That glorious form, that light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
he lays aside. The Word dwelt with men. “Come then, let us reason together”;—“Waiting to be gracious”;—“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man open to Me, I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me.” It is the father seeing his son while yet a great way off, and having compassion, and running to him and falling on his neck and kissing him; for “it was meet for us to rejoice, for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.” Let no man confound the voice of God in His Works with the voice of God in His Word; they are utterances of the same infinite heart and will; they are in absolute harmony; together they make up “that undisturbèd song of pure concent”; one “perfect diapason”; but they are distinct; they are meant to be so. A poor traveller, “weary and waysore,” is stumbling in unknown places through the darkness of a night of fear, with no light near him, the everlasting stars twinkling far off in their depths, and yet unrisen sun, or the waning moon, sending up their pale beams into the upper heavens, but all this is distant and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better much than outer darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the heart to look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light; but he is miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking of; a lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands, it may in some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly fool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the shutters, and make it dark to him, while it sits “i’ the centre and enjoys bright day,” and all upon the philosophical ground that its light was of the same kind as the stars’, and that it was beneath the dignity of human nature to do anything but struggle on and be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and the night by the guidance of those “natural” lights, which, though they are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray. The dignity of human nature indeed! Let him keep his lantern till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him take good heed to the “sure” λόγον while in this αὐχμηρῷ τοπῷ—this dark, damp, unwholesome place, “till the day dawn and φωσφόρος—the day-star—arise.” Nature and the Bible, the Works and the Word of God, are two distinct things. In the mind of their Supreme Author they dwell in perfect peace, in that unspeakable unity which is of His essence; and to us His children, every day their harmony, their mutual relations, are discovering themselves; but let us beware of saying all nature is a revelation as the Bible is, and all the Bible is natural as nature is: there is a perilous juggle here.
The following passage develops Arthur Hallam’s views on religious feeling; this was the master idea of his mind, and it would not be easy to overrate its importance.
“My son, give me thine heart”;—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”;—“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”
He expresses the same general idea in these words, remarkable in themselves, still more so as being the thought of one so young.
The work of intellect is posterior to the work of feeling. The latter lies at the foundation of the man; it is his proper self—the peculiar thing that characterizes him as an individual. No two men are alike in feeling; but conceptions of the understanding, when distinct are precisely similar in all—the ascertained relations of truths are the common property of the race.
Tennyson, we have no doubt, had this thought of his friend in his mind, in the following lines; it is an answer to the question, Can man by searching find out God?—
I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;
Nor thro’ the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun:
If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,
I heard a voice “believe no more,”
And heard an ever-breaking shore
That tumbled in the godless deep;
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part,
And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered, “I have felt.”
No, like a child in doubt and fear:
But that blind clamour made me wise;
Then was I as a child that cries,
But, crying, knows his father near;
And what I seem beheld again
What is, and no man understands:
And out of darkness came the hands
That reach thro’ nature, moulding men.
This is a subject of the deepest personal as well as speculative interest. In the works of Augustine, of Baxter, Howe, and Jonathan Edwards, and of Alexander Knox, our readers will find how large a place the religious affections held in their view of Divine truth as well as of human duty. The last-mentioned writer expresses himself thus:
Our sentimental faculties are far stronger than our cogitative; and the best impressions on the latter will be but the moonshine of the mind, if they are alone. Feeling will be best excited by sympathy; rather, it cannot be excited in any other way. Heart must act upon heart—the idea of a living person being essential to all intercourse of heart. You cannot by any possibility cordialize with a mere ens rationis. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” otherwise we could not have “beheld His glory,” much less “received of His fulness.”[114]