God's Faithfulness in the Cloud

“The children of Israel asked counsel of the Lord, saying, Shall I go up against the children of Benjamin, my brother? And the Lord said. Go up against him. And Benjamin destroyed of the children of Israel eighteen thousand men.” — Judges xx. 23, 25.

This is one of the most singular statements I have met with in the whole course of the Bible. The people of Israel are exercised as to whether they shall go up to battle. They ask counsel of God. They ask it honestly, reverently. They pour out their hearts in prayer for a revelation o God’s will. The answer comes, Go! Joyous at the Divine approval, they march to meet the foe; they are defeated. We can imagine their recriminations against God and religion. We are tempted to join in these recriminations. Is this the value of prayer! we say. Here is a band of pious men who have asked, Shall we go? and received the answer. Yes. And yet these men have not been successful; they have lost the day. Methinks the sorest part of that loss would be the seeming failure of their God. To be defeated in an enterprise is a misfortune; but to be defeated after God has blessed me, to be defeated after God has bidden me go, to be defeated when I am only following the will of my Father — that seems more than a misfortune; it appears a wrong. But look again. Is every call from God a call to material success? Is there no such thing as a call to failure? What is that which God wants to perfect in us? Is it the sense of possession? No, it is the sense of sympathy. And how is sympathy made perfect? Is it by the number of my victories? Nay, it is by the number of my defeats. It is not my gains but my losses that make me human. The disciples on the Mount had both a triumph and a defeat; the triumph was the vision of glory, the defeat was the cloud which overshadowed it. Yet the cloud did more for them than the vision. The vision made them cold to their brother man; they wanted to live in mountain tabernacles above the stream of toil. But the cloud sent them down to the demoniac at the foot of the hill — down to the wail of the eaiy, down to the sigh of the sad. It tuned them into tenderness; it strung them into sympathy; it touched their chords with the echoes of human care. The glory would have stranded them; God made the cloud their chariot.

O my Father, Thy promise is not broken by they

blast. Often have I marvelled at the seeming failure of that promise. I have heard Thee say to Abraham in the watches of the night, “I will make of thee a great nation”; and when the morning came I have seen him in the fires of Mount Moriah. Yet these fires were to him Thy promise fulfilled. If Thou wouldst make of me a nation it can only be through pain. My heart is no highway for the nations till it runs through the path of thorns. My joys often divide me from my brother. My prosperity may repel him, my success may anger him, my year of jubilee may be his year of jealousy. But in the fires of Moriah he calls me brother. He comes to my cross. He bleeds at my bereavement. He weeps at my winter. He sighs at my setting sun. It is my defeats that have won my battles, O my Father. Thou hast promised me ten legions, and Thou hast sent me Calvary; but it is Calvary that has made the legions. My cross has fitted me for the crowd. I was apart from my brother till I walked the wave; but the waters made us one. I was alone on the road till I gained the Garden; but my sorrow became my city. It was pain that parted my garments among the multitude — Thou hast fulfilled Thy promise in a cloud.

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