Providence

“A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the Lord directeth his steps.” — xvi. 9. “There are many devices in a man’s heart: nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” — xix. 21.

THE Bible throughout teaches the providence of God in theory, and exhibits the providence of God in fact. The prophecies are one continuous assertion of the doctrine; the Mstories one vast storehouse of its fruits. The works are manifest; the worker is withdrawn from view. “Thou art a God that hidest thyself,” is one of the songs in which the trustful praise him. The clouds and darkness that are round his throne concealed him from the wisest of the heathen; and yet, at the cry of any Israelite indeed, he was wont to shine forth from between the cherubim, and make bare his holy arm as it wrought deliverance. When a stroke of judgment was about to fall, so heavy that its sound should echo for terror to the wicked down through all time, the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?” Yet, with all their philosophy, the Athenians in Paul’s day were compelled to own that they worshipped an unknown God. The knowledge of his ways is hid from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto babes. “Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.” If, as to power, faith can remove mountains, as to perception it can see through clouds. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant” (Ps. xxv. 14).

“God executeth his decrees in the works of creation and providence.” There are two psalms — the 104th and 105th — placed next each other in the collection, which correspond to these two departments of the divine administration. The one is a hymn to God in nature; the other a hymn to God in history. In the first he appears appointing their course to the rivers of water; in the second, turning whithersoever he will the hearts of men. This psalm deals with the habitation and its furniture; that with the inhabitant and his history. These two songs exhibit an intelligence most comprehensive and a devotion most pure, circulating in the rustic community of the Hebrews, at a time when the conceptions of other nations on the same themes were grovelling and their worship vile. Both in the history that records the act, and the psalms that celebrate the Actor, the patriarch Joseph appears a most vivid portrait standing out of the canvas, and the Exodus stretches away like a landscape lying in the light. The persons and events that occupy that great turning-point in human history serve as specimens of the government which the Most High ever exercises over the children of men.

Providence is as far above us as creation. To direct the path of a planet in the heavens, and his own steps over time, are both and both alike beyond the power of man. God is as much a sovereign in appointing the bounds of my habitation now upon the earth, as in appointing the earth at the beginning to be a habitation for living creatures. Our shoulders could not sustain the government; we should delight to know that it rests on His.

These two proverbs of Solomon announce in different yet equivalent terms that the two grand constituent elements which exist and operate in the divine government of the world, are man’s free agency and Jehovah’s supreme control. When it is said that a man’s heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps, we must not think that the purpose of the creature is condemned as an impertinence; it is an essential element of the plan. Neither human purposes, the material on which God exercises his sovereign control, nor the control which he exercises on that material, could be wanted. If there were no room for the devices of a man’s heart, Providence would disappear, and grim Fate, the leaden creed that crushes Eastern nations in the dust, would come in its stead. If, on the other hand, these devices are left to fight against each other for their objects without being subjected all to the will of a Living One, Faith flees from the earth, and the reign of Atheism begins.

The desires of human hearts, and the efforts of human hands, go into the processes of providence, and constitute the material on which the Almighty works. When God made man in his own image, a new era was inaugurated and a new work begun, Hitherto, in the government of this world, the Creator had no other elements to deal with than matter and the instincts of brutes; but the moment that man took his place on creation, a new and higher element was introduced into its government. The sphere was enlarged and the principle elevated; there was more room for the display of wisdom and power. The will of intelligent moral beings left free, and yet as completely controlled as matter and its laws, makes the divine government much more glorious than the mere management of a material universe. For God’s glory man was created, and that purpose will stand; a glory to God man will be, willing or unwilling, fallen or restored, throughout the course of time and at its close. The doctrine of Scripture regarding providence neither degrades man nor inflates him. It does not make him a mere thing on the one hand, nor a god on the other. It neither takes from him the attributes of humanity, nor ascribes to him the attributes of deity. It permits him freely to propose, but leaves the ultimate disposal in a mightier hand.

When we seek for specimens of providential rule, — of devices manifold in a man’s heart, and the counsel of the Lord standing accomplished either by or against them all, the Exodus is, and ever will be, the richest mine. Let us look at one example, and learn from it the character of all. The cruel decree, repeated in two different forms, devoting to death all the male infants of Israel, was one of the blows, dealt unconsciously by the oppressor’s own hand, which went to break the captive’s chain and set him free. It was an edict that could not be executed. Blinded by his own eagerness to achieve his object early, Pharaoh grasped at too much, and therefore obtained nothing. It is in this way generally that our Father in heaven protects the poor from the wicked devices of the powerful. Evil is kept within bounds by being permitted to exceed all bounds. Its excesses make it barren. As well might Pharaoh have commanded the Nile to flow upward. A massacre of innocents, commanded by a tyrant, may be executed by his slaves. The babes of Bethlehem may be slaughtered by the decree of Herod, — a stroke against Christ in his own person; the Protestants of France may be murdered in a night, — a stroke against Christ in his members; but neither the Instigator of evil nor any of his instruments can secure the execution of a decree which permanently violates the instincts of nature. To murder day by day and year by year continually the infants of a whole people as soon as they are born, is impossible. By the power of Pharaoh the Nile might be dammed up for a day, but all the power of the world could not stem its flood for a season. So, although the instincts of nature may be held in abeyance till the sword has done its short work on the babes of Bethlehem or the Huguenots of France, they gather strength, like the river, from the impediment that crossed them, and at the next onset will sweep all impediments away. The decree must have fallen aside as a dead letter when a few infant corpses had been washed upon the river’s brim. In point of fact, the history contains no trace of its existence after the childhood of Moses. It served to prepare the way of a deliverer, and then disappeared. God served himself of that cruel law, and then crushed it by the instincts which he has pla-nted in human breasts. The people of Egypt were flesh and blood; therefore the purpose of their stony-hearted ruler could not be accomplished: they had infants of their own, and therefore could not day by day continue to murder infants, whose struggling limbs felt soft and warm in the executioners’ hands. The huge machine constructed for the purpose of keeping down the Hebrew population, having been set in motion, turned round once, and stopped to move no more; but by its one revolution, it threw a foundling — a capacious Hebrew mind and a fervid Hebrew heart — into the palace of the Pharaohs, to be charged there with all the learning of Egypt, and employed in due time as the instrument to break the oppressor’s rod, and set his suffering kindred free.

Although God’s hand is in it, and all the more because his hand is in it, the history, as to its form, is intensely human. Everywhere throughout the details, the purposes of men’s hearts protrude; and yet God’s hand fashions the issue for his own purposes as absolutely as it framed the worlds of the solar system, and gave to matter its laws. The history of ancient Israel is marked all over with the footprints of the Chief Shepherd as he led his flock, and teems with types or working plans for the conduct of the divine government to the end of time. Even the life of the Great Deliverer pointed now to one, and now to another feature of the Mosaic programme, as the needle quivers beneath the electric current. In the beginning of his life on earth he went down into Egypt, and out of Egypt again God called his Son. At the close of his ministry, when he showed the three disciples a glimpse of his heavenly glory, Moses was his companion, and Exodus his theme. Children understand and love that wonderful story; it engraves itself on their memory, and abides there even unto old age. The book is true to nature, and true also to grace. Children never weary of the tale; the children of God can never get enough of its spiritual lesson.

There is literally no end to the multiplication of impressions on the current history of the world, from the types which the deep fount of sacred Scripture contains. They are thrown off as days and years revolve, in number and variety all but infinite. The Angel is doing wondrously; it is our part reverently to look on.

Passing over providential arrangements on a small scale involving similar principles and leading to similar results, numerous as reflections of sun-light from the dancing waves, we select as an example one that in several features bears an obvious analogy to the Exodus — the present bondage and prospective freedom of the Negro race in the United States of America. The process is not yet complete, and therefore we cannot fully understand what the counsel of the Lord therein may be. We cannot yet predict all the turnings that the course of events may take; but the issue is not doubtful. We know that the Lord reigneth; we know also certain great principles that run through his administration. We wait confidently for the end of the Lord in that great conflict.

The device of many leading politicians in the United States has been, and is, to maintain three millions of human beings in slavery, to be bought and sold like cattle or any other species of property. There are, indeed, in the laws some shreds of protection for human flesh and blood, not accorded to other species of possessions; but these proceed upon low grounds, and never rise to the recognition of a brother’s nature and a brother’s rights. The citizens of that country have probably an average share of humanity in their personal character; but the institution to which they cling chokes up the channel through which the affections of nature ought to flow. They make laws on the one side to prevent excessive cruelty in the treatment of slaves, and on the other side to forbid the dissemination of knowledge, lest it should emancipate the mind while the body remains in bondage. These alternate struggles this way and that way are painful to the community that makes them, and by no means effectual to accomplish the end desired. To treat a man as the property of man, is to fight against nature and against God. He who falls upon this stone shall be broken. The nation, accordingly, is broken, is rent asunder, by a wound that refuses to be healed. Action and reaction are equal and opposite, as well in morals as in physics. One person or one race cannot hurt another, without receiving a corresponding injury in return. If my brother and myself are standing both together on ice, and I push him violently away from me, I have thereby pushed myself as far in the opposite direction. I may succeed in driving my brother out of his place, but the same effort drives me also out of mine. The Americans are so situated with respect to their slaves. They cannot push the Africans aside from the best condition of humanity on the one hand, without pushing themselves as far from the best condition of humanity on the other. Man is not a fixture on the earth like the everlasting hills: the ground is slippery, and our foot-hold feeble at the best. It is not in our power to turn aside a neighbour from his right, and maintain our own standing and character as before. The master depresses and degrades his slave; but in that very act he ha3 deeply wounded the tenderest part of his own nature. If the oppressed race are necessarily mean, the oppressing race are necessarily arrogant. As far as the slave is sunk below the level into brutish insensibility, so far the master is forced up above it into an odious unfeeling pride. It is in vain that the potsherds of the earth strive with their Maker. His laws are even now silently operating to adjust these inequalities. Some portions of their working may be already seen cropping out upon the surface.

Slaves, stung by injuries at home, and favoured by compassionate hearts abroad, were escaping in a strong steady stream to a land of liberty. A gradual exodus had begun, and the dominant power, by the instinct of self-preservation, adopted a device to arrest it. They passed an enactment, know as the Fugitive Slave Law, which requires that the citizens shall aid in delivering the fleeing African into his pursuers’ hands, and imposes severe punishment on all who shall dare to harbour him or facilitate his escape. This, it seems, is the best device which the powerful could employ to keep the feeble under the yoke. But it has failed, and will fail (7) 23

Like Pharaoh’s device to keep down his slaves, it contains within itself the elements of its own dissolution. The Legislature ol the States has ventured to run counter not only to the principles of justice, but to that which in human breasts is a stronger thing — the instincts of nature. Fathers and mothers in the Free State? cannot be compelled to deliver up a fugitive mother and her infant to the mercy of her pursuer. There is a law which lies underneath that shallow enactment, with power to hold it in check for a time, and to crush it at last.

That latest effort which the slaveholding power has put forth to secure their property has probably done more than any other single event to weaken their tenure, and ultimately wrench it from their grasp. The counsel of the Lord, that shall stand, whether the adversary opposed to it be an ancient despot or a modern democracy. The stroke which was intended to rivet the fetters of the slave more firmly, guided in its descent by an unseen hand, fell upon a brittle link, and broke it through. The newspapers announced that the cruel device had been enacted into a law. The intelligence fell like a spark on the deep compassion that lay pent up in a woman’s heart, and kindled it into a flame. The outburst took the form of a book, the instrument of power usually employed in these later ages of the world. It is certainly true, and is widely known, that the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law produced the book, and that the book caused a panorama of slavery fco pass before the eyes of millions in America and Europe, inexpressibly augmenting the public opinion of the civilized world against the whole system, root and branch. Let no one imagine that we are elevating little things into an undue importance; we speak of Jehovah’s counsel, and how it stands erect and triumphant over all the devices of men. He is wont to employ weak things to confound the mighty. Long ago He employed the tears of a helpless child and the strong compassion of a woman (Ex. ii. 6) as essential instruments in the exodus of an injured race; and it would be like himself if, in our day, while statesmen and armies contend in the senate and the battla-field, he should permit women who remain at home to deal the blow which decides the victory, tvnd distribute the resulting spoil. “He sits King upon the floods.” “All are His servants.” “Stand still and see the salvation of God.”

The exodus of the New Testament, the decease which Christ accomplished at Jerusalem, when, by the shedding of his blood, and through a sea of wrath, he opened a way for his redeemed to pass over, teems even more than- that of the Old Testament with studies of Providence. Caiaphas proclaimed him the sacrificed substitute for sinning men (John xi. 49-52), and Pilate recorded his kingly dignity (John xix. 19). Are Caiaphas and Pilate also among the prophets] They are, although they know it not. He who makes the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire his angels, can harness these untamed spirits, and yoke them to his chariot. He makes the tongue of Caiaphas preach the priesthood, and the pen of Pilate write the sovereignty of Jesus. When God has a message to declare, he is not limited in his choice of the angel who shall bear it. He can compel the servants of Satan to do his errands, without even putting off their dark costume. Their own hearts devise their ways, but the Lord directs their steps. In pursuing their own devices, they unconsciously become the instruments of accomplishing the purpose of God.

“Pilate wrote a title,” in Hebrew and Greek and Latin, and fixed it aloft upon the cross. The title so composed and published was, “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.” In the same spirit the governor had already said, “Shah I crucify your King 1” This testimony from his view-point served two purposes. It gave vent to the conviction struggling in his own mind that the Sufferer was innocent and divine: at the same time it afforded him the opportunity of taking vengeance on the Jews for the blood-hound cruelty with which they had hunted him down, and compelled him, against his own judgment, to give up the Just One to be crucified. He held their shame aloft to heaven, and spread it in three languages across the world. Such is the object which Pilate “proposes” to himself; but this man’s weak vindictive passion God “disposes” so, that it shah proclaim to Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, that the crucified is the King of Israel. Pilate’s shaft was well aimed: it reached its mark, and rankled in the bones and marrow of those Jewish rulers. The governor, whom their policy had concussed, now overreached them. They were ashamed that a formal title, under the supreme civil authority, should publish to the indigenous multitude in their vernacular, and to strangers from the east and west in the languages of the empire, that the Nazarene on the accursed tree was their promised, expected King. They requested that the writing should be changed. Pilate rejected their request. It was now his turn to tighten the screw on the flesh of the victim. Revenge at that moment was sweet to his revengeful heart. “What I have written I have written!” and he pushed them aside with contempt. He determined to pillory these proud priests aloft upon the place of skulls, as the subjects of the Crucified: and yet God employed that fierce passion to print above the cross, and publish through all time, a testimony to the royalty of Emmanuel. Said not the Scriptures truly, “The wrath of man shall praise Thee 1”

We have been contemplating the working of Providence in those great events which have nations for their actors, and a world for their stage. We have preferred to exemplify a principle by the larger specimens of its produce, as we are wont to illustrate the law of gravitation by the balancing of worlds: but that law may be seen as well in the drooping of a snow-drop, or the falling of a leaf. And in like manner our Maker’s might and our Father’s tenderness descend with us from great public events, and follow our private, personal interests, until they are lost to our view, but not to His, in the microscopic minuteness of a hair falling off or growing gray. In a storm at sea, when the danger pressed, and the deep seemed ready to devour the voyagers, one man stood composed and cheerful amidst the agitated throng. They asked him eagerly why he feared not, — was he an experienced seaman, and did he see reason to expect that the ship would ride the tempest through? No; he was not an expert sailor, but he was a trustful Christian. He was not sure that the ship would swim; but he knew that its sinking could do no harm to him. His answer was, “Though I sink to-day, I shall only drop gently into the hollow of my Father’s hand, for he holds all these waters there.” The story of that disciple’s faith triumphing in a stormy sea presents a pleasant picture to those who read it on the solid land; but if in safety they are strangers to his faith, they will not in trouble partake of his consolation. The idea is beautiful; but a human soul, in its extremity, cannot play with a beautiful idea. Strangers may speak of providence; but only the children love it. Those who are alienated from God in their hearts, do not like to be so completely in His power. It is when I am satisfied with his mercy, that I rejoice to lie in His hand.