The Way Known
“This is the rest luherewith ye may cause the weary to rest, and this is the refreshing’’’’ —
“pjc Itnoioctfj tfjc iong tfjat 31 tal;c.”
— Job xxiii. lo.
., -^ The shadow of a palm of blessed consolation
., and comfort, under which sat the old Emir
fenoton. r A uof Arabia.
The Book of Job has been well defined to be “the record of an earnest soul’s perplexities, where the double difficulty of life is solved, the existence of moral evil, and the question whether suffering is a mark of wrath or not. What falls from Job’s lips is the musing of a man halfstunned, half-surprised, looking out upon the darkness of life, and asking sorrowfully, Why are these things so?” In his chequered experience he loses at times the footsteps of a God of love. Through anguished tears he gives utterance to his soul-trouble, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him.” “Behold, I go forward, but He is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive Him. On the left hand, where He doth work, but I cannot behold Him: He hideth Himself on the right hand, that I cannot see Him” (Job xxiii. 8, 9).
But though to sense and sight all is dark, faith rises to io6 PALMS OF ELIM.
the ascendant, and, piercing the environing cloud, her voice is heard, ‘■^ But He knoweth the way that I take.” All that Providential drama is arranged by Him: life, with all its lights and shadows, its joys and its sorrows. It is enough for the sufferer to be assured that his path and lot are not the result of wayward and capricious accident. The furnace (to take the new figure employed in the same verse) is lighted by the God whose hand was for the moment hidden; and that same faith can add, “When He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”
Believer! what a glorious assurance! This way of thine — this, it may be crooked, mysterious, tangled way — this way of trial and of tears, “the way of the wilderness” — “ZT^ knoweth it.” The furnace, seven times heated — He lighted it. Oh! how would every sorrow and loss be aggravated and embittered if we had nothing to cling to but the theory of arbitrary appointment and dreary fatalism! But we may take courage. There is an Almighty Guide knowing and directing our footsteps, whether it be to the bitter Marah pool, or to the joy and refreshment of Elim. That way, dark to the Egyptians, has its pillar of cloud and fire for His own Israel. The furnace is hot; but not only can we trust the hand that kindles it, but we have the assurance that the fires are lighted not to consume, but to refine; and that when the fining process is completed (no sooner — no later), He brings His people forth as gold. When they think Him least near, He is often nearest. “When my spirit was overwhelmed, then Thou knewest my path.”
Can we realise these truths in our every day experience? Can we think of God, not as some mysterious essence, who, by an Almighty fiat, impressed on matter certain general laws, and, retiring into the solitude of His being, left these to work out their own processes: but is there joy to us in the thought of His being ever nigh; compassing our path and our lying down? Do we know of one brighter than the brightest radiance of the visible sun, visiting our chamber with the first waking beam of the morning: an eye of infinite tenderness and compassion following us throughout the day, “knowing the way that we take; “a hand of infinite love guiding us, shielding us from danger, and guarding us from temptation — “The keeper of Israel who neither slumbers nor sleeps? “Ay, too, and when the furnace is lighted, seeing Him not only kindling it, but seated by, as” the refiner of silver,” tempering the fury of the flames? The world, in their cold vocabulary in the hour of adversity, speak of “Providence “—” the will of Providence “—” the strokes of Providence.’’^ Providence! what is that? Why dethrone a living, directing God from the sovereignty of His own earth? Why substitute an inanimate, deathlike abstraction, in place of an acting, controlling, Personal Jehovah? Why forbid the Angel of bereavement to point his hand up the golden steps of “the misty stair,” to “the God above the ladder,” saying, “Our Father on high hath done it! “? How it would take the sting from many a goading trial, thus to see, what the same patriarch saw, (in his hour of aggravated woe, when every earthly Elim-palm lay prostrate at his feet with stripped and withered branches,) — no hand but the Divine. He saw that hand behind the gleaming swords of the Sabeans — he saw it behind the lightning-flash — he saw it giving wings to the careering tempest — he saw it in the awful silence of his rifled home — “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” Thus seeing God in everything, his faith reached its climax when this once-powerful prince of the desert, seated on his bed of ic8 PALMS OF ELLV.
ashes, could say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!”
We joyfully believe the day is coming when we shall write under every mystic providence, “He hath done all things well.” Yes, bereaved ones, ye shall no more weep over early graves, when ye yourselves pass upwards to the realms of glory, and hear from the loved and glorified as they are waiting to greet you at the door of heaven, that by an early death they were “taken away from the evil to come.” Meanwhile let us rejoice in the assurance, that “the Lord reigjtcth;” that He knoweth and appointeth “the way” both for ourselves and for others. Oh, comforting thought! enough to dry all tears and silence all murmurings — “Is there evil in the city,” in the cottage, in the palace, — is there evil which blights some unknown poor man’s dwelling — is there evil which clothes a nation in mourning, “and the Lord hath not done it” .?
“If all things work together
For ends so grand and blept,
What need to wonder, whether
Each in itself is blest?
“If some things were omitted
Or altered as we would,
The whole might be unfitted
To work for perfect good.
“Our plans may be disjointed,
But we may calmly rest;
What God has once appointed,
Is better than our best.”
“SHEW ME THY WAYS, O LORD; TEACH ME THY PATHS.”