Every day will be a New Year's day. Every day will find us honoring men like the Pilgrims. Thus we shall come to see that the angels announced, not only this glorious idea of God, but an equally wonderful idea of man. The race has in it, a talent and divine nature, of whose real dignity we have not begun to dream. We see a seed planted in dirt and surrounded with fertilizers, and we say how small, how mean! Ꭺ heavenly voice calls to us not to despise the day of small things. A babe in a manger will grow to maturity. He will teach men principles, which, planted as germs, will grow and fill the earth. So is the Kingdom. Fowls will lodge in the branches of a tree which began in marvelous littleness. If the sin against the Holy Spirit is a state, then a refusal to see one's highest worth is a deafness to higher voices calling the soul upward. If human life, in its very cradle, is not sacred, then Jesus came in vain. If society in its totality is not at last Christianized, then creation was a mistake. If there is one theme, and there is no other, which justifies the joy of the angels, it is that a sinner, not a just man repents; and if there is a just man who enters heaven he will enter, if at all, re-born with Nicodemus. The joy will be to all people. If some one far off, at last prefers fear, the good Lord will not fail to have foreseen and forestalled a provision by which immortal love will prove only an attainment. No discordant note will be heard, as the being, who fears passes from weary existence and leaves the universe in perfect love. If, in the exercise of that nature, grander than we now dream, man has more resources and opportunities than many earnest men have dared to hope; at last we may find the late laureate of the mother-land right as he sings, "Behold we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall And every winter change to spring." Shall we find that the joy of the Saviour's birthtime, was the joy of a salvation which failed to save? "Fear not," is a happy imperative. It makes optimism imperative. It grieves with the grieving and hopeless. It counts not itself to have apprehended, but presses on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Fear not." "Ah! God is other than we think His ways are far above, Far beyond reason's height, and reached Thrice blest is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell That God is on the field when He Is most most invisible. Blest, too is he who can divine Where real right doth lie, And dares to take the side that seems For right is right, since God is God To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin!" -Frederic William Faber. A Greylock Pulpit. GOD'S WAYS AND OURS. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord." Is 55: 8. What are God's thoughts and ways? They are doubtless fatherly, but those who have generated a substitute for moral force, have taken refuge in obscurantism, and have insisted with great solemnity that God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, and His ways not as our ways. We are told by others that we can not know God's ways and that when we say they are fatherly, we ought to say that we do not know what they are. Let us see. We know that the best experiences that we have are brought together into ideals. These ideals we describe by our most exalted terms, such as benevolence, love, perfection of character. We lift up by the imagination qualities gathered from every source and attribute them to the Supreme One. Since nothing comes from nothing in the moral realm, and since these qualities exist, their adequate cause lies in the personal unity adequate to inspire and diffuse personal quality. Therefore our ways, so far as they are ways of love, are ways of God, for God is the original and adequate Love. Love is Man, as To speak of love, is to be tempted to be diffuse, for it is the greatest thing in the Universe. Not to venture on a great theme, because of the temptations of its magnitude, is to court a habit of caution, a mere minute accuracy of detail, lacking the inspiration of outlook. comprehensive of all good. It fulfills the law. God is Love. the child of God, is to become love, that is, he is to be God, so far as his nature will reach. He is made by love and for love. We hear a great deal said, about our love for God and God's love for us, as though there were so much difference, that there could be no real connection between them. The absurdity of this is easily seen from our common experience. A man of travel tries to describe a new species of animal. It has eyes, but they are wholly unlike the eyes of any bird or beast hitherto known. It has feet but no bones. It has flesh but no muscles. It can fly without wings and eat without a mouth. Its ways are wholly unlike the ways of any creature so far discovered. One attempting such a description might better keep his mouth closed. This has been the way men have talked of God. They have assured us that the ways and thoughts of God are not as ours. He is good and loving, but His goodness and love are a safe, just, exalted and awful sort that transcend our foolish efforts of faith. Clouds and darkness are around about Him. In short it seems to be thought right to attribute to God the dark side of human nature and then to deny that we have taken these ideas from man's own dark history. Nay worse, it is thought right to take the bright home side of human nature and throw discredit upon it, by saying that God's thoughts are awful and holy, that they transcend our thoughts. Verily if God should attempt to reveal Himself, without honoring His own image in us, as the true medium of that revelation, He, like the traveler, would do better to remain silent. One impressed with the single idea of the transcendence of God, hastens to quote all the passages of Scripture that emphasize his favorite thought, seizing them without much care for their context. He takes us back to Ebal and Gerezim. We go further back to Sinai. We see lightnings and hear thunders about the mountain, which not so much as a beast might touch lest it be stoned or thrust through with a dart. Our guide has the agility of an acrobat. He springs back again to the great unknown author of our theme. God, he says, is exalted in awe, veneration and all-mightiness. The prophet, he seems to think, is emphasizing the lesson which the Jew had already been learning for hundreds of years, that God's natural attributes vest Him with grandeur and glory. Our friend asks, Does not the prophet say, "My thoughts are not as your thoughts, neither are your ways, my ways, saith the Lord?" How true! But how did the Jew of the Captivity understand this? Did he think of God as transcending men in natural or moral quality? Was the prophet seeking to impress the people with the power of God to punish sinners? His mood is decidedly one of comfort. God is a God of pardon. There is a correlation of moral forces. The rain and the snow descend. They water the earth and make it bring forth and bud, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. Joy and peace abound. The mountains sing. The trees clap their hands. The fir tree supplants the thorn. The myrtle takes the place of the brier. And all this is not episodical, but an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. In other words, Jehovah, the almighty, the all-knowing, the omnipresent, had been so teaching men of His power, knowledge, efficiency and justice, that when they should be able to bear the new revelation, they would see that the word of His love and pardon had vitality. They would know that these messages could not return unto such a One void. They must realize, that His Fatherhood would prosper in the full accomplishment of His mission to substitute good for evil. To the mind of the great prophet of the Captivity, God was indeed lifted high above man's thoughts and ways. It is borne in upon the prophet that God had been all the centuries gathering in the minds of men a conviction of His Divine power in order that he might surely reinforce His |