But we shall only find this as we expect to find it. All through our spiritual life we may be perpetually in contact, as it were, with the means of receiving what is good, and never receive it because we are not expecting it. We have not expected peace of mind from our worship, we have not expected a sense of security against evil; that is why we have not found it; but it is our fault. And certainly most of us have not expected to find fellowship from worship. We have known something of the grace of Jesus Christ, perhaps even of the love of God; but of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, of the sense of being linked to one another because all dominated by that one power, most of us have found nothing, because we have not expected it.
But if we are expecting this, all the testimony of the saints in every generation goes to show that we shall find what we have expected.
The power that can give us security against the transitoriness of the world and against the instincts of antagonism is there in the faith that we place in God. "I will put my trust in God," the Psalmist says, "I will not fear what flesh can do unto me." This is not because flesh will not do such hurt as it can to the man who puts his trust in God—the Jews crucified Christ—but because to the man who puts his trust in God, anything whatever that happens becomes part of God's purpose for his life, and therefore he will not fear it. For "all things," sorrow as well as joy, pain as well as pleasure, sin as well as righteousness, "all things work together for good to them that love God."
LECTURE VI
GOD IN HISTORY
"I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty."—Revelation i. 8.
We have considered the two great instruments of God by which He fashions the spiritual life of man, and we have considered that spiritual life itself in the outline at least of its four main departments; and now, as we close our line of thought, we need still to consider how it is that, in these fields and by these instruments, God carries forward His work.
The conception of God as at work in human history, guiding it, controlling it, and judging men by its course, is the great contribution of Israel to the religion of the world. It is linked of course with that belief in the union of perfect righteousness with the divine, power which we usually speak of under the somewhat cumbrous title of Ethical Monotheism. We remember what was really at stake in that great day upon Mount Carmel when Elijah confronted the priests of Baal; it was whether the conception of God as righteous and demanding righteousness should prevail, or the conception of God as a capricious Being, needing only to be propitiated, and in connection with whose very worship licentiousness was tolerated and even encouraged.
But, after all, the greatest souls, at least in every highly-developed religion, have believed that God is righteous in Himself. What gives to Israel its supreme significance in the spiritual history of mankind is the conviction that this righteous God is daily and hourly at work in the history of men; and that conviction gives to the faith of Israel a primacy and supremacy over all the other partial faiths, even though they may be superior in certain departments.
If we think of some of the conceptions by means of which we try to bring before our minds the meaning of the word "God," we may find that with regard to several of them, other nations had advanced further than Israel before the coming of the Lord.