03 - Chapter 03

’ DIFFERENT CONCEPTIONS OF PROVIDENCE IN THE BIBLE.’ IN the idea of God there is involved the idea of His relation to the world the world of Nature and of man. Our work is now to find how the latter part of this relation was conceived in Jewish thought within Bible times. Like all other nations, the Jews felt that they were having to do with a higher Power than themselves. How this Power was dealing with them became a subject of reflective thought; it was, indeed, the problem of Providence. This problem is raised by the changes, the alternations of the world and of life. If life were an eternal day or an everlasting night, a summer without end or a winter without break, there would be no problem of Providence. An endless day would create no spectre; an endless night would kindle no hope. But when these alternate, men ask what they mean. What a multitude of myths can be traced to the mysterious impression made upon the minds of ancient time by the dawn which dethrones the night, and leads in victorious day, and by the spring which smiles in beauteous resurrection over the graves of winter, by the apparent struggle between light and darkness! So in human life, when brightness is changed to gloom, or sorrow turned to joy; when trial becomes triumph, or victory turns into defeat; when waves and billows roll over men whose sea was calm, then ’ deep calleth unto deep,’ the deep of life’s great mystery calleth to the deep of human thought for some solution. So theories of Providence arise. And to no ancient nation did changes occur to make people think out what God’s way of dealing with them was in a more significant way than to the Jews. They were, indeed, * tossed from vessel to vessel,’ as one of their writers described it. From a wandering life they came through an awful struggle into something like an ordered unity, and then through fights and wars into settled government. After these victories, however, came new enemies. Delivered from one, they fell into the hands of another: delivered from Egypt, they had to fight with Syria, then with Assyria, and later with Babylon. After the Babylonian Conquest came the Persian, then the Greek, then the Roman, until Jerusalem was finally destroyed, and the old cultus fell to pieces. It is, indeed, a story of storms, and no wonder we go back to see what conceptions of Providence such a people had, and how the conception developed as time with its wondrous events went on!

Early in the story you have the conception that the great concern of Providence was to secure the good fortunes of Israel as a people. In Joshua 24:18 we read: ’ The Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites which dwelt in the land; therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God.’ But in Judges 2:21 the Lord is angry with Israel, and says He will not drive out the nations which were left when Joshua died, but will retain them to 1 prove ’ Israel. ’ So,’ says the writer (Judges 2:23), ’ the Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily; neither delivered He them into the hands of Joshua.’ In spite of the contradiction in the historical statement, which is of no importance for my present purpose, the idea is the same in both passages: that God is concerned with the fortunes of this particular people, and that all other peoples must be either driven out of their land, or used for the good fortune of Israel. It is an exclusively national view of Providence. It is rooted in the old conceptions of primitive peoples. Robertson Smith, in his book on ’ The Religion of the Semites ’ a book which is almost indispensable for understanding the Old Testament, because it describes the old traditional religion which lies behind Judaism, the religion of Semitic peoples, of which the Hebrews were but one race, holding religious conceptions and usages in common with the whole group of kindred peoples says that the social body was made up of gods as well as men. The god of a clan was the chief member of the clan, and he was therefore an enemy to the enemies of the clan; he took part in the feuds of the clan, and therefore no individual could change his clan or nation without changing his god. In those times hardly any but outlaws changed their religion. You will find this old conception reflected in the Old Testament. It lies behind the words of Ruth e.g., * Thy people shall be my people, and thy god my god ’; to become a member of another nation meant changing gods. In the words of David (1 Samuel 26:19), to be driven out from Israel is to be driven out from serving Jahweh. I have asked you to read Judges 3:15-30; Judges 4:17-24; Judges 5:24-31. The first is the story of Ehud getting at Eglon, Israel’s enemy, by deceit, and killing him an act followed by a great slaughter of Moabites. The second is the story of Jael pretending to play the friend to Sisera and then murdering him. The third is the eulogy of Jael for doing so, as ’ blessed above women,’ in the so-called Song of Deborah. Here, you see, Providence is only concerned with the fortunes of Israel; any deceit and any cruelty is right which brings success to this people. Providence is not concerned with morality; nor is it concerned with individuals, except as the individual serves or opposes Israel. This old conception underwent considerable change. You will find it very decisive in the eighth century B.C. Amos startled the people of his day by giving a new idea of the Day of Judgment. The old idea was that the ’ Day of Jahweh ’ meant the day of established good-fortune for Israel and full deliverance. That was an entire mistake, according to Amos; the Day of Jahweh would be darkness, not light. The new conception of God necessarily involved a new conception of Providence. It was quite true, Amos held, that Jahweh had chosen them; but the choice demanded character, and if they were not good they must be punished: ’ You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities.’ Robertson Smith says that the prophetic view that Jahweh would vindicate the right even by destroying his own people was alien alike to Semitic and Aryan. Here, evidently, we are upon advancing thought in Hebrew religion. And this is why I shall call Amos inspired, not because his conception is adequate for us to-day, for it certainly is not, as we shall see, but because he was moving upwards. Everything that tends upwards is inspired; every man who helps us at all in the right direction is inspired. Inspiration is the Impulse of the onward way flowing into man from God, the source of all. It has nothing to do with infallibility of word or work. It does not mean that it is adequate to the needs of the after-time; indeed, the more inspired a thing is the more sure it is to create new life and new needs, which none of its own speech can ever satisfy. The proof of inspiration in old Hebrew thought is not that it was at any point final, or good enough, but that it kept rising and advancing. The inspired man has been regarded as a goalkeeper; but he is the very opposite, ever engaged in extending the course, and telling you that the goal is farther on. His words have been treated as a terminus, but a terminus is a dead thing; inspired words are rather to be taken as impulses of eternal progress. Think, then, of the wonderful evolution of thought from the old conception that Providence was concerned with the good fortunes of Israel apart from character to the conception that righteousness of life was a condition of the love of God.

If it had stopped there it would not have been all we needed; but that it got there showed noble progress, and was itself the condition of better things to come. In Amos, too, Providence not only makes a definite moral demand, but takes a wider range. It is still national in the sense of being specially concerned with Israel, but it assumes a more positive control of the movements of the great worldempires for Israel’s sake, and once, at least, it rises to the view of the equality of some other nations with Israel. ’ Are not ye as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?’ That view is not maintained in Amos; it seems like a flash of light. He still regards Providence as specially interested in Israel, but in a moral way, so much so that the sinners shall be slain, and the good remnant remain for the ideal days to come. He also regarded other lands as unclean. In Deuteronomy, which is later than Amos, Jahweh is still specially Israel’s God. With this national conception of Providence goes also the national conception of morality. The Israelite may behave towards the foreigner in a way he dare not behave to a fellow-Israelite. E.g., you read in Deuteronomy 14:21, ’Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself.’ It would probably be diseased meat. What, then, shall be done with it? ’ Thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is within thy gates, that he may eat of it, or thou mayest sell it to an alien: for thou art a people holy unto the Lord/ English law is more inspired than Deuteronomy at this point, for it will not allow diseased meat to be sold to anyone, and we should execrate the Englishman who gave such meat in charity to an alien. Yet the Deuteronomic law was once regarded as the law of God. In the same way usury might be exacted from a foreigner, though not from an Israelite (Deuteronomy 23:19-20). Here are laws which no one includes in the Bible when he says it is his rule of faith and practice. Yet these old enactments were inspired i.e., they were movements towards a letter life.

Better for one nation to abstain from diseased meat than none; better abolish extortion within Israel than not at all. Establish wisdom and kindness within a given area, and, even though you deny it beyond that area, still you are doing good so far as you go, and you are making it certain, though you do not know it, that others are coming after you who will extend the dominion of the good. It is by instalments that progress comes. And the test of the inspiration of any institution or law or teaching is not, Is it final and complete? but, Is it an instalment? This national view of Providence and of morality which I have been considering was certainly that. The prophets greatly enlarged the view, but you find it surviving in considerable strength in the time of Jesus; the kingdom for Israel was still the expectation of many. You know how far removed from that was the highest conception of Jesus, in such teaching, e.g., as that God caused His rain to fall on the just and the unjust, and was kind even to the unthankful and the evil. With this wider view of the care of Providence came a wider conception of moral duty; the neighbour to love was no longer a member of the same nation, but anyone who needed help; and even enemies must be prayed for, and persecutors blessed. In the highest teaching of Jesus, Providence is completely emancipated from nationalism, and its concern is universal.

Now we must go back to look at our subject in another aspect the way in which Providence dispenses rewards and punishments. In the old view we find that rewards and punishments are external, and dispensed on the national scale. The sinner may be an individual, such as Achan, but the whole host of Israel suffers defeat before the men of Ai, though they are quite innocent. The nation was the unit, and must be punished, because one member had violated the law of taboo touched and appropriated the untouchable. When the people came to deal with the offender they were obliged to take a smaller unit; but the individual sinner would not do the whole family must be put to death. Men were not regarded as individuals, but as members of the social body. This was why it was regarded as right in 2 Samuel 21:1-22 to put to death two sons of Saul, and five grandsons, for a sin which Saul was believed to have committed. The men themselves were innocent, but Jahweh could only be pacified by seeing them hanged. ’ After that God was entreated for the land.’ Sentence executed upon the innocent family of the offender pleased God! The individual had not yet been properly conceived. For a similar reason it was right to kill the Amalekites, men, women, and infants, of one age because their ancestors 400 years before had offended Israel. So popular was this belief that it became a proverb: ’ The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ And it was embodied in the Decalogue that Jahweh would visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and fourth generation (Exodus 20:5).

Providence was dealing with men, not as individuals, but on a wide scale, and also in a very external way. I have asked you to read Deut. xxviii. There you find the blessings and the curses with which the law of Deuteronomy was enjoined on the people. You notice that they are external. If they obey and worship Jahweh in this prescribed way, where do they find their rewards? In the city and in the field, in increased families and increased property, and victory in battle. If they disobey they are cursed in these same things, and they are taken with terrible and loathsome diseases, and reduced to such straits that mothers will even eat their own children. Have you ever tried to measure the contrast between Deuteronomy 28:1-68 and Matthew 5:1-48? When you want an instructive Bible hour you could scarcely do better than read the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy side by side with the beatitudes of Jesus. The former are material, the latter spiritual; the former outward, the latter inward. But I am anticipating.

It was part, also, of the old view that all external calamity, that all suffering was punishment the punishment of some sin. In 2 Samuel 21:1-22, e.g., a famine is taken to be a direct infliction for some transgression. David, with this idea in his mind, tries to think it out; in Bible phrase, * He sought the face of the Lord.’ ’ And the Lord said: It is for Saul and his bloody house, because he put to death the Gibeonites’ i.e., David came to this conclusion, or the writer of the story represents it so. Here is the idea whether it be David’s or the writer’s does not matter that Jahweh sent a famine in David’s day because Saul had done wrong. Every calamity was the punishment of some sin, and therefore the cause must be found somewhere. This view persisted down through Bible times, and it persists even yet. But I want you to note a great change which it underwent in the hands of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah prophesied before and during the Babylonian captivity, and Ezekiel was among the exiles in Babylon. Jeremiah, at the approach of Nebuchadnezzar, counselled Judah to surrender. This was heresy. It was contrary to the action Isaiah had taken a century before; it was against the advice of priests and prophets of his own time, who advised Zedekiah to fight and trust Jahweh to deliver him; and it was considered most unpatriotic, but Jeremiah believed that this captivity must come upon the people for their sins, and the sins of their fathers. Jeremiah 28:1-17 shows how acute the struggle was, where one prophet insisted upon one course, and another on another.

There is no doubt that Jeremiah’s first doctrine of Providence was that of Deuteronomy. National adversity was national punishment. You will find it expounded in chapters xiv; and xv. A terrible drought is the result of the people’s sin, and so are the ravages of war. Jeremiah intercedes for them, but Jahweh says: ’ Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be towards this people; cast them out of my sight ’ (15). He says he will appoint the sword to slay them, and dogs to tear them, fowls and beasts to devour and destroy. Jeremiah does not see that the sins of those then living were bad enough to draw down all this punishment, so he goes back to the sin of Manasseh for part of the cause.

Pass now to the time when Jerusalem had been destroyed, and the few Jews that were left in Judah had taken flight to Egypt, Jeremiah among them, much against his will. In Egypt the Jews fall into idolatry. Jeremiah rebukes them, and says it is for idolatry their trouble has come upon them. But how do they answer him? By the contrary assertion. Their conception of Providence is the same with his, but they have come to a different conclusion as to the cause of their troubles. It was when they did worship the Queen of Heaven they were prosperous, they said, and it was since Deuteronomy was put in force, since Josiah’s reformation, their calamities had come; Deut. xxviii. had not come true! And Jeremiah himself had difficulties with the old conception. One difficulty was that Josiah, the exemplary king, who did right in the sight of Jahweh, the very man who put Deuteronomy in force, was himself killed in battle, and the reformation failed to turn away the fierceness of Jahweh’s wrath (2 Kings 23:26). Instead of getting all the blessings which Deuteronomy promised, Josiah lost his life, and the national calamity was great; it was a terrible blow to the old conception. The thinking out of this problem brought Jeremiah the vision of a new time when things would be different. In that time men would have the law of God written in their heart, and the individual who should commit the sin would have the suffering to bear. * In those days, they shall no more say, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge " (Jeremiah 31:29-30). But "everyone shall die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge." ’ Jeremiah found that the old theory did not square with the facts, and he threw it over. There some of the Old Testament prophets were far more sensible than many who worship them. They knew nothing of an inspiration that was a bar to progressive thinking. In Ezekiel 18:1-32 you have a very full enunciation of this new doctrine. It might be called the charter of the individual. Man is not to be included in the fate of the nation, or of his ancestors; he is free to strike a path for himself. The son of a good father is free to be wicked, and if he be, he must accept the result of it. His father’s goodness cannot be between him and death; the son of a wicked father may be good, and if he be, he shall not suffer death through his father’s sin. Ezekiel would not subscribe to Paul’s doctrine ’ In Adam we all die,’ and he would have denounced a theology which condemned the race for Adam’s sin. Further, man is not doomed on the one hand, nor is his salvation guaranteed on the other, by his own previous life. The good man, if he depart from goodness, may bring upon himself the death penalty, and the wicked man, if he leave his sin, shall live. Providence here deals directly with the individual. In the Decalogue, God is said to announce that He will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation; in Ezekiel, God says He will do no such thing, but deal with each man according to his own merits. This doctrine, however, had its difficulties when it faced the facts of life. The case of Josiah could not be explained by it; nor would Jeremiah’s own personal experience fit this theory. His whole endeavour was to do good, and he was cruelly persecuted for it. Here, then, was a case of suffering, not for wickedness, but for goodness! Jeremiah almost quarrels with Jahweh’s forbearance towards his enemies ’ Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable?’ (Jeremiah 15:18). ’ Take me not away in thy longsuffering; know that for thy sake suffer reproach ’ (Jeremiah 15:15). Here he finds in his own experience a case of suffering for goodness. Ps. Ixxiii. struggles with the problem that the wicked man prospers and the righteous suffers. Surely washed hands and innocence are vain things. The only solution the Psalmist offers is that things will be adjusted in the end; these prosperous wicked men are on slippery places, and shall one day be cast down to destruction. The problem of Job is: Why does the righteous suffer? The author has no solution. He puts the theory of Ezekiel into the mouth of Job’s friends, and they try to make out that Job’s sin accounts for the calamities. But they preach to him so much about his sin that he feels quite righteous, and thinks they are sinners for preaching such sermons. The author of Job is evidently not satisfied with any theory, and he leaves the problem unsolved, sure only of one thing viz., that the proper atitude for man is to be humble in the presence of the problem. Jahweh speaks out of the whirlwind, and Job is in dust and ashes. ’ Providence is a great mystery,’ he seems to say, ’ bow yourselves before it.’ Someone, who took up the book at a later time, thought that was poor comfort, and he wrote an appendix, in which he describes Job coming back to greater riches than ever. He would not let the idea go forth that Providence could let the good man suffer in this way to the end, nor suffer in this way at all without compensation in kind. Now, neither the new doctrine of Ezekiel nor the old doctrine of the national unit is a large enough truth, and we are to-day in possession of a more adequate conception than either. We must stand for the reality of the individual, and allow no conception of his relations to obscure the fact that he is a person, with a will, with sufficient moral freedom to create personal responsibility. We believe that neither heredity, nor environment, nor his own past is a final sentence of doom on any man; we hold that the door is open for the most unfortunate and for the worst into the kingdom of the blest. But it is also true that man is not an independent unit, and that his life cannot be explained by itself: there are joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, abilities and dispositions in it to which other lives have contributed, and are contributing. There is a solidarity, not only of the nation, but of mankind, through which the innocent do suffer for the guilty, and one generation for another. Heredity and environment, though they are not all, are tremendous factors always to be counted with. It is profoundly true that the sins of all are laid upon every one, and that every good man who lives and dies does so for all the world. I believe it was this truth that was struggling for utterance through the older conceptions of the Decalogue and Jeremiah.

Now I pass to Isa. liii., where you get a conception different from the two I have been considering. I do not enter now upon the difficult question as to who is meant by the Servant of Jahweh. The point for us here is that the Servant was good, and that he suffered. Here is a fact that cannot be explained by Ezekiel’s doctrine of every man upon his own merits. The Servant is good: does he, then, suffer merely as punishment for the sins of others, according to the older doctrine? This prophet rises above the idea of suffering as punishment to think of it as remedial and redemptive. The good Servant surfers for the sins of others, but in order to make them righteous! Suffering here is vicarious, and creates character; the good suffer for the bad to redeem the bad, so in the pains of innocent suffering Providence is showing a care for the world. I need scarcely point out the profound truth and lofty elevation of that conception. This is, perhaps, the highest peak in the Old Testament revelation. This, too, is the highest view of the suffering of the good in the New Testament. Jesus probably regarded His own suffering in this light, and it came to be the view of others concerning Him, that He died the Just for the unjust to bring us to God suffered not to satisfy God’s appetite for punishment, but to redeem the sinner from sin, and win him to goodness. Verily the light of God shines on it. It is well to see that God gave men such visions of truth to transcend the common sight. It is true that the theory of external rewards and punishments persisted, that calamity and misfortune continued to be read as direct judgments and signs of sin, and that external wealth and prosperity were looked upon as signs of Divine favour. There were sceptics who denied it, as in Ecclesiastes 8:14, etc. * There be righteous men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men, to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous.’ The old theory will not do. You find the old theory in many psalms, but it is impossible to read some of them without feeling that at times, at least, men rose above the general notion. The singer of Psalms 51:1-19 (leaving out the last two verses, probably added by another), which is perhaps the most marvellous of all psalms, did not ask for outward blessing, for rich lands or a prosperous city; he only asked to be made what God wanted him to be true in the inward parts, clean in heart, and right in spirit, so that he might diligently serve God and men. In this psalm it is not the externally rich man whom Providence favours most; the greatest favour of God here is the gift of inward goodness itself. Here again the Old Testament touches the highest points of New Testament revelation. The old theory of outward rewards and punishments survived in the New Testament. There is a curious relic of it in Paul, when he regards some deaths in the Corinthian Church as punishments for misbehaviour at the Lord’s Supper. The story of Ananias and Sapphira and many others illustrate the same point. You also meet with the idea of the postponement of rewards and punishments to the future age, in the New Testament. But that will come up for treatment in my next lecture. Spite of what I have said, no one can doubt that there is a vast difference between the conception of Providence which prevails in the New Testament, and that which prevails in the Old Testament. So great is it that the saying is quite justified: * The blessing of the Old Testament is prosperity; the blessing of the New Testament is adversity.’ An old psalmist had said that he had ’ never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread ’; but the New Testament sees the most righteous of all not only without a place to lay His head, and often dependent on charity, but at last hanging on the Cross, and crying: ’My God! my God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ And no deliverance was granted back into this life. Yet this same New Testament regards that assertion as only apparent, and rears the great faith that that Person, who was not rich but poor, not successful in the world but a failure, crowned only with thorns, was the great Son of God, and the Saviour of men. Calvary, with its cross of shame, becomes the mount of our highest ascensions, and the altar of our best thanksgiving. Instead of looking upon a calamity as a sign of Divine wrath, Paul glories in tribulation, rejoices with a chain upon his wrist, spends and is spent, ’ his joy to do the Master’s will,’ and he finds the reward in the doing. Whatever may be God’s method of adjusting character to circumstances, let us be quite sure at present that what the world calls success is not the proof of God’s favour, as we are so often told in the Old Testament, and whatever may or may not be true of external rewards or punishments, certain it is that the greatest reward of goodness is goodness, and the severest penalty of sin is sinfulness. When I ask’ the young to pledge themselves to high standards of goodness, to take the vow of conscience, I cannot guarantee them worldly success for such devotion. Whether or not they will ’get on’ depends much on the kind of society in which they live. Success only demands average morality. If a man falls below that he is put in prison; if he rises much above it he may be driven to the Cross. We cannot promise blessing in the basket and in the store for devotion to Christ; for devotion to Christ you may be rewarded as Christ was, with derision, and persecution, and death. Even then you secure the one eternal success the success of the soul itself. Is there a legitimate demand for more than this? I believe there is. Read at its depths, perhaps the persistent expectation of reward on the part of good men is but a demand that the world should be good enough to recognise goodness. It is true that goodness is to be its own reward, but if the individual good man suffers unjustly, we demand the adjustment of circumstances to character, and this at bottom is only the demand that all other men shall be good, so as not to inflict unjust suffering. We cannot be content with being good ourselves; we must desire the universal victory of the good. The fact is, we are quite content with ’the wages on going on ’ ourselves; we claim that the world shall come on too. This, however, is a moral and spiritual process, and we believe God is engaged in it. We believe in a Providence which enables us to hold on to goodness in spite of adversity, but which is also at work every moment on that mighty task of God, ’the restitution of all things.’ Purified from crude forms, there is a legitimate demand, not only for heaven in the heart, but for a heavenly world in which that heart shall be for ever at rest.