*Reprinted from _The Study_.
Will God indeed dwell upon the earth? asked Solomon. Will God indeed
work with man on the earth? asks the pushing, working spirit of to-day.
Has man a right to expect a special lending of the infinite power to
help out his human endeavors? Does God put special forces to open some
doors, close others, influence some men to come to his help, hinder
others, bring to bear influences benign, restrain those malign, and
invigorate a man's own powers so that his arm has the strength of ten,
because his heart is pure enough for God to work in it and through it?
If this is so, in what fields, under what conditions, to what extent,
and in accordance with what laws may we expect aid?
First, it is evident that there is power not ourselves. We did not
make this world. We did not put into it even the lowest force,
gravitation. It is more than our minds can compass to measure its
power. We have no arithmetic to tell its power on every mote in the
sunbeam, or flower, or grain-head bowing toward the earth, tree brought
down with a crash, or avalanche with thunder. Much less can we measure
the power that holds the earth to the sun spite of its measureless
centrifugal force. We did not make the next highest force, cohesion.
The particles of rock and iron cohere with so great an energy that
gravitation cannot overcome it. But it is not by our energy. We did
not make the next highest force, chemical affinity, that masters both
gravitation and cohesion. Water, the result of chemical affinity
between oxygen and hydrogen, can be rent into its constituent elements
with nothing less than a stream of lightning. We did not make the next
highest force, vegetative life. That masters gravitation, and lifts up
the tree in spite of it; masters cohesion--the tree's rootlets tear
asunder the particles of stone; masters chemical affinity--it takes the
oxygen from air and water. We did not create that force, measureless
to our minds. We say it must have come out of some omnipotence greater
than all of them. The conclusion of all minds is, there is a power not
ourselves.
It is unthinkable that these forces before mentioned should have
originated themselves. It is equally so that they could maintain and
continue themselves. There must be some continual upholding by a word
of power.
It is equally plain that there is intelligence, thought, and plan
behind these forces. They are not blind Samsons grinding in a
prison-house, and liable at any moment to bring down in utter ruin
every pillar of the universe on which they can put their hands.
If intelligent and planful, there must be personality. We may as well
call it by the name by which it is universally known, God.
Now does this intelligent and powerful personality know our plans and
lend his powers to the accomplishment of our purposes? It is better to
put it the other way. Mr. Lincoln taught us the truer statement when
one said to him, in the awful anxiety of the war, "I think God is on
our side;" he answered, "My great concern is to know if we are on God's
side." So our question is better thus: Does this intelligent, powerful
personality accept and use our energy in the accomplishment of his
plans?
That will depend on what he wants done. If he only wants mountains
lifted, he can put the shoulder of an earthquake under the strata of a
continent and tilt them up edgewise, or toss up a hundred miles of
strata and let them come down the other side up. If he wants mountains
carried hence and cast into the sea, he can bring rivers to carry for
thousands of years numberless tons. If he wants worlds held in
rhythmic relations to their sun, he can take gravitation. Man is of no
use; he cannot reach so far.
But if this being has anything to do that he cannot do, he will gladly
welcome man's aid. Has he? Yes. Obviously he wants things done he
cannot do alone. Worlds are dead. Trees do not think. Morning stars
may sing together, but they cannot love. None of them have character.
None of them have conscious responsiveness to the full tides of power
and love that flush the universe. None of them are permanent, or worth
keeping forever. They are only scaffolding. He wants something
greater than he can make; something as great as God and man and angels
together can make. He wants not mere matter acted upon from without,
but intelligences active in themselves; wants not mere miles of
granite, but hearts responsive to love, and character that is sturdier
than granite, more enduring than the hills that seem to be everlasting,
and of so great a price that a whole world is of less value than a
single soul, and of such permanence that it shall flourish in immortal
youth when worlds, short-lived in comparison, shall have passed away.
God can make worlds in plenty, but he wants something so much better
that they shall be mere parade-grounds for the training of his armies.
Are there proofs that God's forces are cooperating with ours? Many.
Gravitation holds us to the earth. We do not drift, all sides up
successively, in space or chaos. We never want a breath but there are
oceans of it rushing to answer our hunger for it.
But especially do we undertake all our more definite efforts with a
full expectation of the aid of the forces without us. Man takes to
agriculture with a relish that indicates that the soil and he are akin.
He expects all its energies to cooperate with him. He plants the grain
or seed expecting that all its vegetative forces will cowork with his
plans. Every energy of earth, air, water, and the far-off sun work
into his plans as if they had no other end in all their being. If a
man wants a house, he expects the solidity of the rock, all the
adaptations of wood that has been growing for a century, expects the
beauty of the fir tree, the pine, and the box to come together to
beautify the place of his dwelling.
There are other forces into which man can put his scepter of power and
hand of mastery. They all work for and with him. Does he want his
burdens carried? The river will convey the Indian on a log or the
armaments of the greatest nations. The wind fits itself into the
shoulder of his sail on the sea, and steam does more work on the land
than all the human race together. Does he want swiftness? The
lightning comes and goes between the ends of the earth saying, "Here am
I." Obviously all these kinds of forces are always on hand to work
into man's plans.
Is not our whole question settled? If these fundamental forces, these
oceans of air and energy, forces so great that man cannot measure them,
so delicate and fine that man does not discover them in thousands of
years, are all waiting and palpitating to rush into the service of man
to advance his plans, and hint of plans larger than he ever dreamed,
until he grows great by handling these ineffable factors, how can it be
otherwise than that the energies, thoughts, and loves back of these
forces, and out of which they come, and of which they are the visible
signs and exponents, are working together with man? Then, in all
probability, nay in all certainty, all other forces, whether they be
thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, things present or
things to come, will also lend all their energies to the help of man.
God does not aid in the lowest and leave us to ourselves in the
highest. He does not feed the body and let the soul famish, does not
help us to the meat that perishes and let us starve for the bread of
eternal life.
Scripture passages, literally thousands in number, proclaim God's
control of the regular operations of nature, his sovereignty over
birth, life, death, disease, afflictions, and prosperity, over what we
call accident, his execution of righteous retributions, bringing of
deliverance, setting up thrones, and casting down princes. He upholds
all things by the direct exercise of his power. "The uniformities of
nature are his ordinary method of working; its irregularities his
method upon occasional condition; its interferences his method under
the pressure of a higher law." There can be no general providence
which is not special, no care for the whole which does not include care
for all the parts, no provided safety for the head which does not
number all the hairs. The Old Testament doctrine of a special and
minute providence over the chosen nation is expanded by Christ's loving
teaching and ministrations into an equal care for the personal
individual (Matt. vii, 11; xviii, 19; Heb. iv, 16). The cold glacial
period of human fear that poured its ice floe over the mind of man,
making him feel like an orphaned race in a godless world, has retired
before the gentle beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and the winter is
past, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds
and hearts has commenced.
It is everywhere recognized that the great outcome of a man's life is
not the title to a thousand acres. He is soon dispossessed. It is not
all the bonds and money he can hold. A dead man's hands are empty. It
is not reputation that the winds blow away. But it is character that
he acquires and carries with him. He has a fidelity to principle that
is like Abdiel's. He is faithful among the faithless. He has
allegiance to right that the lure of all the kingdoms of the earth
cannot swerve for a moment. He counts soul so much above the body that
no fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont, sway
him for a moment from adherence to the interests of soul as against
even the existence of the body.
Now, how has such an eminence of character been attained? Not
altogether by individual evolution. Ancestral tendencies, parental
example, the great force of strong, eternal principles, the moral
muscle acquired in the gymnasium of temptation, and confessedly and
especially a spiritual force vouchsafed from without, have wrought out
this greatest result of heaven and earth. Of some men you expect
nothing but goodness and greatness. They would belie all the
tendencies of their blood to be otherwise than good. Some are
constantly trained under the mighty influences of great principles that
sway men as much as gravitation sways the worlds. What could be
expected of the men of '76 when the air was electric with patriotism?
What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the
sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the
earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and
inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be
expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter
following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves
exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be expected of men who
have been tried in the furnace of temptation till they are pure gold?
Nay, more, what can be expected of men who have in these temptations
been strengthened out of God? Besides the strength of development by
the resistance of evil, they have found that God made a way of escape,
that he strengthened, them and that they were thus by supernal power
able to bear it. Nay, rather, what may not be expected of such men?
But we will not forget that this great outcome is precisely the plan of
God for every man's life, and that when man works he finds that there
are forces outside of him thoroughly cooperative with him. He starts a
rock down the mountain side, but gravitation reaches out ready fingers
and hurls it a thousand times faster and faster. He launches his ship
on the sea and the wind and steam carry it thousands of miles. He
speaks his quiet breath into the ear of the phone and electricity
carries it in every tone and inflection of personal quality a thousand
miles. He vows, and works for purity and greatness of personal
character, and a thousand gravitations of love, a thousand great winds
of Pentecost, a thousand vital principles on which all greatness hangs,
a thousand influences of other men, and especially a thousand personal
aids of a present God, cooperate with his plans and works.
Of course every man who believes in a new type so high that good birth,
wealth, culture, education, and broad opportunity cannot attain it
believes in the divine co-operation to that end. It must be born of
the Spirit. God sends forth his Spirit into our hearts crying, Abba,
Father! It pleases the Father himself to reveal his Son in us.
Not only is this cooperation true in regard to the beginning of this
higher life, but especially so in regard to the development and
perfection of that life into the stature of perfect manhood in Christ
Jesus. By continuous effort to lead into all truth, by intensity of
endeavor that can only be represented by groanings that cannot be
worded in human speech, the perfection of saints is sought.
And in the final glorification of those saints every man will say
nothing of his own efforts, but all the praise will be unto him who
hath redeemed us unto God, and washed us in his blood.
To what extent, then, may we expect God will lend his forces to work
out our plans? First, in so far as those forces have to do with the
maturing and perfecting of our character they become his plans. No
energy will be withheld. All our plans should be such. The end in
character may often be attained as well by failure of our plans as by
success. God has to choose the poor in this world's things, rich in
faith, to do his great work. And he has to make "the best laid schemes
o' mice and men gang aft a-gley" to get the desired outcome of
character. He is then working with, not against, us. He would rather
have any star for his crown of glory than tons of perishable gold.
But outside of our plans and work for ourselves what cooperation may we
expect in our plans and work for others?
Every preacher knows that for spiritual work in saving others the word
of the Lord is true, "Without me ye can do nothing." There must be an
outpouring of the Spirit or there is no Pentecost. Over against that
settled conviction is the thrice-blessed command and assurance of the
Master, "Go preach my Gospel; and lo, I am with you alway" (blessed
iteration), "unto the end of the world." That has not yet come.
But there are other enterprises men must push--mines to be dug,
railroads to be surveyed and built, slaves to be emancipated, farms to
be cultivated, mischiefs framed by a law to be averted, charities to be
exercised, schools to be founded, and generally a living to be gotten.
To what extent may we expect divine aid?
First, all these things are his purposes and plans. But since it is
necessary for our development that we do our level best, he will not do
what we can. We can plant and water, but God only can give the
increase. Even the fable maker says that a teamster, whose wagon was
stuck in the mud, seeing Jupiter Omnipotens riding by on the chariot of
the clouds, dropped on his knees and implored his help. "Get up, O
lazy one!" said Jupiter; "clear away the mud, put your shoulder to the
wheel, and whip up your horses." We may call on God to open the rock
in the dry and thirsty land where no water is, but not to lift our
teacups. It is no use to ask God for a special shower when deep
plowing is all that is needed. It is no use to ask God to build
churches, send missionaries, endow schools, and convert the world, till
we have done our best.
But when we have done our best what may we expect? All things. They
shall work together for good to those who love God enough to do their
best for him in any plane of work. One could preach fifty sermons on
the great works done by men, obviously too great for man's
accomplishment. Time would fail me to tell of Moses, Gideon, Paul,
Luther, Wesley, Wilberforce, William of Orange, Washington, John Brown,
Abe Lincoln, and thousands more of whom this world was not worthy, who,
undeniably by divine aid, wrought righteousness. One of the great sins
of our age is that men do not see God immanent in all things. We have
found so many ways of his working that we call laws, so many segments
of his power, that we have forgotten him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will. A sustainer is as necessary as a creator.
There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh
all in all. The next great service to be done by human philosophy is
to bring back God in human thought into his own world. Since these
things are so, what are the conditions under which we may work the
works of God by his power?
First, they must be his works, not ours as opposed to his, but ours as
included in his. All our works may be wrought in God, if we do his
works, follow his plans, and are aided by his strength.
Second, they must be attempted with the right motive of glorifying God.
Christ is the pattern. He came not to do his own will, but the will of
him who sent him. And he did always the things that pleased him. In
our fervid desires for the accomplishment of some great thing we should
be as willing it should be accomplished by another as by ourselves.
The personal pride is often a fly in the sweet-smelling savor. God
would rather have a given work not done, or done by another, than to
have one of his dear ones puffed up with sinful pride. Great Saul must
often be removed and the work be left undone, or be done by some humble
David.
"Inaudible voices call us, and we go;
Invisible hands restrain us, and we stay;
Forces, unfelt by our dull senses, sway
Our wavering wills, and hedge us in the way
We call our own, because we do not know.
"Are we, then, slaves of ignorant circumstance?
Nay, God forbid!
God holds the world, not blind, unreasoning chance!"
How shall we secure the cooperative power? There is power of every
kind everywhere in plenty. All the Niagaras and Mississippis have run
to waste since they began to thunder and flow. Greater power is in the
wind everywhere. One can rake up enough electricity to turn all the
wheels of a great city whenever he chooses to start his rake. The sky
is full of Pentecosts. Power enough, but how shall we belt on? By
fasting, prayer, and by willing to do the will of God. We have so much
haste that we do not tarry at Jerusalem for fullness of power. Moses
was forty years in the wilderness: Daniel fasted and prayed for one and
twenty days. We are told to pray without ceasing, and that there are
kinds of devils that go not out except at the command of those who fast
and pray.
"More things are wrought by prayer than
This world dreams of."
The Bible is a record of achievements impossible to man. They are
achievements of leaderships, emancipations, governments, getting money
for building God's houses, making strong the weak, waxing valiant in
fight, and turning the world upside down. The trouble with many of our
modern saints is that they seek for purity only instead of power,
ecstasy instead of excellence, self-satisfaction in a garden of spices
instead of a baptism that straightens them out in a garden of agony.
They are seekers of spiritual joys instead of good governments, cities
well policed and sewered, with every street safe for the feet of
innocence. The next revelation of new possibilities of grace that will
break out of the old Word will be that of power.
How will this divine aid manifest itself? In the giving of wisdom for
our plans and their execution. God will not help in any foolish plans.
He wants no St. Peter's built in a village of six hundred people, no
temple, except on a Moriah to which a whole nation goes up. Due
proportion is a law of all his creations. The disciples planned not
only to begin at Jerusalem, but to stay there. Their plans were wrong,
and they had to be driven out by persecutions and martyrdoms (Acts
viii, 4). But Africa, Europe, and Asia eagerly received the light
which Jerusalem resisted. Some ministers to-day stay by their fine
Jerusalems when the kitchens of the surrounding country wait to welcome
them. The Spirit suffered not Paul to go into Bithynia, but sent him
to Macedonia. Had he then persisted in going to Asia his work would
have been in vain.
We may expect wisdom in the choice of the human agents we select. Half
a general's success lies in his choice of lieutenants. No class leader
should be appointed nor steward nominated till after prayer for divine
guidance. God has more efficient men for his Church than we know of.
He is thinking of Paul when we see only Matthias (Acts i, 26). When
Paul had to depart asunder from Barnabas God sent him Silas, the
fellow-singer in the dungeon, and Timothy, who was dearer to him than
any other man.
We may expect opposition to be diminished or thwarted. Let Hezekiah
spread every letter of Rab-shakeh before the Lord and pray (2 Kings
xix, 14). The answer will be, "I have heard" (v. 20). Let the answer
to every slander that Gashmu repeateth among the heathen be, "O Lord,
strengthen my hands" (Neh. vi, 9); "My God, think thou upon Tobiah and
Sanballat according to these their works" (v. 14). Then all the
heathen and enemies will "perceive that this work was wrought of our
God" (v. l6). "When a man's ways please the Lord, he maketh even his
enemies to be at peace with him." The purpose of the manifestation of
the Son of God was "that he might destroy the works of the devil" (1
John iii, 8).
Lastly, we may expect actual help. These plans are all dear to God.
He wishes them all accomplished. They have been wisely made.
Opposition has been diminished. It only remains that our hearts be
open to guidance and strengthening. Moses was sure I AM had sent him.
Elijah had the very words to be uttered to Ahab put into his mouth.
Nehemiah told the people that for building a city "the joy of the Lord
is your strength." God strengthened the right hand of Cyrus. The
three Hebrew children and Daniel knew that God was able to deliver them
from fire and lions. "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall
give thee the desires of thy heart." And the great promise of the Lord
to be with his disciples to the end is not so much a promise for
comfort as for the accomplishment of their mission. Paul said, "I can
do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." And all great
doers for God, in all ages, have gladly testified that they have been
girded for their work by the Almighty.
The designed outcome of this paper is that every reader should get a
fresh revelation of the immanency of God in the kingdom of nature and
grace; that the reader is more intimately related to him and his plans
than is gravitation; that there are laws as imperative, exact, and sure
to yield results in the mental and spiritual realms as in the material;
that he is a part of God's agencies, and that all of God's forces are a
part of his; that he may sing with new meaning,
"We for whose sakes all nature stands
And stars their courses move;"
that in the burning vividness of this new conception each man may
boldly undertake things for God--conversions, purifications, missionary
enlargements, business enterprises--that he knows are too great for
himself; that he may find new helps for spiritual victories as great as
this age has found for material triumphs in steam and electricity; and
that in all things man may be uplifted and God thereby glorified.
How shall it be done?
First, by a vivid conception that cooperation is designed, provided
for, and expected. We are children of God; there can be but one great
end through the ages in the universe. There should be cooperation of
every force. There have been thousands of evident cooperations--waters
divided and burned by celestial fire, Pharaohs rebuked, Ninevehs warned,
exiles recalled, Jerusalems rebuilded, Luthers upheld, preachers
of today changed from waning, not desired, half-over-the-dead-line
ministers into vigorous, flaming heralds of the Gospel, who possessed
tenfold power to what they had before; we ourselves personally helped
in manifest and undeniable instances, and so have come to believe that
God can do anything, anywhere, if he can get the right kind of a man.
Promises of aid are abundant. Heaven and earth shall pass away sooner
than one jot or tittle of these words fail. We are invited to test them:
"Come now, and prove me herewith, and see if I will not open the windows
of heaven once more, as at the deluge, and pour you out a blessing that
there shall not be room enough to receive it."
Second, select some definite work too great for us to do alone, as the
preparation of a sermon that shall have unusual power of persuasion to
change action, the conduct of a prayer meeting of remarkable interest,
the casting out of some devil of evil speech or action, the conversion
of one individual, the raising of more money for some of God's
purposes, and then go about the work, not alone, but in such a way that
God can lead and we help. Let the fasting and prayer not be lacking.
When the right direction comes let Jonathan take his armor-bearer and
climb up on his hands and knees against the Philistines, let Paul go to
Macedonia, Peter to Cornelius, Wesley send help to America. Bishop
Foss said, in regard to several crises in a most serious sickness, that
Christ always arrived before it came. So in regard to work to be done.
The Lord was in Nineveh before Jonah, in Caesarea before Peter, and
will be in the heart of every sinner we seek to get converted before we
arrive. Any man who wants to do an immense business should seek a good
partner. We are workers together with God. What is being done worthy
of the copartnership?