Or

the rejection of their nation and the admission of the Gentiles in their stead to the privileges of the Christian Kingdom, he breaks into the well-known passage, "O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments and how unsearchable are His ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? who hath first given unto Him, and recompense shall be made him? For of Him, and by Him, and in Him, are all things: to Him be glory for ever, Amen." And, after all that we can gather by way of explanation of the ways of Providence from Sacred Scripture and the sayings of the Fathers, there will always remain a great deal more than what we can understand; nay indeed, we may most truly say that God would not be God. if we could understand all that He does. What we can gather comes in the main to this—we can see certain great principles which are readily observed in our thoughts concerning God and His dealings with His creatures, and we can feel sure that there is much which we do not understand in the application of those principles by Him. But whether in any given case He follows one law of His dealings or another law, what is the particular reason for this or for that among His multitudinous acts to individuals, all this is beyond our ken. And now, just as we can gather, from what our Lord said afterwards to His Apostles, a considerable light as to His meaning in the action to which the words of the text refer,

1 Romans xi. 33—36.

although He said that the full intelligence of His action was not to be given to them at that time, so we may most profitably dwell a little on some of the principles of the government of God which are not. altogether unknown to us, and thus enhance to our own minds the greatness of that full revelation of His works which is to be made to us at the Last Day.

It is not as if there were no real difficulties, even to Christians, in the daily government of God. We do not doubt that all He does is, and must be, wise and just and good, but it is the same with some of the events which we see in Providence, as it is with the articles of our faith. We know that they must be true, and we believe them because we have the authority of God for their truth, but we do not understand them, we take them on faith. So also is it with many things in the government of God—we take them as just and good and wise, as we ought, because He has done them, but we do not fully understand them, and the full understanding of them is reserved for that great revelation of the ways of God of which I am speaking. And those who are not Christians, many even who are Christians, but without intelligence in the ways of God, and without due reverence for His infinite majesty, are found to rail against and writhe under the arrangements of His providence, against which they murmur and complain almost blasphemously. It is in answer to such complaints that we find so much in Scripture and in the Fathers of explanation as to the ways of Providence. Not that either

the Apostles or the Fathers themselves thought that they could fully comprehend the ways of Him Who is above all flight of human or angelic thought, but that they thought it right to furnish those for whom they wrote with certain principles by which to silence objectors and on which they might at the same time feed their own souls in thankful contemplation of the Divine works and ways.

Thus we find St. Paul, in more than one place, laying down the principle of the sovereignty of God as an answer to the cavils of those who questioned His justice and wisdom. "O man," says the Apostle, "who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto Him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus? or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and one unto dishonour?" And indeed this is one of the most constant mistakes which people make in their judgments of God. They forget that He is absolutely free in the distribution of His gifts, that He may choose whom He wills for the great exhibitions of His favour, and that though it is against His nature to be unjust, or cruel, or tyrannical, He is not bound, and He will not bind Himself, to give exactly the same favours to one as to another. Another simple answer to the complaints which are so often made against Providence is one which is but the commonest and simplest matter of reason. Such complaints might be made against the maker of any complicated machine or the contriver of any

1 Romans ix. 20, 21.

long and combined system of action, like the campaign of an army, or the order of some great drama, or anything of that kind, and the answer is that we can only see a part at a time and that we are unable to judge of it until we can see the whole. God's dealings with the race of man, with nations, and with individual persons, are a great whole, beginning in time and reaching on to eternity, and it is but necessary that He should do many things, in the course of "this great complication and combination, of which we do not see the purpose at the moment when they are done. These are general principles, and by means of these we can answer a great number of the difficulties of which I am speaking.

But there are a score of others which men put to themselves in their wayward, foolish habit of finding fault with the decrees of God, and which will not receive their final solution until we see all things which are now hidden uncovered in the light of day. Why do we not know whether we are in the grace or out of the grace of God? Why are even the servants of God afflicted with the perpetual doubt whether they shall be saved? Why are the wicked, the heirs of misery, not forewarned of the doom that awaits them? Why do we not know when we have to die and how long we have to live? The hour of our death is the one most important moment for us, on which eternity depends, and why do we not know when it is to come? Why do the wicked prosper in the world? Why are the just afflicted in the world? Is it not the world of God,

T

and has not our Lord come down for the purpose of redeeming it, and why then is vice rampant and sin unpunished, and virtue persecuted and humility laughed at, and the whole favour of the world given to the enemies of God? Why do the good die young, when they might live on and be so great a benefit to the Church and to the world, and on the other hand the wicked live to a green old age, prospering all their lives, and by their prosperity, leading others to blaspheme, and loading the earth with the moral and physical ruins which they cause all around them? Why are children snatched away even before baptism, why do they suffer for the sins of their parents, while hoary-headed sinners are spared to live out their days? Why is the grace of perseverance denied or not granted to many who have begun well, and why are many others who have offended God for long years, saved at the very last by a death-bed repentance? Why do the servants of God themselves fall, and why are any, whom God has made capable of eternal happiness, plunged for ever into Hell?

IV.

Such are some of the questions which are constantly arising in the minds of men as they speculate on the action of God in the government of the world, and I suppose that there are few who have not at some time or other listened to the doubts which such speculations suggest. Now, I am not here to answer these questions to-day, for though there is not one of them which has not a good and