Secret Things
“The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” — Devt. xxix. 29.
THE “secret” and the “revealed;” these are distinct though related divisions of proprietorship. The one division belongeth unto the Lord our God, the other unto men and their children for ever.
At the very basis, then, of all our inquiries should be found this fact, — THAT THERE ARE CERTAIN DOMAINS OF THOUGHT AND GOVERNMENT ACCESS-IBLE TO NONE BUT GOD.
Though on the one hand this fact circumscribes human inquiry, yet on the other it gives intensity to concentration, and a practical value to research.
I have said that the “secret” and the “revealed,” though distinct, are yet related; and it is important to remember this, inasmuch as God’s seal of secrecy is often found in the very midst of things that are apparently wholly revealed. One would say, ¢.g., that nature is a full revelation; that the heavens and the earth are books wide open; that there is no law of trespass in the outer creation. But facts show us that there are many doors in nature not yet opened to the appeals of science. It hath pleased God to mark many doors as “private;” to write over many a radiant portal, “secret things.”
There is, then, a law of secrecy even in the apparently open and unwatched fields of nature. Inquiry is circumscribed. There is a limit to the “ask, seek, knock” of all investigation. Not only in what is distinctively called prayer, but in all intellectual research, is this law fundamental, — “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Emphatic importance attaches to this fact. We imagine that prayer and spiritual benefits, exclusively so designated, are alone comprehended under the injunction, “Ask, and it shall be given you,” whereas experience demonstrates that that simple law is at the very root and core of progress of every kind. “Ask, and it shall be given you,” is as truly a canon in science as it is a law in religion. It is written alike in the bible of nature and the Bible= of the gospel. It is written as distinctly on the - heavens and the earth as on the solemn temple and the mystic altar, And so, indeed, with many other’ of the laws of the holy book. When the ages shall give birth to the seer, who shall have, in all its fulness and vigour, the faculty of interpretation, he will teach us that science and gospel stand on the
ANY
same basis, and that the one serveth the other as the younger the firstborn.
There is a man learned in star-writing. The heavens are the pages, the worlds are the words, the systems are the sentences which he attempts to decipher. And many a brilliant paragraph he succeeds in interpreting. But how did he attain his wisdom? Why, by the old gospel plan — “ask, seek, knock;” by patience,’ oft severely tried; by labour, that brought sore weariness; by perseverance, often toilworn, — by this method he became a successful translator of the heavens. Thus, that which is called cant in religion is called philosophy in science. Every time he turned an inquiring glance on the flaming firmament, he actually stood in the attitude of mute prayer. Every time he pointed his telescope to the kindling glories of nocturnal empire he was asking, seeking, knocking. Every attempt he made to arrest the chariots of fire that travel for ever around the King’s throne, he was uttering the suppliant voice of his heart; and every true record which he entered upon his map was, in reality, an answer to his prayer.
And thus all through science. The man who interrogates a plant, and would charm it into an unbosoming of its secret; who asks it questions regarding its lineage, and subjects it to impertinent and cruel analysis, is a man who asks, seeks, knocks. The man who dissects the human body with a view
HIDDEN SPRINGS. TD,
of eliciting from the dead what he never could learn from the living, asks, seeks, knocks. These men, however, do not use this form of phraseology in describing their pursuits. They say they are studying, botanizing, anatomizing, whereas they know not that in truth they are praying. Why, sirs, we could not read a line upon the floral leaflet if the untiring hand did not hold the light for us. We could not read the book of the stars if God did not turn over the pages. Yet men curl the lip of scorn at yonder infatuated saint, who on his knees is praying. They call his spiritual service “cant” and “hypocrisy,” not knowing, in their learned Atheism, that they themselves are suppliants at another side of the same throne.
The practical point to be kept in view is this : — Though Almighty God encourages man to ask, seek, and knock; though He has made man an inquisitive and a progressive being; though He has endowed man with faculties, instincts, capacities, that yearn to transcend these minor spheres, and free themselves from the encumbrances of an enslaving flesh, yet human ambition is to be regulated by divine law, and to veil its eager eyes before the blazing splendours of the higher circles, into which admission is not yet permitted.;
From nature to Providence the transition is easy, and in the providential realm the seal of privacy is not far to seek. No man can find out the work
=) that doeth from the beginning to the end. We cannot see how God interposes in every combination, and rounds off every detail. We see something of Him in the majesty of the heavens, but are bafiled by the minuteness which makes the dewdrop as perfect a sphere as the vastest planet that burns in the canopy. In the every-day affairs of life, God is constantly interposing. He hath beset us behind and before, and laid His hand upon us. We cannot understand God’s government of men. How should we? “We are of yesterday, and know nothing.” Can the rustic civilian follow the rapid and brilliant manceuvres of the veteran warrior, whose nod sways an army? Can your infant comprehend the shallowest mystery of your domestic government? Would you appeal to the deaf for an estimate of the harmonious blending of certain sounds? How, then, should we, who are unlearned travellers through a world so changeful, attempt to arraign the divine procedure, and determine the interpretation of its hidden purposes?
Yes, wonderful are the hidings of the divine intent. You laid your plan, you boldly prognosticated a bright future, you saw light gleaming out of every line, and beauty blushing around every footprint, yet an invisible hand overturned your glittering temple, and ploughed up its deep foundations. In walking down the highway you unwittingly changed sides; you knocked at the wrong door when in quest of your friend; in sorting your correspondence for the post, you mismatched some of the letters and envelopes; or you had long set your heart: on a certain journey, and had made much patient preparation for it, but on the appointed morning you were under the grasp of an overmastering disease. You could not understand these things. Some of them were so simple as apparently to have no meaning, and others were so harsh as to be apparently malignant. But time disclosed the golden band by which, all these circumstances, simple and complex, were linked to the eternal throne. You were amazed that events so trivial could have shrouded purposes so great, and that afflictions so cruel should have lain at the very threshold of the kingdom of God. But the Great Worker disdains nothing. He holds everything at high value. A dewdrop may reflect a planet. An atom may be necessary to the completion of a temple. As out of so common a thing as the dust of the earth God fashioned the magnificent temple of manhood, so out of the ordinary trivialities of life He moulds the stupendous realities of destiny. You say that you cannot understand these things; I answer, It is quite unnecessary that you should. Understand as much as God intended you to understand, and leave the rest. What do you do when, in reading the massive folios of ancient English authors, you meet passages written in an unknown tongue? Para-N
graph after paragraph you read with all possible fluency, instantly apprehending the author’s purpose; but suddenly the writer throws before you a handful of Latin or a handful of Greek; what then? If you are absorbed by the interest of the book, you eagerly look out for the next paragraph in English, and continue your pursuit of the leading thought. Do likewise with God’s wondrous Providence-book. Much of it is written in your own tongue — in largelettered English, so to speak, — read that; master its deep significance, and leave the passages of unknown language until you are farther advanced in the rugged literature of life — until you are older and better scholars in God’s probationary school.. The day of interpretation will assuredly come. A beam will strike right through the baffling mystery. Meantime, there should be sweet rest in the reflection that “secret things belong unto the Lord our God.”
Nor have we far to go until we confront the deeper secrets of redemption. “Great is the mystery of godliness.” All the mysteries of nature and providence are but as the riddles of childhood compared with the all-absorbing problem of the atonement. The cross is the meeting-place of the highest intelligences. Seraph and cherub fold their wings, and sit in wonder within the shadow of the “shameful tree.” Pilate’s superscription, in Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin, we can decipher; but the writing of that other hand — mayhap the hand that wrote on Belshazzar’s proud walls — that hand so awfully distinct, yet so rapid, so delicate, as to be “something between a thought and a thing,” — the writing of that other we cannot read in all the depth and scope of its significance. The hoariest wisdom looks on and wonders; sages with wrinkled brow look on and wonder; and even angels desire to look into these dark developments of love.
But though mysteries culminate in the cross, yet there is enough revealed in the cross for man’s present pardon, and his final enfranchisement in heavenly immortality. The secret things are not ours, — the revealed things are. We have not so much to do with the top of the ladder which is lost in the effulgence of the heavens, as with the foot of it which resteth on the earth; nor have we so much to do with the bright angel ministrants who throng it, as with the messages of mercy and hymns of hope which escape their tuneful lips. Fool is he who, in running from a town in flames, will not cross the river until he speculates concerning the architecture of the bridge, and makes inquiry into the origin and the date of its building. “Speed away from the pursuing flame,” say you; “tarry not until you are far beyond its range, and afterwards, if you please, discuss your speculations concerning the bridge.” The illustration
% may be applied to the sinner who wishes to escape from his sin. His first business is to reduce to. practice all that he does understand, to manifest a disposition to accept all the arrangements of divine wisdom, and in childlike trust to give himself up to God. The cross has a side that is “secret,” and a side that is “revealed” — a side that shines towards God, and a side that shines towards a sinning world. It lights the heavens as well as the earth, but man’s whole business now is to accept the beam which falls upon himself, and in its light to penetrate his way to the higher and better spheres.
This, then, is our fundamental point, viz. that there are certain domains of thought and government accessible to none but God. An additional remark is this : —
IMPENETRABLE SECRECY IS COMPATIBLE WITH
PATERNAL BENEVOLENCE.
We have come to associate secrecy with selfishness; nor is the association destitute of logical and moral sequence, when looked at in the twilight of mere human experience. Yet all nature proves that in the divine administration, impenetrable secrecy may co-exist with paternal benevolence. As rapidly as you point me to the mystery, I can point you in return to the fatherhood. Do you say that God keeps to Himself the mystery of the sun? I answer, He turns upon you the full revelation of the light. Does He keep in His own breast the secret of germination? See! He gives you the revelation of golden harvests; the Spring kept the secret in her heart, but Autumn poured her largess at your feet! Enough is kept back to prove the power, enough is given to establish the mercy. It is right, it is necessary, that the father should know more than the child. And is the father less a father because of this superior knowledge? Is not his very superiority of knowledge one of his highest qualifications for discharging the duties of paternity? Mystery is the seal of the Infinite. If you are clinging to parchment which you call your title-deeds to heaven, I pronounce it invalid, illegal, worthless, if this seal. be absent. All through, from Eden’s word of hope to Calvary’s ery, “It is finished,” and Bethany’s “Go ye into all the world,” all through, I say, “great is the mystery of godliness.” Yet benevolence guides man round the base of the dread mount of mystery. Guides man! You have seen an old man tottering with the gathered infirmities of a weary lifetime, and wandering in darkness on which no summer sun could shed the light of morning: blind! blind from his birth! never saw God’s outer robe of many colours; never saw God’s shadowed outline — his own mother’s face! You have seen such a man, led along the thronged highway by a little child, to whose young, bright
eyes he committed himself in hope and faith. I am that poor blind wanderer through the way of God’s mysteries, and that little guide represents the benevolence, the mercy, the tenderness, with which God leads me from horizon to horizon, until I stand amid the encircling glories of the perfect revelation. The commonest mercy of the daytime flames up into a fire-guide, that lights me through the gloom and trouble of the night.
The speculative thinker looks at the mystery and forgets the benevolence. The very wealth of God makes us covetous. Does poverty provoke envy? + We look not so much at what God has given, as at what He might have given. We read the love through the mystery, rather than the mystery through the love. Men like to peer into the hidden. They flatter it, they exalt it, they say, “It is good for food, and pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise;” and having wrought themselves up into this delusive appreciation of its value, they put forth the thievish hand, and the fancied blessing turns to a scorpion’s sting!
Do not anticipate your course of study. The volumes will be given, by the great Librarian, one by one. Understand what you can, and in doing it you will increase in knowledge; understand that in all the wastes of folly there can be no greater fool than he who will not believe his
Father’s telegram, because he cannot understand the mystery of the telegraph.
DIVINE SECRECY IS NO PLEA FOR HUMAN DIS-OBEDIENCE. “Those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.” In these words we have, —
1. An acknowledgment of a divine revelation, — “Those things which are revealed.”
2. A definition of the relationship im which God stands to human kind, — * All the words of this law.” Law? Then God is our lawgiver. All the moral institutes issue from His wisdom. There is one lawgiver. All that man lays down as law is, so far as it is right, but a modification or interpretation of God’s own word of government. When I ask for evidences of God’s existence, wisdom, and power, men point me to all the host of heaven, and say that these glittering letters proclaim the majesty of the Most High. True. Yet in such a word as, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ I find a more satisfying testimony to Christ’s Godhead than in all the wonders of His physical empire. I like to read the revelation of His hand, but better far the revelation of His heart. J am awe-struck when the sea-storm pauses in its wrath like a chidden child, but thrilled with a holier, tenderer ecstasy when the wild heart calls
Him, in sweet submission and loving loyalty, Lord and God!
3. A distinct recognition of man’s power to obey the law, — “That we may Do all the words.” Religion has, indeed, its contemplative side, but also its sterner side of action. The architect supplies the builder with the plan of the mansion; all the great lines are there, and all the lines of detail, — every angle, every curve, every combination. For what purpose does the architect supply the plan? Let us see. The builder takes the elaborate drawing, admires it, frames it in gold, hangs it in his chief room, and points it out to every guest! Was that the purpose for which the drawing was supplied? Has not the architect good reason to be angry and indignant? The builder may have shown great admiration of the plan, and may even have done it some little honour, — but where is the mansion? So have we done with God’s holy “law.” We have published it in letters of gold; we have bound it in richest morocco; genius, art, taste, have conspired to beautify, and adorn, and decorate the sacred book; but where is the mansion of a noble, majestic, holy, and perfected manhood? We received the law that we might “do” it; having failed in that, our admiration is hypocrisy, and our loudest applause a thundered lie!
No longer regard divine secrecy as a plea for human disobedience. The statute book is the judgment book. Every day is a day of judgment. Any man may now tell whether he is brightening mto an angel, or darkening and shrivelling into a devil.
INQUISITIVENESS INTO SECRET THINGS WILL NECES-SARILY PRODUCE GREAT UNREST. I must leave this point without expansion.
The practical comfort to all saints is this, “What thou knowest not now thou shalt know hereafter.” Hope is not cut off, it is merely deferred. There shall be a breaking of the sun through all heavy, sullen, threatening clouds. “We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” What hope rings in this word of promise! ‘When that which is perfect is come,” is the thrilling chorus to the song of the Christian’s life-long toil. He sings it in the morning light, when the unknown and untraversed day calls him to its companionship; he sings it under the glitter
‘of the evening star, when the mistakes and mischances of the day are all reminding him that he knows only “in part.” He lifts his wet and swollen eyes from many a spoiled page, and says with a sob of distress, yet a tone of struggling gladness, “When that which is perfect is come.” He recovers himself from many a paroxysm of ungodly passion, and takes heart at the words, “When that which is perfect is come.” He pillows his aching head upon this promise, knowing that the morning of revelation and completeness is advancing. This is our duty. We do the law; we leave the mystery and we rest in a hope which brings no shame!