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BACON GOD INDWELLING
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Leonard Woolset Baoon, Congregational divine, Bom in New Haven, Conn., 1830. He was educated at Tale, from which uni versity he graduated in 1850. He has filled the position of pastor in many im portant churches and has done much theological and literaiy work. Among other things he edited Luther's ''Deutsche Geistliche lieder" (New York, 1883), and wrote ''History of American Christianity'^ (New York, 1897).
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BOBN IN 1830
GOD INDWELLING'
Thus saith the high and loftyi One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones, ―^Isaiah lyii.^ 15.
INHABITING eternity ; yet making His abode within a broken heart! It seems as if we might apprehend either of these things singly; but both together ―how can it be? The distresses, the wants, the fears, of life, make ns long that indeed it were so. Our soul crieth out for Gk)d, for the living God. We cry; but there seems no answer; only an awful silence. We look upon the outward facts of life and death, and see the steady, unswerving march of law ―^the unbroken, ir refragable chain of causes and effects ―^never yielding nor bending to all our needs, to all our prayers. And God seems so far, so far away ! We turn the pages of our knowledge from the physical to the metaphysical, and
^Frorn "The Simplicity That Is in Christ,*' pub lished by Funk & Wagnalls Company.
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vre come no nearer. Our philosophical, our theological, yes, our religious meditations upon tiie nature and attributes of the infinite Oiie ―^the omniscient, the eternal, the un changeable ―set Him more and more beyond the reach of our fellowship and prayer. But all the time, one thing testifies to us of a heavenly Father that hears and loves and an swers, and that is our ineradicable need. The cravings of our nature cannot be rebuked by scientific observation of the constancy of law, nor by philosophic meditation of the proper ties of absolute and infinite being. We need, we must have, a Father. Our heart and fiesh, our soul, crieth out for the living Qod.
In such a strait, there is true comfort in this word of the Lord by His prophet, in which the full measure of the difficulty is set forth, and the solution of it is found in faith.
It has seemed to me that we need not seek in vain in the created works of QtoA for helps to that faith by which we know that the in finite and eternal God can have fellowship with us and can dwell within the narrow pre cincts of a human heart.
That sight in visible nature which gives to us the highest sense of vastness, ―the aptest suggestion of infinity, ―^is doubtless the aspect of the starry heavens ; ―^to all of us, ignorant or learned, poetic or unimaginative. It needs no diagrams nor distances from a book of astronomy to tell the lessons of the firmament.
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''Their sound is gone out into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world/'
And yet it is when we come to study the dimensions of this operation in detail, that the sense of its vastness grows upon us and overpowers us. David never could have felt, as we can feel, the force of his own words:
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy finsers, The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained, What is man that thou art mindful of him, And the sun of man that thou visitest him I
They are like the chariot of Ezekiel's vision, ''so high that it was dreadful." It seems a fearful thing to have to do with such magni tudes ; and when we hear of scholars in their observatories measuring the distances among the stars, it overcomes us with a giddy feeling, as when we see men clambering on church spires, or crossing the East Biver on a strand of wire. A row of figures on a slate does seem such a frail support on which to go marching through the starry spaces ! We almost shud der when we see human science springing clear of the narrow boundaries of the earth, and on such attenuated threads of calculation venturing boldly forth to other planets, and thence over chasms of space so vast that it is easiest to call them infinite, until he reaches the fixt stars. No longer content with num bering and naming the host of heaven, and marshaling them in constellations, this tiny
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creature must take upon himself to scrutinize their constitution, must weigh their floating bulk, must
''Speed his flight from star to star, From world to luminous world, as far As the universe rears his flaming wall,"
and, as if bearing in this amazing flight the measuring-rod which once the prophet saw in an angel's hand, must measure the paths along which the planets travel, and tell in human language the distances on the chart of heaven.
And how human language staggers under the burden thus laid upon it ! We begin with attempting to state the least of these distances in numbers of a unit of earthly distance, but, when we speak of some of our near neighbors in celestial space as being twenty trillions of English miles away, the words will not hold the meaning ―^they carry no conception to the mind. They are good to cipher with, but that is all they are good for. We try to invent a new form of speech, and for our unit we take the distance which a cannon-ball, if retaining the velocity with which it leaves the gun, would travel in twenty-four hours, and say that, at this rate of speed, it would take so niany months, and years, and centuries, to reach such and such of the nearer stars. But this, too, is a clumsy failure; and we resort, at last, to the heavens themselves for a stan
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dard of measurement, and find it in the velo city of light. It shoots from the sun to the earth, a distance of ninety-two millions of miles, in eight minutes and seven seconds. And we attempt to represent the distance of certain of the stars by stating how many years, how many hundred years, how many thousand years, it takes a ray of their light to reach the earth. But it is all in vain. We commonly speak of imagination as outstrip ping, in its speed, the slow-paced reason ; but here it is the reason that has outrun the imagination. From these unspeakable tracts of space, over which the reason of man has not hesitated to go,
< < Sounding along its dim anti perilous^ way, ' '
the imagination shrinks back and refuses to follow. We know things which we cannot conceive. In presence of such stupendous magnitudes,
'' Imagination's atmost stretch In wonder dies away."
We can only bow with awe in the presence of things which the calmest computations have revealed, and seizing the words kindled on the lips of inspiration, sing aloud in worship :
"O Lord, how great are thy works I In wisdom hast then made them aU ! "
I have shown you what is wonderful. Gome now and I will show you what is more won
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derful. For I will show you these infinite spaces of the sky, and the glory of them, and the innumerable host of starry worlds, gath ered up in a moment of time, within the tiny pupil of a human eye. It is wonderful that the heavens and the host of them should be so great ; but that, being so great, they should be able to become so infinitely littie, ―^this passes all wonder. The shepherd stretched upon the ground amid his sheep gazes up into the starry depths, and finds them wonderful ; but never thinks how far more wonderful than the heavens which he beholds is himself be holding them. As he lies gazing, long lines of light, from planet and star and constella tion, come stretching on through the infinite void spaces, to center "on the lenses of his drowsy eye. Side by side, and all at once, yet never twisted or confused, these ten thou sand rays of different light enter the little aperture in the center of the eye which we call the pupil. There they cross, in a point which has no dimensions, and separate again, and paint in microscopic miniature upon the little surface of the retina, behind the eye ball, the inverted facsimile of the visible heav ens. There, in the ante-chamber of the brain, marches Orion, with his shining baldric and his jeweled sword; there glow Arcturus and Sirius, and the steadfast North Star; there pass the planets to and fro; and the far-off nebulffi are painted there with suffused and
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gentle radiance ―^all the heavens and the glory of them gathered in that slender filament of light, threaded through that tiny aperture, painted by their own rays upon that little patch of nervous network, apprehended, felt, known through and through by that finite human mind. How far stranger and sublimer a thing is this than the mere bulk of the worlds, or the mere chasms of void space in which they hang weltering!
By this sublime fact of God's visible crea tion, we are led on to apprehend and feel the sublimest of the glories of God Himself, set forth in the prophet's words, ―^that He whose lifetime is infinite duration, whose dwelling place is infinite space, ―^He who before the earth and the world were made was no younger, neither will be older when they are all consumed, ―^whose presence reaches out to the farthest fixt star that eye or telescope has ever described floating upon the far verge of the universe, and occupies beyond in all the orbits of worlds yet undiscovered, and still beyond in the regions of space where is naught but the possibility of future worlds, and fills all this immensity to repletion, ―that this **high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity" should enter into some poor, crusht and broken spirit, that trembles at the very whisper of His voice, and should make the narrow recesses of that heart His abode. His home. This is the mystery and glory of the
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Godhead, ―^not alone that He should be in finite, eternal, immortal, invisible, but that being all these. He should yet be apprehended by the little mind of a man, and call Himself that man's Friend and Comforter and Father.
For it is not more evident that the tiny pupil of human eye can take in the expanses and abysses of the heavens, than it is that the little soul of man can receive into itself the infinite God«
I. Man receives God into himself by the in tellect. We trifie with the facts of our own consciousness, if we suffer the theological de scription of God as incomprehensible to divert us from the fact that our minds are made for nothing more expressly than for this, that they should receive God. The lowest rudiments of the knowledge of the simplest forms of mat ter are the beginnings of the knowledge of God. If we could remember, you and I, now that we are grown, all that came to us in infancy ―^the first struggles of the childish mind with the questions that we are not done with yet, we should see how soon the knowl edge of God comes to the little one. Beyond the cradle in which it wakes up to the won ders of a new day is the nursery, and beyond the nursery is the house, and beyond the house is the garden, and beyond the garden there lies all the world, and beyond the world shuts down the sky with its stars, and beyond the sky ―^whatf **Tell me, father ―^tell me,
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mother, what is there beyond the sky t ' ' And, according to your knowledge or your ignor ance, your faith or your unbelief, you may tell the little questioner of heaven, or of in finities of other worlds, or of infinite waste room and empty space, and he will believe you. But attempt to tell him that beyond is nothing, and not even room for anything, and wiU he believe you 1 He may seem to be lieve you, but it is impossible that he really should believe. The infant mind ―^any mind ―^rejects it as impossible. It cannot live in anything less than infinite space. It stifles. It leaps up and beats its wings against any bars with which you would cage it in, but that it will break through and take possession of its inheritance.
And as with infinite extent, so with infinite duration. How well I remember, as a very little child, when men were talking of the end of the world, and the great comet
stretched amain across the sky, and men's hearts were failing them for fear, how the thought of infinite duration prest in, inexor ably, on my soul ! Come judgment day, come final conflagration, come end of all material things, come cessation and extinction of all angels, all souls, all sentient creatures, still this could not be the end. Eternity must needs go on and on, tho there were neve): an event or thought to mark its movement. There cannot be an end.
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They err, not measuring the import of their own arguments, who tell us, in that pride of not-knowing which is so high uplifted beyond any pride of knowledge, tiiat the very form f of the word infinite marks it as the sign of a thing inconceivable, being a mere negation. Nay, verily, it is lie word end, limit, cessa tion, that is the negative word, having no meaning except as the negation of continu ance; and infinite is the negation of this nega tion ―a thing positive, afSrmative, reaL
So, then, it is not the idea of infinity to which the human mind is unfitted. The mind is so made that it cannot help receiving that. The incredible, inconceivable idea is the idea of absolute end. So far is the idea of infinity from being inconceivable, that it is just im possible to thrust the conception out of the mind. And with the conception of eternity, there rushes into the thoughtful spirit at once, the awful and lovely conception of 'Hhat high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy.** By such a wonder of crea tion is it, that He who made the little ball of the human eye so that it can take in the heav ens and the earth, has made the petty intellect of man so that it can take in the knowledge of the infinite Ood.
II. But, secondly, it is even a greater won der than this, that the infinite God, whom the intellect has conceived, draws near for a more intimate society with His creature, and enters
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the heart of man through the gateway of his affections. I say a greater wonder; for it must be conf est that this ideal of the intellect, this center in which all infinite attributes in here, does by His very majesty so overawe the heart that we shrink away from Him. By every new perfection of His nature, that grows upon our apprehension; by His awful power as the Almighty ; by His perfect knowl edge as the Allwise; by His imswerving steadfastness as the Faithful and True ―^the Immutable ; by the very infinitude of His na ture, He is witiidrawn farther and farther from the possibility of being counted among those humble objects on which the tendrils of a human heart are able to lay hold. How, for instance, shaU this Inhabitant of eternity, whose name is Holy, be well-pleased with His petty creature who has dared withstand His perfect law, and looks shrinking toward the throne of infinite Majesty, fearing and cry ing, ** Unclean! unclean!" How shall any prayer that we can frame bring arguments to bear upon the Mind that knows the end from the beginning, and to whom there is not a word upon our lips, but lo ! He knoweth it altogether? How can any pitiful plight into which we may fall move the compassion of Him who is immutable, and under whose be nign government even the pains and severi ties that befall His creatures are wrought into a plan of common beneficence to the whole?
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These are questions which the awe-struck in tellect, gazing upward at the infinite attri butes that adorn the name which is holy, puts to the yearning heart, which, with all the craving of its love, with all the outstretching of its need, gropes after a God to worship, to love, to pray to, if haply it may find Him. And the heart cannot answer back the intel lect with arguments of language. But love contains more reason than many arguments; and the strong instincts of affection and devo tion with which the humble and contrite heart reaches out after the love and personal friend ship of an infinite Creator are themselves an argument that God will not refuse Himself to the aflEections which He has Himself im planted. The hunger and thirst of our hearts for God are a promise from Him that they shall be filled. He cannot deny Himself.
The very arguments by which we climb to the knowledge of the infinite Spirit are like mountains that separate us from any relation with him of childlike prayer and mutual love. But a trustful confidence can say to these mountains, **Be ye removed and be ye cast into the sea," and it shall be done.
Have you ever pondered that dark mystery of human nature, the origin of the frightfii idolatries of India? It seems to be proved that they had their beginning, not (as the prepossessions of modem science would sug gest) through development from some form
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of fetishism baser and coarser still, but by degradation from the most refined and ab stract speculations on the infinity, the spir ituality, and the immutability of Gkd. No subtler metaphysics is taught to-day in the lecture-rooms of Yale and Princeton than was taught long centuries ago by Hindoo sages, enthroning their supreme divinity in the ever lasting, impassive repose of the unconditioned, far beyond the reach of affection, sympathy or prayer, until the needy millions cried out, stifling, famishing, ''Give us a God to love,, to worship, to pray to!" and, for lack of an swer, betook them to the forest or the quarry or the mine, to the carver and the smith, and made them gods that were no gods. So little can argument and reason hold us back in times when the stress of life comes down upon us, and the cravings of the soul grow strong ! I am bringing to the altar of God my offer ing ―^my poor little offering of thankhilness and prayer. Here have I my little bundle of anxieties, cares, troubles, ―^it may be the concerns of a nation in fear and perplexity; it may be the distress and terror of some sorely afflicted little household; it may be the secret of bitterness of some humble and con trite spirit; in any case, a matter how infin itely small when measured by the scale of immensity and eternity; but oh, how great a thing to me! And there meets me, in the way, a philosopher. '*And what, forsooth,.
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have you there t Show it me, now/' And I unroll before Him my little bundle of griefs, of cares, of pains, of sickness, of fears, of forebodings, ―here a handful of myrrh from a troubled heart, and there a sprig of frankin cense from a grateful spirit. ' ' And this, then, is what you would bring to lay before the infinite, the eternal, the omnisci^it, the un changeable Ood ! ' ' And each great title smites upon my heart with discouragement and dismay. ''This is what you would bring to Him in prayer and deprecation ! But do you not know that all this is a part of a perfect system? ―^that it is all fixt by the laws of nature, which no prayer can change or sus pend without upsetting the constitution of the universe. You would lay before Qod your wretched plight to move His pityT Tush! Did He not know it all a hundred thousand ages ago, or ever the earth wasf And I can not gainsay Him, and I cannot cease to pray. But by and by the philosopher himself comes face to face with some of the overwhelming things in human life and human death. He hangs with tears and wringing of hands over some cradleful of childish anguish, and shrinks from what the laws of nature, the system of the universe, are doing there ―so pitiless, so deaf to prayer, so blind to agony ; and he looks away, and looks up, and cries, ''My God, my Gk)d!" And his reason is not one whit the less true, because now, at last^
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his love and faith are also tme and strong. The awful wonder of Ood's unchangeable in finity abides; but out of cloud and darkness breaks forth, oh, what light of fatherly love ! And the bewildered soul sings: ―
And can this mighty King
Of glory condeseendf And will He write His name My Father, and my Friend? I loye His name! I love His word I Join all my powers and praise the Lord!
And now behold a mystery ―the mystery of godliness, without controversy great, manifest in the flesh! That He may come over these mountains of helpless separation, that we may be helped to know, to love, to trust that which is far too vast for the reach of our clinging affections to clasp, what wonders of conde scending tenderness will not our Father do 1 There draweth near to us One having the like ness of man, but glorious with an unearthly glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He stands beside us in our daily cares, our household joys and griefs, our business troubles and anxieties, our national fears and sorrows. He shares our temptations. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He carries our sorrows. He bears our sickness. He dies our death. How easy to love Him, to come near to Him, to trust Him! Being lifted up, how dqth
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He draw all men unto Him I And what mean those wonderful words of His, telling of His intimacy. His sonship, His oneness with the invisible and eternal GFodf Could it be, per haps, that sueh an one might bring us nearer to the inaccessible Light ―might help us to draw nigh as seeing Him who is invisible? Oh, Master, show us the Father and it suf ficeth us ! And hear now His gracious words : ''He that believeth on me believeth on him that sent me." ''He that hath seen me hath seen the Father also." Thus the high and lofty One, who hath wonderfully entfered into our narrow understanding, cometh also into our heart, and draweth us to His own bosom "with the chords of love, with the bands of a man."
III. Finally, with a true spiritual inter course and converse, which no man can define, which is as the viewless wind that men know altho they see it not, and feel its quicken ing and refreshment, altho they cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth, God entereth into our spirits, "not to sojourn, but to abide with us," and we become the temples of the Holy Ghost.
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