The Mercy of God

“I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, for I am God, and not man.” — Hos, xi. 9.

HIS is a saying very unique, very original, very sublime. It is the utterance which

of all others we should have least expected — least expected even from the prophet himself. He has been expressing in the loudest terms his sense of the Divine horror of sin. He has been putting into the lips of God the most withering, the most scathing denunciations of surrounding evil. And the sequel we look for is, “I will utterly destroy these wicked men, and will sweep away their name and their remembrance.” Instead of that, we have the startling conclusion, “I will not execute the fierceness of Mine anger, for I am God, and not man.” I say, startling, for a sudden calm -

is as startling as a sudden storm. The wind has been rising to a climax, climbing step by step the ladder of indignation. All at once, it drops. It does not subside, it does not soften, it does not moderate its fury; it goes down altogether — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. In India the night passes into day without a twilight; here God’s frown passes instantaneously into a smile. And the strangest thing of all is the reason for the lenity — “<For I am God, and not man.” One would think this a reason for more drastic sentence. The natural view is, if even the blunted conscience of your brother man condemns you to death, much more must an all-holy God. Not thus says Hosea. To him the strongest is the gentlest, the purest is the most pitying. And he is so, just because he most condemns the disease, most feels its virulence, most sees its ravages. Your brother man overestimates your power of resistance; he has less sense of sins horror. To the eye of Divine Love sin has crippled even your power of will; and Divine Love pities you.

Unto whom, then, shall I go but unto Thee! My brother has no place for the leper; he sends him out among the tombs. I thought at first that my chance would lie with my brother. I said, “He is man, he is human, he has a common frailty; he will remember that I am dust.” I have found my mistake, O Lord. I have found that there is no hope but in the highest. My pardon has come from the only quarter which I deemed impossible — the sinless. My hope was in the sinner. I expected great things from the touch of a hand that was soiled and the compassion of a heart that was itself impure. I hoped great things from Simon Peter, who himself had passed through the sea and experienced the strength of the wave. But when Peter came to Antioch, he kept aloof from me; he pretended that he did not see me. The waves of the Sea of Galilee had washed him too clean to be any longer a fit companion for me. But Thou camest to me, O Lord — Thou of the burning purity, Thou of the spotless spirit! Thou camest to me — when human friend forsook, when earthly comrade crept away! Thou camest — when no man would give me even swine-husks, when my brother denied me the music and the dance! Thou camest with the robe and the welcome — through fire and flood, through storm and stress, through mist and mire, through desert and death! Thou camest to my cloud on the transfiguration mount! All others vanished when they saw my cloud — Moses,

Elias, Peter, James, John; I “saw no man but Jesus only”! Henceforth, in all this mountain, I will build no tabernacle but to Thee!