Law and God

Contents:

An Atheistic Suggestion
Law And Prayer
Worship, A Sight Of God
A Law Of Sacrifice
An Interpretative Principle
Religious Use Of Old Testament History
Do We Make Men Into Unbelievers?
Try The Spirits Whether They Are Of God
How To Make A New Heart
The Consciousness Of Sin
The Consuming Eire
The Sting Of Death

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An excerpt from the beginning of the first chapter:

AN ATHEISTIC SUGGESTION

As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me ; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God? —PSALM xlii. 10.


THERE never comes a misfortune or calamity of any kind but there are those who cannot keep silent, who are always ready to minister to minds diseased their formal maxims and ready-made salves; whose moral and religious commonplaces are expected by those who prescribe them to bind up the broken-hearted ; and who with infinite self-satisfaction improve the occasion, as he does who presents a handful of chaff to one who is dying of hunger. What an amazing knowledge of human nature and of human suffering he must possess who can say to the bereaved and the miserable, ' Ah, we must expect trouble in this world; we are born to it, and no doubt it is all for the best.' Why, such talk, at such times, is monstrous. Can I, when the noble and the brave and the wise have suddenly been lost from the world, and the world has become so much poorer, can I easily believe that it is a good thing ? I may be mistaken, and when the mysteries of life are cleared up and the disjointed fragments have taken their place in the perfect cosmos, the mistake may be most evident; but I cannot see now that it is for the best, and I will not say I see that which I do not see because men tell me it is religious to do so. The sorrow which refuseth to be comforted is too wide and deep to be satisfied with the maxim of the optimist, or the sacred platitude—

'And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.'

The prophet of old times was not ignorant of the human heart when he said of her whose child was dead, ' Let her alone, for her soul is vexed within her; and the Lord hath hid it from me, and hath not told me.'


But I must turn away from these thoughts to another, a thought which is one of the greatest strains upon human faith when any great disaster overtakes us—How can it be that God is omnipotent and infinitely tender, as we believe He is, and yet can allow such things to happen ? It is the old question of the origin and allowance of evil, which philosophers have debated from ancient days without resolving; and yet it is a question which comes home like a sword to the humblest and least cultivated. The mother who has suddenly lost the pride and hope of her house cannot tell why God allowed the bullet or the fever to kill the son for whom she so much prayed. The fisherman's wife whose husband has eagerly taken his place on the life-boat for the salvation of those who are in peril of their lives cannot understand, as she weeps over her helpless little ones for him ' who will never come back to the town,' why God did not save him. The thought has crossed my own mind, when I have sailed in peace and safety with hundreds more in some brave ship, God could not let us perish. And when the things against which tender and true hearts have fervently prayed, and which they almost felt to be impossible, come to pass, there is a strain upon human faith; there is a still small voice of atheism in the heart, which says to him who is bewildered and amazed, Can there be a God ? A man is then tried of what stuff his faith is made; and if it be but an opinion, or an inherited, unrooted assent, it is shattered to pieces. But the strain I am speaking of is as old as the world, and David felt its force, and in this poem expresses it, ' As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies, reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God ?'

Now this is a question which cannot be shirked. Men must answer it in some way r or, for some good and peace-giving reason, place it on one side, as not for the present to be answered. Some have answered it by denying the omnipotence of God. Believing in a god, or in gods, they also believed that the divine powers were limited; that there were powers as great as or greater than those of the gods; in other words, they recognised either gods which were equal and opposite, or one stern power to which even the gods themselves must ultimately submit. This latter was a Greek faith, and practically it was no disbelief of an omnipotent God; it only denied omnipotence to the Olympian deities, and placed it finally in the hands of an almighty remorseless fate. The former belief, that there were powers in perpetual opposition—good and bad powers, which always waged war, and so restricted each other's sphere of activity—...