p. 62My dear and burdened friend, I hope your difficulties are finding their level.—I am partly ashamed of my difficulties, I confess.
There is no particular cause for shame. The sense of difficulty indicates a certain amount of discernment. There are some people that it would be quite refreshing to see distressed with a difficulty. At the same time, the presence of difficulty means more or less the obstruction of light.—That is what makes me ashamed.
Doubtless, the free course of light would banish all darknesses. Yet the shadows shew that light is near.—Also that it is obstructed. That is what I lament.
The sorrow is a noble one, but you may let it go too far. Our difficulties are due to our impotencies, and our impotencies are realities for the time being, to be taken into account. We are not capable of knowing everything at present. It is well to know p. 63 and note the fact. It mitigates our distress in dealing with such subjects to recognize distinctly that we can only go so far. If a man thought he ought to be able to go up to the moon, his actual inability to do so would be a distress unknown to the man who recognizes that it is impossible.
You would almost seem to argue in favour of ignorance and uncertainty.—Yes, beyond a certain point.
What!—Certainly. There are things we cannot know: things we cannot be certain about. My great contention is that we ought not to allow our ignorance of what we cannot know to interfere with our certainty as to the things we can and do know. Suppose a farmer ignorant of the causes of the seasons were to shut his eyes to the fact that there are seasons, and so refrain from sowing his fields, he would illustrate the folly of the men, who because they cannot understand God, refuse the Bread of Everlasting Life that has come to their very doors in the Bible.
The cases are not exactly parallel. The farmer would of course not be guilty of such folly, because he knows the harvest will come independently of his understanding of the matter; but is it so in this other matter?—I submit it is even so. We know enough to justify faith and hope and practical compliance, notwithstanding our inability to know everything. We cannot measure the universe, but we know enough of it to see that it must have had its origin in Power and Wisdom Eternal. Science recognizes this in other terms; for what else does “force” mean?
That is where I do not follow you. Science does not recognize a personal God.—Science does not exclude a personal God. It employs p. 64 a term that merely covers ignorance—I mean ignorance in the literal and confessed sense. It says, “We do not know. We know this much, that there is force or energy behind all the phenomena of Nature: what this force is we cannot tell.” So far as the knowledge possessed by science is concerned, this eternal force may be eternal God—the personal God of revelation.
“May be” is very unsatisfactory.—Nay, not in this special connection. Consider how different the case would be if we were obliged to say “cannot be.” The “may be” leaves the door open. It amounts to this, that science must be left out of the question. We must look to the general drift of facts in coming to a decision.
I think that is where I am most liable to drift. I do not see any evidence of superintendence in the universe. Everything works by such relentless law that superintendence seems excluded.—Excuse me, “relentless law” would necessarily be the basis of a rational universe on any principle. Things must work upon a stable basis of cause and effect for reason to reign and superintendence to work. Suppose fire sometimes burnt and sometimes supplied cooling moisture: suppose the ground was sometimes liquid and sometimes solid: suppose the air sometimes destroyed life and at other times sustained it: suppose the sun sometimes rose and at other times for weeks stayed away: suppose the earth sometimes extended itself vapourously into universal space, and sometimes condensed itself; how impossible for created beings to adapt themselves to such a universe of uncertainties. It is one of the necessities of the case that “relentless law” should be at the bottom of things. There could not otherwise p. 65 arise the idea of superintendence. It is well said that “order is Heaven’s first law.” We may rejoice that the universe is established on the immovable foundation of “relentless law.”
I can join in that thought. The “relentless law” I see; but where is the superintendence?—That is a question of history purely; we have record of the superintendence.
I do not think it is a question of history. It is more an affair of experience. Do we experience the superintendence? Do we see it take place?—I should say “Yes,” if you make the “we” large enough.
What do you mean?—Well, don’t confine the “we” to you and me or our generation.
Why not? If it is a matter of experience, we should see it take place as well as others.—Yes, when it does take place. Superintendence is a casual thing. It happens when it happens. It is not always happening, for if it were, it would cease to be what we understand by superintendence and would be part of the system of things—the system you have called “relentless law.”
You mean it is only occasionally performed?—Yes; and that those who are there to see, see. Divine superintendence is necessarily an affair of such importance as to be rare in its occurrence, and impossible in its discernment unless God permit. Those who are not contemporaneous with such a stupendous event, and to whom God does not vouchsafe privity in the matter, necessarily cannot know it.
You are too vague; come to particulars.—Well, take the opening of the Red Sea or the dividing of the Jordan: these were cases of superintendence. The “relentless law” which makes water find its level p. 66 was superintended. It was not set aside. It was regulated. Another application of “force” was brought to bear, diverting the water from a particular spot. Now, only those who were living at the time could witness the occurrence, and those only of the living who stood related to it. Their knowledge of the matter could only come to us as a matter of history.
There you are touching the question of miracle and revelation.—So men talk in their artificial discriminations; miracle and revelation are as much a department of experience as the daily phenomena of Nature.
Not for us.—Yes, for us, as an affair of testimony. Belief on testimony is not experience.—We cannot experience everything. Some things—many things—we have to take on the experience of others; and their experience can only come to us in the form of testimony, and when lodged in the mind, it is as much an item of knowledge as experience. Take the existence of the Lake Victoria Nyanza in Central Africa: you have never seen it: probably never will. But you have no doubt of it existence, have you?
No, I cannot say that I have.—Yet you never experienced it?
I have experienced the credible testimony of it.—So have we experienced the credible testimony of the superintendence of the universe in many palpable particulars. “Relentless law” does not exclude it, but provides the platform for it, and creates the necessity for it. The universe as a mere machine that could not be superintended would be vastly less interesting than a system under omnipotent control.