Men take up with such notions, I believe, most generally in days of comfort, ease, safety.  They find the world so well ordered outwardly, that it seems able enough to go on its way without a God.  They have themselves so few sorrows, struggles, doubts, that they never feel that sense of helplessness, of danger, of ignorance, which has made the hearts of men, in every age, yearn for an unseen helper, an unseen deliverer, an unseen teacher.

And so it is—and shameful it is that so it should be—that the more God gives to men, the less they thank Him, the less they fancy that they need Him: but take His bounties, as they take the air they breathe, unconsciously, and as a matter of course.

And therefore adversity is wholesome, danger is wholesome; so wholesome, that in all ages, as far as I can find, the godliest, the most moral, the most manful, and therefore the really happiest and most successful nations or communities of men, have been those who were in perpetual danger, difficulty, struggle; and who have thereby had their faith in God called out; who have learned in the depth, to cry out of the depth to God; to lift up their eyes unto the Lord, and know that their help comes from Him.

I know a village down in the far West, where the 121st Psalm which I just quoted, was a favourite, and more than a favourite.  Whenever it was given out in church—and the congregation used often to ask for it—all joined in singing it, young and old, men and maidens, with an earnestness, a fervour, a passion, such as I never heard elsewhere; such as shewed how intensely they felt that the psalm was true, and true for them.  Of all congregational singing I ever heard, never have I heard any so touching as those voices, when they joined in the old words they loved so well.

 
Sheltered beneath the Almighty wings
Thou shall securely rest,
Where neither sun nor moon shall thee
By day or night molest.
At home, abroad, in peace, in war,
Thy God shall thee defend;
Conduct thee through life’s pilgrimage
Safe to thy journey’s end.
 

Do you fancy these people were specially comfortable, prosperous folk, who had no sorrows, and lived safe from all danger, and therefore knew that God protected them from all ill?

Nothing less, my friends, nothing less.  There was hardly a man who joined in that psalm, but knew that he carried his life in his hand from year to year, that any day might see him a corpse—drowned at sea.  Hardly a woman who sang that psalm but had lost a husband, a father, a brother, a kinsman—drowned at sea.  And yet they believed that God preserved them.  They were fishers and sailors, earning an uncertain livelihood, on a wild and rocky coast.  A sudden shift of wind might make, as I knew it once to make, 60 widows and orphans in a single night.  The fishery for the year might fail, and all the expense of boats and nets be thrown away.  Or in default of work at home, the young men would go out on voyages to foreign parts: and often never came back again, dying far from home, of fever, of wreck, of some of the hundred accidents which befal seafaring men.  And yet they believed that God preserved them.  Surely their faith was tried, if ever faith was tried.  But as surely their faith failed not, for—if I may so say—they dared not let it fail.  If they ceased to trust God, what had they to trust in?  Not in their own skill in seamanship, though it was great: they knew how weak it was, on which to lean.  Not in the so-called laws of nature; the treacherous sea, the wild wind, the uncertain shoals of fish, the chances and changes of a long foreign voyage.  Without trust in God, their lives must have been lives of doubt and of terror, for ever anxious about the morrow: or else of blind recklessness, saying, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  Because they kept their faith in God, their lives were for the most part lives of hardy and hopeful enterprise; cheerful always, in bad luck as in good; thankful when their labours were blest with success; and when calamity and failure came, saying with noble resignation—“I have received good from the hand of the Lord, and shall I not receive evil?  Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”

It is a life like theirs, mixed with danger and uncertainty, which most calls out faith in God.  It is the life of safety and comfort, in which our wants are all supplied ready to our hand, which calls it out least.  And therefore it is that life in cities, just because it is most safe and most comfortable, is so often, alas, most ungodly, at least among the men.  Less common, thank God, is this ungodliness among the women.  The nursing of the sick; the cares of a family, often too sorrows, manifold and bitter, put them continually in mind of human weakness, and of their own weakness likewise.  Yes.  It is sorrow, my friends, sorrow and failure, which forces men to believe that there is One who heareth prayer, forces them to lift up their eyes to One from whom cometh their help.  Before the terrible realities of danger, death, bereavement, disappointment, shame, ruin—and most of all before deserved shame, deserved ruin—all the arguments of the conceited sophist melt away like the maxims of the comfortable worldling; and the man or woman who was but too ready a day before to say, “Tush, God will never see, and will never hear,” begins to hope passionately that God does see, that God does hear.  In the hour of darkness; when there is no comfort in man nor help in man, when he has no place to flee unto, and no man careth for his soul: then the most awful, the most blessed of all questions is: But is there no one higher than man to whom I can flee?  No one higher than man who cares for my soul and for the souls of those who are dearer to me than my own soul?  No friend?  No helper?  No deliverer?  No counsellor?  Even no judge?  No punisher?  No God, even though He be a consuming fire?  Am I and my misery alone together in the universe?  Is my misery without any meaning, and I without hope?  If there be no God: then all that is left for me is despair and death.  But if there be, then I can hope that there is a meaning in my misery; that it comes to me not without cause, even though that cause be my own fault.  I can plead with God like poor Job of old, even though in wild words like Job; and ask—What is the meaning of this sorrow?  What have I done?  What should I do?  “I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.  Surely I would speak unto the Almighty, and desire to reason with God.”

“I would speak unto the Almighty, and desire to reason with God.”  Oh my friends, a man, I believe, can gain courage and wisdom to say that, only by the inspiration of the Spirit of God.

But when once he has said that from his heart, he begins to be justified by faith.  For he has had faith in God; he has trusted God enough to speak to God who made him; and so he has put himself, so far at least, into his just and right place, as a spiritual and rational being, made in the image of God.

But more, he has justified God.  He has confessed that God is not a mere force or law of nature; nor a mere tyrant and tormentor: but a reasonable being, who will hear reason, and a just being, who will do justice by the creatures whom He has made.

And so the very act of prayer justifies God, and honours God, and gives glory to God; for it confesses that God is what He is, a good God, to whom the humblest and the most fallen of His creatures dare speak out the depths of their abasement, and acknowledge that His glory is this—That in spite of all His majesty, He is one who heareth prayer; a being as magnificent in His justice, as He is magnificent in His majesty and His might.

All this is argued out, as it never has been argued out before or since, in the book of Job: and for seeing so much as this, was Job approved by God.  But there is a further question, to which the book of Job gives no answer; and to which indeed all the Old Testament gives but a partial answer.  And that is this—This just and magnificent God, has He also human pity, tenderness, charity, condescension, love?  In one word, have we not only a God in heaven, but a Father in heaven?

That question could only be answered by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Truly He said—No one cometh to the Father, but by me.  No man hath seen God at any time: but the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath revealed Him.  He revealed Him in part to Abraham, in part to Moses, to Job, to David, to the prophets.  But He revealed Him perfectly when He said—I and the Father are one.  He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.  Yes.  Now we can find boundless comfort in the words, “Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost”—Love and condescension without bounds.  Now we know that there is A Man in the midst of the throne of God, who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His character; a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, seeing that He was tempted in all things like as we are, yet without sin.

To Him we can cry, with human passion and in human words; because we know that His human heart will respond to our human hearts, and that His human heart again will respond to His divine Spirit, and that His divine Spirit is the same as the divine Spirit of His Father; for their wills and minds are one; and their will and their mind is—boundless love to sinful man.

Yes, we can look up by faith into the sacred face of Christ, and take refuge by faith within His sacred heart, saying—If it be good for me, He will give what I ask: and if He gives it not, it is because that too is good for me, and for others beside me.  In all the chances and changes of this mortal life we can say to Him, as He said in that supreme hour—“If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done,” sure that He will present that prayer to His Father, and to our Father, and to His God and to our God; and that whatsoever be the answer vouchsafed by Him whose ways are not as our ways, nor His thoughts as our thoughts, the prayer will not have gone up to Christ in vain.

And in such a case as this of missions to the heathen—If we believe that Christ died for these poor heathen; if we believe that Christ loves these poor heathen infinitely more than we, or than the most devoted missionary who ever lived or died for them: shall we say—Then we may leave them in Christ’s hands to follow their own nature.  If He is satisfied with their degradation, so may we be?  Shall we not rather say—Their misery and degradation must pain His sacred heart, far more than our sinful hearts; and if He does not come down again on earth to help them Himself, it must be because He means to help them through us, His disciples?  Let us ask Him to teach us and others how to help them; to enable us and others to help them.  Let us pray to Him the one prayer which, unless prayer be a dream, is certain to be answered, because it is certainly according to God’s will; the prayer to be taught and helped to do our duty by our fellow-men.  And for the rest: let us pray in the words of that most noble of all collects, to pray which is to take refuge from our own ignorance in the boundless wisdom of God’s love—“Thou who knowest our necessities before we ask, and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our infirmities, and those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask, condescend to give us, for the worthiness of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”