This is to see the guidance of the Shepherd in the great things of our world as well as in the little. It is a strange, a poor religion that believes that providence will send a man his dinner but never gives a thought to the great purposes working out through all the strife of our common life, through our industrial, social, and political problems, nor remembers that life is more than meals or millinery.
There is the large faith which we need for all times, to believe that a plan is being wrought out behind all the seeming chaos, that there is a purpose even though we cannot yet trace its lines, to be willing to go on doing our work, laying down our lives, because the great world needs us; the Shepherd cannot bring His flock to the green pastures and the still waters unless we live and labour and die.
There is only one solution to all the mystery of our lives, the riddle of history and the universe; it is the spirit solution, that we are but the offspring, as all things are but the creation of Spiritual forces; that we are working out spiritual destinies, the green pastures and the still waters are but emblems of felicities and beauties beyond our tongue, the full orbed glory of the soul to which the Shepherd leads by toilsome mountain ways or dreary desert trails; but at last we come to the house of the Lord, where we may dwell forever.
THE FATHER'S CARE
Formal creeds have little to say of the belief in the overruling care of the All Father. Perhaps the belief is so nearly universal as to be without the range of debate so dear to creed makers. Yet at all times, in all lands, man, whether the savage, the oriental mystic, or the cool-headed Christian, in various ways and with different phrases, has recognized the hand that, from behind the scenes, touched his affairs and often seemed to order his life. Whether it be the hand of force or of friend, the fact has been felt.
True, the laziest man is apt to have the readiest sense of the intention of Providence to care for him, to send him bread well buttered; the foolish and thoughtless depend on heaven to do their thinking, and many court bankruptcy while praying for solvency. But the improvidence of man does not disprove the providence of God. So far from encouraging sloth and recklessness this truth provokes to progress by the assurance of the coöperation of infinite powers with our best endeavours.
It is a thought we cannot escape; the all wise must be the all loving. The spirit at the centre of all must embrace all within the circle of his love; and that love will not lie quiescent, helpless when its objects are in distress, in perplexity, or need, when it might succour, save, or suggest the way of success. If there is a heart of love there is a hand of help.
Yet it seems too great a thought. What are we but dust on the wheels of the universe? Often do our fainting hearts question whether there be any, outside our own little circle, who care whether we suffer, whether we succeed. Can it be that the petty affairs of a life that passes like the hoar frost before the morning sun can even interest, still less call forth the aid, of the one in whom we all live and move and have our being?
Despite all questionings men will ever go on praying to that one; they will turn to an ear that hears, they will seek a heart that feels, and look for hands reached out in hours of necessity. Experience indorses their faith. Nearly all can look back and see where destiny has seemed to breathe upon them; their old plans wilted, and new ones, and new ways sprung up, bearing other and fairer flowers than they had ever dreamed; a mighty, mysterious power had intervened.
What does it all mean? That we are but puppets in these strange unseen hands; that we can neither will nor work for ourselves? No; it but means what poets sang long ago when, seeking after that which far transcends all thought and all imagery, they cried, "Surely Thou art our Father." That which was best in them, the holy fire of fatherhood, became a mirror in which they saw the infinite.