II

THE FAILURE OF GOD

Howbeit I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened not nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness.-JEREMIAH xliv. 4.

THERE is a timid anæmic religion which is afraid to speak of God except in vague general terms, such as the Absolute, the First Cause, the Power that makes for righteousness, and the like. It is afraid to ascribe to God the emotional and moral qualities familiar to us in human nature, love, fear, jealousy, passion, eager desire. This is partly due to a worthy feeling, which dreads to degrade the divine by too close association with human attributes. Figures of speech, which speak of God performing acts like a man, sound offensive to superfine ears. This type of religion would worship God as the Infinite, or the Eternal, or as Absolute Law; and takes care to avoid the anthropomorphism which frankly attributes human qualities to God, by invariably using ethereal and colourless ideas. It is shocked by such

an idea as ascribing jealousy to God, or by such a figure as here, which pictures God rising early in the morning that He might lose no time in sending prophets and messengers to the people He loved in the eager desire for their good. It will have nothing but abstruse philosophical words to express spiritual things, and as a religious result it ends in expressing nothing; for it whittles away any real notion of God at all, and soon is submerged in a vague Pantheism.

Religiously it is a failure; for mere philosophical terms, however accurate, can never touch the hearts of men and inspire either true love or true worship. There is no irreverence in the way Scriptural writers ascribe to God thoughts and feelings and actions derived from human life. If God is to be real to us at all, a living personal Being, we are compelled to speak of Him in terms of the human. All language that we can use to express the divine attributes must necessarily be imperfect. We can have no conception of what we have no experience. We are forced by the limitations of our nature to think of God in human terms. Revelation also must do the same, or it would pass over our heads without effect. The Bible declares God to be infinite above thought or speech or imagination of man, with ways

and thoughts higher than man's as the Heaven is higher than the earth. But it takes the highest that we know in man, love, generosity, mercy, justice, righteousness, and extends them, and declares that God is that and more, infinitely all that, the highest and best in man. We have said that this is a necessity both philosophically and religiously; and therefore it is absurd to boggle at figures of speech which are designed to make vivid and real some aspect of these divine qualities.

From a literary point of view also such superfine criticism is stupid. It is pedantry of the worst sort to condemn the prophets for depicting God as jealously anxious for His people, or as pleading passionately with them, rising early and sending messengers beseeching them for their good, and yet failing in achieving His heart-felt desire. If God is love and is the living God, then these figures of speech are truer than any metaphysical subtleties to express the divine nature could possibly be. It was true insight, therefore, as well as moral boldness, that made the writers of the Bible fearlessly speak of God in the language of human nature, even the language of human passion. Again and again, for example, Jeremiah uses this same homely figure of speech as of a man rising early in his eagerness,

despatching messengers, leaving no means untried to bring His people to a right mind, pleading with them, and yet failing in His benign purpose as a man fails. It is a figure of the everlasting patience of God, refusing to be tired out, bearing and forbearing, trying new plans and new agents, and yet beaten back by invincible obstinacy, His best schemes frustrated, His kindest designs defeated, having at the last to acknowledge Himself baffled. "I sent unto you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate. But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness."

It is a vivid picture of the failure of God. From the philosophical point of view where God is the Absolute, eternal irrefragable Law, His purpose can never be said to fail; the immutable word cannot return void but must accomplish that which it will. And in a logical system of doctrine, of which there is none so logical and consistent as Calvinism, the Sovereignty of God must be maintained, with radiance undimmed and supremacy unchallenged. His decrees go out and inevitably achieve their purpose, unerring as natural law. But there is another sense, true to the highest attributes of the divine nature,

in which God may be said to fail often, to attempt what ends only in disaster. The Bible is a record of the failures of God, the putting forth of divine grace with no result, the travail of heart and soul with no fruit. Whenever we speak of His designs in terms of love, when we think of Him as the gracious Lord or Heavenly Father, dealing with disobedient vassals or with wilful children, we are brought face to face with this strange mystery, that the Lord of lords and King of kings can fail of His purpose and be unable to attain what He most desires. The Bible constantly depicts God as putting forth to the utmost His redemptive grace, seeking ever to find an opening to the heart of man, trying every shift that wisdom and love can suggest, putting Himself on the level of men, pleading with them, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate," rising early and sending His servants, asking for obedience and reasonable service; and yet every effort repulsed, His grace made of none effect, beaten back by the obstinate defence of man. It is failure so complete that the terrible words could be said, "It repented the Lord that He had made man."

This is the heart-breaking pathos of the wonderful literature of the Bible, the failure of all the gracious means designed by perfect love, not merely