It serves to check our arrogance and presumption, and promotes true humility. It teaches us that he has ways that are past our finding out, and that all our boasted wisdom is folly when compared with his. It tells vain man that he cannot tread in the Almighty’s footsteps, nor fathom his deep designs.
Our entire dependence too is thrust upon our convictions by this mode of the Almighty’s working. Often we are forced to feel that we cannot rely upon our own forecast and prudence. Our own will is not strong enough to shape events and make them subserve our wishes. God’s unseen hand is ever interfering, and reminding us that without his blessing we can do nothing.
And how too is faith tried and encouraged by this economy: tried when all we can see of God, many times, is like a smoking furnace, dark and obscure, when reason asks and gets no answers; and anon encouraged, when through the mystery there shines the burning lamp.
This present life is the great school of Christian faith. Where reason’s eyesight fails, faith can see the way. It can see but in part, it is true, for our earthly state answers well to the prophet Zechariah’s description: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark. But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord: not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass that at evening time it shall be light.”
Moreover, how adapted is our subject to cheer God’s people and prompt them to quiet, patient resignation under dark and afflictive providences. What if sometimes we can see nothing but the furnace smoking; we know that behind it somewhere is the lamp of fire.
How too are we impressed with the truth that there is something left for us to learn in heaven, something yet unrevealed which we do not see, but which we hope for, which makes us reconciled to the thought of leaving this dim, misty realm of time, and to wait in anxious expectation till the day break and the shadows flee away. Oh be content, Christian, a little longer to walk by faith, for by and by the smoking furnace will have passed away for ever, and heaven will welcome you to its cloudless revelations.
Learn to walk humbly before that God who surrounds your path. See him in the clearest form in which he has revealed himself, even in the incarnate Son our Saviour. Through him alone can we approach the Father. Through him alone can we hope to see his face, and obtain salvation and deliverance from his wrath.