October 12

Why then is all this befallen us? - Judges 6:13.

PERHAPS there is hardly a truth that we hold, however firmly, but something far below ingenuity may embarrass by questions which wisdom itself may not be able to answer. And what wonder if this should be the case with regard to an infinite Being, who in none of his works, and by none of his creatures, can be found out unto perfection? Thus some have said, if “God is love,” how comes he to leave so much misery in the world, which he could hinder? Now, we admit the difficulty is great, very great; and there will be many things which we shall be unable to harmonize with the assertion of the Apostle John, -“God is love.”

This difficulty, however, no more belongs to Christians than to other men. All meet with it, all feel it; and as to a deist, he must feel it peculiarly. He believes in a God; but he believes that God is pure, omnipotent, and benevolent, therefore he denies a future state of misery. But he cannot disprove a present state of misery. He therefore only shifts the difficulty instead of removing it. Any misery in God’s empire, since he could have prevented it, is inconsistent with the deist’s notion of a Deity. And yet he goes on reproaching Christianity with what no more belongs to Christianity than to deism. Suppose Christianity had never appeared: suppose it was now destroyed: why, the case would remain the very same; misery would remain, disease would remain, and the sufferings of children too, who have not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, would remain. God has much to explain hereafter. There is much in his government which seems to be at variance with the doctrine that “God is love;” but that does not prove the doctrine false.

All this is in appearance, and because we have not those views which God has, and which we shall have hereafter. Oh, let us distrust ourselves, and not dishonour God. “If the tree is known by its fruit,” let us remember that there are cases in which the fruit must be judged by the tree. For instance, now, if we knew a person who has been remarkable for wisdom and goodness, and has never done any thing incompatible with these all through life, we repose a kind of implicit trust in him; and should any thing be alleged against his character, what do we? Why, we give him credit till he has an opportunity to explain himself, and we deem it very disingenuous to judge of the whole by a part, and we would rather judge of a part by the whole.

Let us do the same with regard to the blessed God, and let us remember not only that our present faculties, are very limited, and that only small portions of the divine proceedings ever come under our observation, and that we are ignorant of the bearing of these upon others, and also of their issues with regard to the whole, but let us also remember that it is a part of our moral discipline to walk here by faith and not by sight. Let us remember, too, that we are now in a course of training; and if we are in training for a future and an invisible state, the principle of that training must be, and can only be, trust. We may be assured that all God permits is good and necessary upon the whole.

Men will hereafter be made perfectly sensible that they have been the authors of their own misery.