It is not improbable, but Job might have amused himself, like some of our modern philosophizing Christians, with fine-spun theories and speculations upon the nature and attributes of the Divinity; and whilst the tide of temporal prosperity continued to flow in upon him, whilst "he washed his steps in butter, and the rock poured out for him rivers of oil," whilst his health continued unimpaired, and his domestic bliss uninterrupted, such empty researches might have been sufficient to entertain his imagination; and such an outward knowledge of the Most High, might satisfy a soul, that was yet insensible of any spiritual or temporal wants or distresses. But let the hand of God fall heavy upon him; let his body be visited with pain and sickness, and his soul wounded with grief and disappointment; let him be stripped of all his worldly affluence, and deprived of all his domestic comforts; and he will soon find, that the wants of nature, when deeply felt, are not to be supplied by reasoning and speculation; that an outward hearsay knowledge of God is of no avail; that it cannot administer the least relief either to the body or the mind; that it cannot sooth or mitigate one bodily pain, or send one ray of light into the dark and comfortless regions of the soul.
Go to the chambers of sickness, visit the melancholy retreats of indigence and woe! produce there your strong reasonings—strive, with learned labour, to open and convince the understandings of your suffering brethren—enumerate to them all the outward evidences, that you can collect, of the great truths of religion—give them proof upon proof, demonstration upon demonstration—talk to them of the Nature and Attributes of God, and the immortality of their souls—tell them what the Son of God hath done and suffered for sinners; what are the means of reconciliation, and what the sure grounds of an happy death—give them all that they can receive "by the hearing of the ear"—and what have you done, and what have they gained?—Why you have done just as much as an unskilful physician would do, who entertained his patient with a learned dissertation upon the virtues and excellencies of a certain medicine, which he had somewhere read or heard of, as admirably adapted to the disorder, but which he had never seen with his eyes, and of the nature of which he knew nothing by his own experience. Thus it is with this outward knowledge of God: the poor soul is left to feed upon words or ideas, and to seek comfort, in vain, in empty speculations.
Fruitless, indeed, are such attempts as these! Till the soul is shaken to her very center, till the stone is removed from the door of the sepulchre, that God who "makes darkness his secret place," can never be seen. The eye must be turned inwardly, to view what is passing in the inmost soul, to discover what its wants and necessities are, as well as what will supply them, and yield it peace, and yield it happiness, from an inexhaustible source. It must feel its own darkness, before it can seek to have it enlightened—The same Light that breaks in upon it like the dawn of day, gives it the first sensibility of distress, as well as the first sensibility of consolation "now hath mine eye seen thee, therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes"—I now feel the misery of nature without God—I feel nothing but darkness, and want, and hunger, and thirst! But in this darkness, under this want, in this hunger and thirst, the soul must wait, without reasoning, without repining, in stillness, in silence, till the invisible God shines into the darkness, and till the darkness comprehends and eagerly imbibes the Light, and he, in whom is no darkness at all, manifesteth his Presence by a self-evident sensibility.
Thus it is, that man, by virtue of the Redeeming Power of the Second Adam, implanted in his heart as a spark of Heavenly flame, hidden under the flesh and blood of fallen nature, is revived, quickened, and enlightened. The Heavenly Birth soon perceives and owns its parent—the outward knowledge gives way to the inward manifestation—and God, and Heaven, and Goodness, and Grace, are seen and known, and felt by their own incontestible workings in the human Heart. Hence, the fruits of the Spirit, the fruits of Heaven, begin to bud and blossom: "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness," are felt and practised; and the soul lives and breathes in the Heavenly world, even whilst she inherits this frail tenement of clay.
And now, my brethren, is not such a Knowledge of God worth possessing? A Knowledge, that unites you to him; makes you One Heart and Spirit with him; gives the highest relish to all the joys, and the firmest support under all the evils of life; which will stand by you, when every outward comfort fails, when relations, friends, wealth, power, and all that earth is able to supply, can no longer yield you the least support or satisfaction.
Some of the great obstacles and impediments to the attainment of this Knowledge, I shall enumerate in my next discourse.
DISCOURSE XVII.
The true Knowledge of God internal and practical.
Job, Chap. xlii. Ver. 5, 6.
"I have heard of thee by the hearing of the Ear; but now hath mine Eye seen thee: therefore I abhor myself, and repennt in Dust and Ashes."