universal scheme. I shall see the part assigned to each unit. I shall grasp without effort, without reasoning, the self-evident fact that the dignity of every human being lies in its having a place in God’s eternal design; that independent or solitary greatness is an impossibility; that our happiness no less than our grandeur consists in filling that place in the vast mosaic which divine wisdom and love has appointed us; that the significance of the creature, its beauty and well-being are to be found only in its conformity with the ideal in the Creator’s mind. Those who on earth have worked out that ideal and thereby reached their appointed place are happy. Those who, absorbed by selfish aims, have failed to fit themselves for the place assigned them, are necessarily cast aside as failures--and this whatever the gifts, station, influence that distinguished them in the momentary interval between two eternities that we call Time. Nothing indeed will astound me more than the reversal of lots in the world beyond the grave. I shall see how in innumerable instances paths of glory have led to everlasting confusion and oblivion. How, on the other hand, the unnoticed, the meagrely gifted, have made their way up to the highest honour, and are placed “with the princes of His people”. The beggar of the Roman streets, shunned by every passerby, the shepherdess of an obscure village, the simple, illiterate Curé d’Ars, as “the friends of God are made exceedingly honourable”. Whilst high above all, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, is a village Carpenter of heretofore.
Truly God’s ways are not our ways! When I see as He sees, there will be no heartburnings, no pining for anything however good in itself that has not found place in His designs for me. Narrow views will melt away so completely as to be deemed wholly inexplicable in the past; egotism disappear in the burst of admiration at the design revealed in creation. What will be my delight to have a place, my particular place, in that glorious scheme! What my regret, as I turn away to purgatory, that I have failed to co-operate in the perfecting of the whole in the measure determined for me!
And this I shall see soon! Soon I shall be viewing all things from God’s standpoint, the only one possible in the land of Truth. Recognising at last in my outfit a marvellous adaptation of means to the end, I shall see wherein He has loved me. I shall bless His will that has ordered all things sweetly. I shall trace His love in withholding as well as in giving, in ordaining my limitations and deficiencies no less than my aptitudes as means for attaining to my place in His kingdom. The greater or less glory and happiness of that place will be a matter of indifference to me. To reach the degree in which _He_ would place me, to satisfy _Him_, to give Him throughout eternity the praise and reverence and service He asks of me--this will be the only ambition possible to my enlightened understanding and will. “In Thy light we shall see light.”[121]
* * * * *
O Father, that it might be thus even now! That now, whilst my place in heaven is to be sought and reached, I might have the light and strength to accept, not with resignation only--this were too poor a gratitude--but with deepest, tenderest thankfulness, the means fashioned to my hand, designed by Your wisdom _for me_!
[113] 1 Cor. ii.
[114] _Ibid._
[115] Psa. cxviii.
[116] Deut. xxxii.
[117] Ecclus. iv.
[118] Rom. ix.
[119] Apoc. iv.
[120] St. James i.
[121] Psa. xxxv.