Thus early did it appear how much of what is admirable and serviceable clung to human nature apart from any recognition of G.o.d. The worldly life was then what it is now, a life not wholly and obviously polluted by excess, nor destroyed by violence, but displaying features which appeal to our sensibilities and provoke applause; a life of manifold beauty, of great power and resource, of abundant promise. There is abundant material in the world for beautifying and elevating human life, and this material may be used and is used by men who acknowledge neither its origin in G.o.d nor the ends He would serve by it. The interests of men may be advanced and the best work of the world done by three distinct cla.s.ses of men--by those who work as G.o.d"s children in thorough sympathy with His purposes; by those who do not know G.o.d but who are humble in heart and would sympathise with G.o.d"s purposes, did they become acquainted with them; and by those who are proud and self-willed, positively alienated from G.o.d, and who do the world"s work for their own ends. And so far as the external work goes the last-named cla.s.s of men may be most efficient. In mental endowment, social and political wisdom, scientific apt.i.tude, and all that tends to substantial utility, it is quite possible they may excel the G.o.dly, for "not many n.o.ble, not many wise are called." But we have nothing to measure permanent success by, save conformity with G.o.d"s will; and we have nothing by which we can estimate how character will endure and how deeply it is rooted save conformity with the nature of G.o.d. If a man believes in G.o.d, in one Supreme Who rules and orders all things for just, holy and wise ends; if he is in sympathy with the nature and will of G.o.d and finds his truest satisfaction in forwarding the purposes of G.o.d, then you have a guarantee for this man"s continuance in good and for his ultimate success.
The precarious nature of all G.o.dless civilisation and the real tendency of self-sufficing pride are shown in Lamech.
It is in Lamech the tendency culminates and in him the issue of all this brilliant but G.o.dless life is seen. Therefore though he is the father, the historian speaks of him _after_ his children. In his one recorded utterance his character leaps to view definite and complete--a character of boundless force, self-reliance and G.o.dlessness. It is a little uncertain whether he means that he has actually slain a man, or whether he is putting a hypothetical case--the character of his speech is the same whichever view is taken.
"I have slain," he says, or suppose I slay, "a man for wounding me, A young man for hurting me: But if Cain shall be avenged seven-fold--then Lamech seventy and seven-fold."
That is, I take vengeance for myself with those good weapons my son has forged for me. He has furnished me with a means of defence many times more effectual than G.o.d"s avenging of Cain. This is the climax of the self-sufficiency to which the line of Cain has been tending. Cain besought G.o.d"s protection; he needed G.o.d for at least one purpose, this one thread bound him yet to G.o.d. Lamech has no need of G.o.d for any purpose; what his sons can make and his own right hand do is enough for him. This is what comes of finding enough in the world without G.o.d--a boastful, self-sufficient man, dangerous to society, the incarnation of the pride of life. In the long run separation from G.o.d becomes isolation from man and cruel self-sufficiency.
The line of Seth is followed from father to son, for the sake of showing that the promise of a seed which should be victorious over evil was being fulfilled. Apparently it is also meant that during this uneventful period long ages elapsed. Nothing can be told of these old world people but that they lived and died, leaving behind them heirs to transmit the promise.
Only once is the monotony broken; but this in so striking a manner as to rescue us from the idea that the historian is mechanically copying a barren list of names. For in the seventh generation, contemporaneous with the culmination of Cain"s line in the family of Lamech, we come upon the simple but anything but mechanical statement: "Enoch walked with G.o.d and he was not; for G.o.d took him." The phrase is full of meaning. Enoch walked with G.o.d because he was His friend and liked His company, because he was going in the same direction as G.o.d, and had no desire for anything but what lay in G.o.d"s path. We walk with G.o.d when He is in all our thoughts; not because we consciously think of Him at all times, but because He is naturally suggested to us by all we think of; as when any person or plan or idea has become important to us, no matter what we think of, our thought is always found recurring to this favourite object, so with the G.o.dly man everything has a connection with G.o.d and must be ruled by that connection. When some change in his circ.u.mstances is thought of, he has first of all to determine how the proposed change will affect his connection with G.o.d--will his conscience be equally clear, will he be able to live on the same friendly terms with G.o.d and so forth. When he falls into sin he cannot rest till he has resumed his place at G.o.d"s side and walks again with Him. This is the general nature of walking with G.o.d; it is a persistent endeavour to hold all our life open to G.o.d"s inspection and in conformity to His will; a readiness to give up what we find does cause any misunderstanding between us and G.o.d; a feeling of loneliness if we have not some satisfaction in our efforts at holding fellowship with G.o.d, a cold and desolate feeling when we are conscious of doing something that displeases Him. This walking with G.o.d necessarily tells on the whole life and character. As you instinctively avoid subjects which you know will jar upon the feelings of your friend, as you naturally endeavour to suit yourself to your company, so when the consciousness of G.o.d"s presence begins to have some weight with you, you are found instinctively endeavouring to please Him, repressing the thoughts you know He disapproves, and endeavouring to educate such dispositions as reflect His own nature.
It is easy then to understand how we may practically walk with G.o.d--it is to open to Him all our purposes and hopes, to seek His judgment on our scheme of life and idea of happiness--it is to be on thoroughly friendly terms with G.o.d. Why then do any not walk with G.o.d? Because they seek what is wrong. You would walk with Him if the same idea of good possessed you as possesses Him; if you were as ready as He to make no deflexion from the straight path. Is not the very crown of life depicted in the testimony given to Enoch, that "he pleased G.o.d"? Cannot you take your way through life with a resolute and joyous spirit if you are conscious that you please Him Who judges not by appearances, not by your manners, but by your real state, by your actual character and the eternal promise it bears? Things were not made easy to Enoch. In evil days, with much to mislead him, with everything to oppose him, he had by faith and diligent seeking, as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, to cleave to the path on which G.o.d walked, often left in darkness, often thrown off the track, often listening but unable to hear the footfall of G.o.d or to hear his own name called upon, receiving no sign but still diligently seeking the G.o.d he knew would lead him only to good. Be it yours to give such diligence. Do not accept it as a thing fixed that you are to be one of the graceless and unG.o.dly, always feeble, always vacillating, always without a character, always in doubt about your state, and whether life might not be some other and better thing to you.
"Enoch was not, for G.o.d took him." Suddenly his place on earth was empty and men drew their own conclusions. He had been known as the Friend of G.o.d, where could he be but in G.o.d"s dwelling-place? No sickness had slowly worn him to the grave, no mark of decay had been visible in his unabated vigour. His departure was a favour conferred and as such men recognised it. "G.o.d has taken him," they said, and their thoughts followed upward, and essayed to conceive the finished bliss of the man whom G.o.d has taken away where blessing may be more fully conferred. His age corresponded to our thirty-three, the age when the world has usually got fair hold of a man, when a man has found his place in life and means to live and see good days. The awkward, unfamiliar ways of youth that keep him outside of much of life are past, and the satiety of age is not yet reached; a man has begun to learn there is something he can do, and has not yet learned how little. It is an age at which it is most painful to relinquish life, but it was at this age G.o.d took him away, and men knew it was in kindness. Others had begun to gather round him, and depend upon him, hopes were resting in him, great things were expected of him, life was strong in him. But let life dress itself in its most attractive guise, let it shine on a man with its most fascinating smile, let him be happy at home and the pleasing centre of a pleasing circle of friends, let him be in that bright summer of life when a man begins to fear he is too prosperous and happy, and yet there is for man a better thing than all this, a thing so immeasurably and independently superior to it that all this may be taken away and yet the man be far more blessed. If G.o.d would confer His highest favours, He must take a man out of all this and bring him closer to Himself.
V.
_THE FLOOD._
GENESIS v.-ix.
The first great event which indelibly impressed itself on the memory of the primeval world was the Flood. There is every reason to believe that this catastrophe was co-extensive with the human population of the world. In every branch of the human family traditions of the event are found. These traditions need not be recited, though some of them bear a remarkable likeness to the Biblical story, while others are very beautiful in their construction, and significant in individual points.
Local floods happening at various times in different countries could not have given birth to the minute coincidences found in these traditions, such as the sending out of the birds, and the number of persons saved.
But we have as yet no material for calculating how far human population had spread from the original centre. It might apparently be argued that it could not have spread to the sea-coast, or that at any rate no ships had as yet been built large enough to weather a severe storm; for a thoroughly nautical population could have had little difficulty in surviving such a catastrophe as is here described. But all that can be affirmed is that there is no evidence that the waters extended beyond the inhabited part of the earth; and from certain details of the narrative, this part of the earth may be identified as the great plain of the Euphrates and Tigris.
Some of the expressions used in the narrative might indeed lead us to suppose that the writer understood the catastrophe to have extended over the whole globe; but expressions of similar largeness elsewhere occur in pa.s.sages where their meaning must be restricted. Probably the most convincing evidence of the limited extent of the Flood is furnished by the animals of Australia. The animals that abound in that island are different from those found in other parts of the world, but are similar to the species which are found fossilized in the island itself, and which therefore must have inhabited these same regions long anterior to the Flood. If then the Flood extended to Australia and destroyed all animal life there, what are we compelled to suppose as the order of events? We must suppose that the creatures, visited by some presentiment of what was to happen many months after, selected specimens of their number, and that these specimens by some unknown and quite inconceivable means crossed thousands of miles of sea, found their way through all kinds of perils from unaccustomed climate, food, and beasts of prey; singled out Noah by some inscrutable instinct, and surrendered themselves to his keeping. And after the year in the ark expired, they turned their faces homewards, leaving behind them no progeny, again preserving themselves intact, and transporting themselves by some unknown means to their island home. This, if the Deluge was universal, must have been going on with thousands of animals from all parts of the globe; and not only were these animals a stupendous miracle in themselves, but wherever they went they were the occasion of miracle in others, all the beasts of prey refraining from their natural food. The fact is, the thing will not bear stating.
But it is not the physical but the moral aspects of the Flood with which we have here to do. And, first, this narrator explains its cause. He ascribes it to the abnormal wickedness of the antediluvians. To describe the demoralised condition of society before the Flood, the strongest language is used. "G.o.d saw that the wickedness of man was great,"
monstrous in acts of violence, and in habitual courses and established usages. "Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually,"--there was no mixture of good, no relentings, no repentances, no visitings of compunction, no hesitations and debatings.
It was a world of men fierce and energetic, violent and lawless, in perpetual war and turmoil; in which if a man sought to live a righteous life, he had to conceive it of his own mind and to follow it out unaided and without the countenance of any.
This abnormal wickedness again is accounted for by the abnormal marriages from which the leaders of these ages sprang. Everything seemed abnormal, huge, inhuman. As there are laid bare to the eye of the geologist in those archaic times vast forms bearing a likeness to forms we are now familiar with, but of gigantic proportions and wallowing in dim, mist-covered regions; so to the eye of the historian there loom through the obscurity colossal forms perpetrating deeds of more than human savagery, and strength, and daring; heroes that seem formed in a different mould from common men.
However we interpret the narrative, its significance for us is plain.
There is nothing prudish in the Bible. It speaks with a manly frankness of the beauty of women and its ensnaring power. The Mosaic law was stringent against intermarriage with idolatresses, and still in the New Testament something more than an echo of the old denunciation of such marriages is heard. Those who were most concerned about preserving a pure morality and a high tone in society were keenly alive to the dangers that threatened from this quarter. It is a permanent danger to character because it is to a permanent element in human nature that the temptation appeals. To many in every generation, perhaps to the majority, this is the most dangerous form in which worldliness presents itself; and to resist this the most painful test of principle. With natures keenly sensitive to beauty and superficial attractiveness, some are called upon to make their choice between a conscientious cleaving to G.o.d and an attachment to that which in the form is perfect but at heart is defective, depraved, G.o.dless. Where there is great outward attraction a man fights against the growing sense of inward uncongeniality, and persuades himself he is too scrupulous and uncharitable, or that he is a bad reader of character. There may be an undercurrent of warning; he may be sensible that his whole nature is not satisfied and it may seem to him ominous that what is best within him does not flourish in his new attachment, but rather what is inferior, if not what is worst. But all such omens and warnings are disregarded and stifled by some such silly thought as that consideration and calculation are out of place in such matters. And what is the result? The result is the same as it ever was.
Instead of the unG.o.dly rising to the level of the G.o.dly, he sinks to hers. The worldly style, the amus.e.m.e.nts, the fashions once distasteful to him, but allowed for her sake, become familiar, and at last wholly displace the old and G.o.dly ways, the arrangements that left room for acknowledging G.o.d in the family; and there is one household less as a point of resistance to the incursion of an unG.o.dly tone in society, one deserter more added to the already too crowded ranks of the unG.o.dly, and the life-time if not the eternity of one soul embittered. Not without a consideration of the temptations that do actually lead men astray did the law enjoin: "Thou shalt not make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, nor take of their daughters unto thy sons."
It seems like a truism to say that a greater amount of unhappiness has been produced by mismanagement, folly, and wickedness in the relation subsisting between men and women than by any other cause. G.o.d has given us the capacity of love to regulate this relation and be our safe guide in all matters connected with it. But frequently, from one cause or another, the government and direction of this relation are taken out of the hands of love and put into the thoroughly incompetent hands of convenience, or fancy, or selfish l.u.s.t. A marriage contracted from any such motive is sure to bring unhappiness of a long-continued, wearing and often heart-breaking kind. Such a marriage is often the form in which retribution comes for youthful selfishness and youthful licentiousness. You cannot cheat nature. Just in so far as you allow yourself to be ruled in youth by a selfish love of pleasure, in so far do you incapacitate yourself for love. You sacrifice what is genuine and satisfying, because provided by nature, to what is spurious, unsatisfying, and shameful. You cannot afterwards, unless by a long and bitter discipline, restore the capacity of warm and pure love in your heart. Every indulgence in which true love is absent is another blow given to the faculty of love within you--you make yourself in that capacity decrepit, paralyzed, dead. You have lost, you have killed the faculty that should be your guide in all these matters, and so you are at last precipitated without this guidance into a marriage formed from some other motive, formed therefore against nature, and in which you are the everlasting victim of nature"s relentless justice. Remember that you cannot have both things, a youth of loveless pleasure and a loving marriage--you must make your choice. For as surely as genuine love kills all evil desire; so surely does evil desire kill the very capacity of love, and blind utterly its wretched victim to the qualities that ought to excite love.
The language used of G.o.d in relation to this universal corruption strikes every one as remarkable. "It repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." This is what is usually termed anthropomorphism, _i.e._ the presenting of G.o.d in terms applicable only to man; it is an instance of the same mode of speaking as is used when we speak of G.o.d"s hand or eye or heart. These expressions are not absolutely true, but they are useful and convey to us a meaning which could scarcely otherwise be expressed. Some persons think that the use of these expressions proves that in early times G.o.d was thought of as wearing a body and as being very like ourselves in His inward nature. And even in our day we have been ridiculed for speaking of G.o.d as a magnified man. Now in the first place the use of such expressions does not prove that even the earliest worshippers of G.o.d believed Him to have eyes and hands and a body. _We_ freely use the same expressions though we have no such belief. We use them because our language is formed for human uses and on a human level, and we have no capacity to frame a better. And in the second place, though not absolutely true they do help us towards the truth. We are told that it degrades G.o.d to think of Him as hearing prayer and accepting praise; nay, that to think of Him as a Person at all, is to degrade Him. We ought to think of Him as the Absolutely Unknowable. But which degrades G.o.d most, and which exalts Him most? If we find that it is impossible to worship an absolutely unknowable, if we find that practically such an idea is a mere nonent.i.ty to us, and that we cannot in point of fact pay any homage or show any consideration to such an empty abstraction, is not this really to lower G.o.d? And if we find that when we think of Him as a Person, and ascribe to Him all human virtue in an infinite degree, we can rejoice in Him and worship Him with true adoration, is not this to exalt Him? While we call Him our Father we know that this t.i.tle is inadequate, while we speak of G.o.d as planning and decreeing we know that we are merely making shift to express what is inexpressible by us--we know that our thoughts of Him are never adequate and that to think of Him at all is to lower Him, is to think of Him inadequately; but when the practical alternative is such as it is, we find we do well to think of Him with the highest personal attributes we can conceive. For to refuse to ascribe such attributes to Him because this is degrading Him, is to empty our minds of any idea of Him which can stimulate either to worship or to duty. If by ridding our minds of all anthropomorphic ideas and refusing to think of G.o.d as feeling, thinking, acting as men do, we could thereby get to a really higher conception of Him, a conception which would practically make us worship Him more devotedly and serve Him more faithfully, then by all means let us do so. But if the result of refusing to think of Him as in many ways like ourselves, is that we cease to think of Him at all or only as a dead impersonal force, then this certainly is not to reach a higher but a lower conception of Him.
And until we see our way to some truly higher conception than that which we have of a Personal G.o.d, we had better be content with it.
In short, we do well to be humble, and considering that we know very little about existence of any kind, and least of all about G.o.d"s, and that our G.o.d has been presented to us in human form, we do well to accept Christ as our G.o.d, to worship, love, and serve Him, finding Him sufficient for all our wants of this life, and leaving it to other times to get the solution of anything that is not made plain to us in Him.
This is one boon that the science and philosophy of our day have unintentionally conferred upon us. They have laboured to make us feel how remote and inaccessible G.o.d is, how little we can know Him, how truly He is past finding out; they have laboured to make us feel how intangible and invisible and incomprehensible G.o.d is, but the result of this is that we turn with all the stronger longing to Him who is the Image of the Invisible G.o.d, and on whom a voice has fallen from the excellent glory, "This is My beloved Son, hear Him."
The Flood itself we need not attempt to describe. It has been remarked that though the narrative is vivid and forcible, it is entirely wanting in that sort of description which in a modern historian or poet would have occupied the largest s.p.a.ce. "We see nothing of the death-struggle; we hear not the cry of despair; we are not called upon to witness the frantic agony of husband and wife, and parent and child, as they fled in terror before the rising waters. Nor is a word said of the sadness of the one righteous man, who, safe himself, looked upon the destruction which he could not avert." The Chaldean tradition which is the most closely allied to the Biblical account is not so reticent. Tears are shed in heaven over the catastrophe, and even consternation affected its inhabitants, while within the ark itself the Chaldean Noah says, "When the storm came to an end and the terrible water-spout ceased, I opened the window and the light smote upon my face. I looked at the sea attentively observing, and the whole of humanity had returned to mud, like seaweed the corpses floated. I was seized with sadness; I sat down and wept and my tears fell upon my face."
There can be little question that this is a true description of Noah"s feeling. And the sense of desolation and constraint would rather increase in Noah"s mind than diminish. Month after month elapsed; he was coming daily nearer the end of his food, and yet the waters were unabated. He did not know how long he was to be kept in this dark, disagreeable place. He was left to do his daily work without any supernatural signs to help him against his natural anxieties. The floating of the ark and all that went on in it had no mark of G.o.d"s hand upon it. He was indeed _safe_ while others had been destroyed. But of what good was this safety to be? Was he ever to get out of this prison-house? To what straits was he to be first reduced? So it is often with ourselves. We are left to fulfil G.o.d"s will without any sensible tokens to set over against natural difficulties, painful and pinching circ.u.mstances, ill health, low spirits, failure of favourite projects and old hopes--so that at last we come to think that perhaps safety is all we are to have in Christ, a mere exemption from suffering of one kind purchased by the endurance of much suffering of another kind; that we are to be thankful for pardon on any terms; and escaping with our _life_, must be content though it be bare. Why, how often does a Christian wonder whether, after all, he has chosen a life that he can endure, whether the monotony and the restraints of the Christian life are not inconsistent with true enjoyment?
This strife between the felt restriction of the Christian life and the natural craving for abundant life, for entrance into all that the world can show us, and experience of all forms of enjoyment--this strife goes on unceasingly in the heart of many of us as it goes on from age to age in the world. Which is the true view of life, which is the view to guide _us_ in choosing and refusing the enjoyments and pursuits that are presented to us? Are we to believe that the ideal man for this life is he who has tasted all culture and delight, who believes in nature, recognising no fall and seeking for no redemption, and makes enjoyment his end; or he who sees that all enjoyment is deceptive till man is set right morally, and who spends himself on this, knowing that blood and misery must come before peace and rest, and crowned as our King and Leader, not with a garland of roses, but with the crown of Him Who is greatest of all, because servant of all--to Whom the most sunken is not repulsive, and Who will not abandon the most hopeless? This comes to be very much the question, whether this life is final or preparatory?--whether, therefore, our work in it should be to check lower propensities and develop and train all that is best in character, so as to be fit for highest life and enjoyment in a world to come--or should take ourselves as we find ourselves, and delight in this present world? whether this is a placid eternal state, in which things are very much as they should be, and in which therefore we can live freely and enjoy freely; or whether it is a disordered, initial condition in which our main task should be to do a little towards putting things on a better rail and getting at least the germ and small beginnings of future good planted in one another?
So that in the midst of all felt restriction, there is the highest hope, that one day we shall go forth from the narrow precincts of our ark, and step out into the free bright sunshine, in a world where there is nothing to offend, and that the time of our deprivation will seem to have been well spent indeed, if it has left within us a capacity permanently to enjoy love, holiness, justice, and all that is delighted in by G.o.d Himself.
The use made of this event in the New Testament is remarkable. It is compared by Peter to baptism, and both are viewed as ill.u.s.trations of salvation by destruction. The eight souls, he says, who were in the ark, "were saved by water." The water which destroyed the rest saved them.
When there seemed little hope of the G.o.dly line being able to withstand the influence of the unG.o.dly, the Flood came and left Noah"s family in a new world, with freedom to order all things according to their own ideas. In this Peter sees some a.n.a.logy to baptism. In baptism, the penitent who believes in the efficacy of Christ"s blood to purge away sin, lets his defilement be washed away and rises new and clean to the life Christ gives. In Christ the sinner finds shelter for himself and destruction for his sins. It is G.o.d"s wrath against sin that saves us by destroying our sins; just as it was the Flood which devastated the world, that at the same time, and thereby, saved Noah and his family.
In this event, too, we see the completeness of G.o.d"s work. Often we feel reluctant to surrender our sinful habits to so final a destruction as is implied in being one with Christ. The expense at which holiness is to be bought seems almost too great. So much that has given us pleasure must be parted with; so many old ties sundered, a condition of holiness presents an aspect of dreariness and hopelessness; like the world after the flood, not a moving thing on the surface of the earth, everything levelled, prostrate, and washed even with the ground; here the corpse of a man, there the carcase of a beast; here mighty forest timber swept p.r.o.ne like the rushes on the banks of a flooded stream, and there a city without inhabitants, everything dank, dismal and repellent. But this is only one aspect of the work; the beginning, necessary if the work is to be thorough. If any part of the sinful life remain it will spring up to mar what G.o.d means to introduce us to. Only that is to be preserved which we can take with us into our ark. Only that is to pa.s.s on into our life which we can retain while we are in true connection with Christ, and which we think can help us to live as His friends, and to serve Him zealously.
This event then gives us some measure by which we can know how much G.o.d will do to maintain holiness upon earth. In this catastrophe every one who strives after G.o.dliness may find encouragement, seeing in it the Divine earnestness of G.o.d for good and against evil. There is only one other event in history that so conspicuously shows that holiness among men is the object for which G.o.d will sacrifice everything else. There is no need now of any further demonstration of G.o.d"s purpose in this world and His zeal for carrying it out. And may it not be expected of us His children, that we stand in presence of the cross until our cold and frivolous hearts catch something of the earnestness, the "resisting unto blood striving against sin," which is exhibited there? The Flood has not been forgotten by almost any people under heaven, but its moral result is _nil_. But he whose memory is haunted by a dying Redeemer, by the thought of One Whose love found its most appropriate and practical result in dying for him, _is_ prevented from much sin, and finds in that love the spring of eternal hope, that which his soul in the deep privacy of his most sacred thoughts can feed upon with joy, that which he builds himself round and broods over as his inalienable possession.
VI.
_NOAH"S FALL._
GENESIS ix. 20-27.
Noah in the ark was in a position of present safety but of much anxiety.
No sign of any special protection on G.o.d"s part was given. The waters seem to stand at their highest level still; and probably the risk of the ark"s grounding on some impracticable peak, or precipitous hill-side, would seem as great a danger as the water itself. Five months had elapsed, and though the rain had ceased the sky was heavy and threatening, and every day now was worth many measures of corn in the coming harvest. A reflection of the anxiety within the ark is seen in the expression, "And G.o.d remembered Noah." It was needful to say so, for there was as yet no outward sign of this.
To such anxieties all are subject who have availed themselves of the salvation G.o.d provides. At the first there is an easy faith in G.o.d"s aid; there are many signs of His presence; the subjects in whom salvation operates have no disposition or temptation to doubt that G.o.d is with them and is working for them. But this initial stage is succeeded by a very different state of things. We seem to be left to ourselves to cope with the world and all its difficulties and temptations in our own strength. Much as we crave some sign that G.o.d remembers us, no sign is given. We no longer receive the same urgent impulses to holiness of life; we have no longer the same freshness in devotion as if speaking to a G.o.d at hand. There is nothing which of itself and without reasoning about it says to us, Here is G.o.d"s hand upon me.
In fact, the great part of our life has to be spent under these conditions, and we need to hold some well-ascertained principle regarding G.o.d"s dealings, if our faith is to survive. And here in G.o.d"s treatment of Noah we see that G.o.d may as certainly be working for us when not working directly upon us, as when His presence is palpable. His absence from us is as needful as His presence. The clouds are as requisite for our salvation as the sunny sky. When therefore we find that salvation from sin is a much slower and more anxious matter than we once expected it to be, we are not to suppose that G.o.d is not hearing our prayers. When Noah day by day cried to G.o.d for relief, and yet night after night found himself "cribb"d, cabin"d, and confined," with no sign from G.o.d but such as faith could apprehend, depend upon it he had very different feelings from those with which he first stepped into the ark.
And when we are left to one monotonous rut of duty and to an unchanging and dry form of devotion, when we are called to learn to live by faith not by sight, to learn that G.o.d"s purposes with us are spiritual, and that slow and difficult growth in self-command and holiness is the best proof that He hears our prayers, we must strive to believe that this also is a needful part of our salvation; and we must especially be on our guard against supposing that as G.o.d has ceased to disclose Himself to us, and so to make faith easy, we may cease to disclose ourselves to Him.
For this is the natural and very frequent result of such an experience.
Discouraged by the obscurity of G.o.d"s ways and the difficulty of believing when the mind is not sustained by success or by new thoughts or manifest tokens of G.o.d"s presence, we naturally cease to look for any clear signs of G.o.d"s concernment about our state, and rest from all anxious craving to know G.o.d"s will about us. To this temptation the majority of Christian people yield, and allow themselves to become indifferent to spiritual truth and increasingly interested in the non-mysterious facts of the present world, attending to present duties in a mechanical way, seeing that their families have enough to eat and that all in their little ark are provided for. But to this temptation Noah did not yield. Though to all appearance abandoned by G.o.d, he did what he could to ascertain what was beyond his immediate sight and present experience. He sent out his raven and his dove. Not satisfied with his first enquiry by the raven, which could flit from one piece of floating garbage to another, he sent out the dove, and continued to do so at intervals of seven days.
Noah sent out the raven first, probably because it had been the most companionable bird and seemed the wisest, preferable to "the silly dove;" but it never came back with G.o.d"s message. And so has one often found that an enquiry into G.o.d"s will, the examination, for example, of some portion of Scripture, undertaken with a prospect of success and with good human helps, has failed, and has failed in this peculiar ravenlike way; the enquiry has settled down on some worthless point, on some rotting carcase, on some subject of pa.s.sing interest or worldly learning, and brings back no message of G.o.d to us. On the other hand, the continued use, Sabbath after Sabbath, of G.o.d"s appointed means, and the patient waiting for some message of G.o.d to come to us through what seems a most unlikely messenger, will often be rewarded. It may be but a single leaf plucked off that we get, but enough to convince us that G.o.d has been mindful of our need, and is preparing for us a habitable world.
Many a man is like the raven, feeding himself on the destruction of others, satisfied with knowing how G.o.d has dealt with others. He thinks he has done his part when he has found out who has been sinning and what has been the result. But the dove will not settle on any such resting-place, and is dissatisfied until for herself she can pluck off some token that G.o.d"s anger is turned away and that now there is peace on earth. And if only you wait G.o.d"s time and renew your endeavours to find such tokens, some a.s.surance will be given you, some green and growing thing, some living part, however small, of the new creation which will certify you of your hope.
On the first day of the first month, New Year"s day, Noah removed the covering of the ark, which seems to have stranded on the Armenian tableland, and looked out upon the new world. He cannot but have felt his responsibility, as a kind of second Adam. And many questionings must have arisen in his mind regarding the relation of the new to the old.
Was there to be any connection with the old world at all, or was all to begin afresh? Were the promises, the traditions, the events, the genealogies of the old world of any significance now? The Flood distinctly marked the going out of one order of things and the establishment of another. Man"s career and development, or what we call history, had not before the Flood attained its goal. If this development was not to be broken short off, and if G.o.d"s purpose in creation was to be fulfilled, then the world must still go on. Some worlds may perhaps die young, as individuals die young. Others endure through hair-breadth escapes and constant dangers, find their way like our planet through showers of fire, and pa.s.s without collision the orbits of huge bodies, carrying with them always, as our world does, the materials of their destruction within themselves. But catastrophes do not cut short, but evolve G.o.d"s purposes. The Flood came that G.o.d"s purpose might be fulfilled. The course of nature was interrupted, the arrangements of social and domestic life were overturned, all the works of men were swept away that this purpose might be fulfilled. It was expedient that one generation should die for all generations; and this generation having been taken out of the way, fresh provision is made for the co-operation of man with G.o.d. On man"s part there is an emphatic acknowledgment of G.o.d by sacrifice; on G.o.d"s part there is a renewed grant to man of the world and its fulness, a renewed a.s.surance of His favour.
This covenant with Noah was on the plane of nature. It is man"s natural life in the world which is the subject of it. The sacredness of life is its great lesson. Men might well wonder whether G.o.d did not hold life cheap. In the old world violence had prevailed. But while Lamech"s sword may have slain its thousands, G.o.d had in the Flood slain tens of thousands. The covenant, therefore, directs that human life must be reverenced. The primal blessing is renewed. Men are to multiply and replenish the earth; and the slaughter of a man was to be reckoned a capital crime; and the maintenance of life was guaranteed by a special clause, securing the regularity of the seasons. If, then, you ask, Was this just a beginning again where Adam began? Did G.o.d just wipe out man as a boy wipes his slate clean, when he finds his calculation is turning out wrong? Had all these generations learned nothing; had the world not grown at all since its birth?--the answer is, it had grown, and in two most important respects,--it had come to the knowledge of the uniformity of nature, and the necessity of human law. This great departure from the uniformity of nature brought into strong relief its normal uniformity, and gave men their first lesson in the recognition of a G.o.d who governs by fixed laws. And they learned also from the Flood that wickedness must not be allowed to grow unchecked and attain dimensions which nothing short of a flood can cope with.
Fit symbol of this covenant was the rainbow. Seeming to unite heaven and earth, it pictured to those primitive people the friendliness existing between G.o.d and man. Many nations have looked upon it as not merely one of the most beautiful and striking objects in nature, but as the messenger of heaven to men. And arching over the whole horizon, it exhibits the all-embracing universality of the promise. They accepted it as a sign that G.o.d has no pleasure in destruction, that He does not give way to moods, that He does not always chide, that if weeping may endure for a night joy is sure to follow. If any one is under a cloud, leading a joyless, hopeless, heartless life, if any one has much apparent reason to suppose that G.o.d has given him up to catastrophe, and lets things run as they may, there is some satisfaction in reading this natural emblem and recognising that without the cloud, nay, without the cloud breaking into heavy sweeping rains, there cannot be the bow, and that no cloud of G.o.d"s sending is permanent, but will one day give place to unclouded joy. Let the prayer of David be yours, "I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. Let, I pray Thee, Thy merciful kindness be for my comfort according to Thy word unto Thy servant."
It may be felt that the matters about which G.o.d spoke to Noah were barely religious, certainly not spiritual. But to take G.o.d as our G.o.d in any one particular is to take Him as our G.o.d for all. If we can eat our daily bread as given to us by our Father in heaven, then we are heirs of the righteousness which is by faith. It is because we wait for some wonderful and out-of-the-way proofs that G.o.d is keeping faith with us that we so much lack a real and living faith. If you think of G.o.d only in connection with some spiritual difficulty, or if you are waiting for some critical spiritual experience about which you may deal with G.o.d,--if you are not transacting with Him about your daily work, about your temporal wants and difficulties, about your friendships and your tastes, about that which makes up the bulk of your thought, feeling, and action, then you have yet to learn what living with G.o.d means. You have yet to learn that G.o.d the Infinite Creator of all is present in all your life. We are not in advance of Noah, but behind him, if we cannot speak to G.o.d about common things.