and that while it is most certain that in the end His promises will be fulfilled, we must trust in them even when we cannot understand His immediate acts. Is not this conveyed in His final injunction to Job to consider behemoth and leviathan, the hippopotamus and the crocodile-the one huge and harmless that eateth grass like an ox,' the other cased in scales of armour, with murderous teeth and fatal sweep of tail, living on slaughter ? We cannot understand the reason for existence of creatures so different, and in one case so hurtful, yet we must know that both are created for a purpose inexplicable. The world is full of things we cannot understand-as our own fate on earth is beyond our understanding—but we have to recognise by means of experience that everything God does is wise, and is done in the wisdom of infinite Love. So is the story of Genesis confirmed by the story of Job, and so are both confirmed by observation of all ages down to this present day. For consider the lessons of our own daily life. 'Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat CHAP. VI] LABOUR AND SORROW 101 of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.' True indeed is this, as we here so well know, of those who labour in the fields, who turn the soil with the slow-moving plough, whose work is doubled by the growth of noxious weeds, who through the long summer days and winter's frosts have their task of incessant labour till night brings rest to wearied limbs. But alike is the lot of all the other trades: the miller and the baker, the spinner and the weaver, the mason and the carpenter, the railwaymen who carry the produce, the policeman who guards them from thieves, the doctor who tends the sick, the lawyer and the judge who settle disputes, the legislator who makes the laws, the journalist and the author who collect news and furnish our minds with ideas-every man has to labour, or else live on the stores of labour, and it is hard to say whose among them all is the most exhausting toil. But all are meanwhile learning in the school of God. Each in doing his own work sees how it fits into and helps on the work of all the others. Each of us sees the rewards of industry and the penalties of sloth, at every moment we see in others and we feel in ourselves the consequences of good and evil, the miseries that come from yielding to temptation, the happiness that follows on the performance of duty. Thus the curse of toil teaches; thus, imposed as the result of disobedience, it becomes the instrument for recalling to obedience; and thus the death decreed in the loss of God's presence becomes the way of restoring us to it and to life. There are It varies indeed in its influence. some blessed souls who learn the lesson quickly, and who are early taken back to God. There are some so hard in heart that they will not learn it, and these God may send out to some other form of penalty or purifying fire, into the mysteries of which we may not enter. But to everyone yet here on earth there is given from moment to moment some fresh suggestion towards the great end. To the labourer in the fields there is the ever-new marvel of the springing blade and the ripening ear; to the workman in the factory the wondrous laws of matter that concentrate the power of a thousand horses in one small room; to the man of literature or science the thoughts of all times open to the mind, and the successive discovery of miracles rewarding research; to all who, having eyes can see and having ears can hear, CHAP. VI] RESCUE FROM DEATH 103 there are the evidences about our paths of God s care for His creatures. These are for the natural man; to the religious mind there is the treble assurance in the witness of the water and the Spirit and the blood. All these forces tend in one and the same direction, the rescuing of mankind from death. Not from the death of the body, for that is but the gate of life, but from the death of the soul which is its separation from God. So are we brought back to Life. 1 Truly then said St. Paul, The law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.' The schoolmaster teaches and corrects, punishes and rewards; the scholar learns by repetition of lesson -some willingly, some unwillingly, but by varying methods all are made at last to understand and to learn. So to us are the commandments of God in the discipline of this life. They make our souls fit for the everlasting presence of God by teaching how vain is rebellion, how blessed is submission to His will. When that is at length learned there will be no more temptation, because we shall have learned to defy it. Then having eaten of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, and found how bitter is the evil and how sweet the good, we shall finally 1 Gal. iii. 24. |