fault with them and criticise them and pronounce opinions upon them. The hungry man pronounces no opinion upon the bread, but that it is good. It is the epicure that finds fault with his supplies; if he could be hungry for a time he would be a thankful man. The time will come when there will be no Church, no altar, no open vision, no spread volume out of which men may read shortly or at length as they please; there shall be only a retired God, a withdrawn vision, a day all cloud, a night all

storm.

O God of mercy, take the wings from every little bird that seeks the sun, but do not take from our souls the desires that would fly towards thee! O do thou blight every little flower, and let it no more see the light of day; but do not withdraw thy sunshine from our souls, or they will twice die—they will die the second death. Reverse all the laws of nature, plague the universe, vex and tease the procession of the worlds and the outflowings of all the floods that make the life and spring of creation; but spare them that call on thee-Take not thy Holy Spirit from us. We have despised our pastors, we have mocked them; we have written bitter things about them; we have made profit by our shame; we have laughed at the altar, and called the sanctuary an abandoned vacancy; but now that there is no word from heaven, no message from the skies, no music in the air, O Lord God Almighty, in the pitifulness of thy great mercy help us and save us, we humbly beseech thee!

Where is the Lord God of Elijah? O ye sermon-bibbers and gospel epicures, fed to a pitch of bloated awfulness of character, critics of the sanctuary, men whose heads are so cool because so empty that they can pronounce opinion upon prayer and song and sermon, and like it and not like it—the days come when you shall be taught by famine what you never could be taught by wisdom! My soul, live not until that day, but pray God to release thee, and take thee into the land of heavenly plentifulness before this poor little earth be given over to spiritual famine. Amen, Amen.

Chapter ix.

OMNIPOTENCE AND OMNISCIENCE.

HE prophet gets clearer and brighter as he goes along. Up

THE

to this time we have had visions; now we have the clear, definite, concrete realisation: "I saw the Lord standing upon the altar." We have come past the visions, the outlines, the apocalyptic cloudings, and we are face to face with the living God. This is music, this is progress, this is characteristic of the way of life; we end, not in vision of a poetic, ideal, shadowy kind, but in vision that means sight, touch; an immediate yet not overwhelming, a glorious yet not dazzling and blinding, presence. We were assured by his quality and tone that he would not perish in a cloud. It would have been contrary to the frankness of his nature, and out of harmony with the peculiar tone of his voice, if Amos had faded away. He must leave as definitely as he appeared. When he spoke we knew there was a man amongst Now that he is about to go away, and we shall see him, in this exposition, no more, he must speak to us in frankness; he must not leave us in thunder and judgment, he must find for us a gospel. First let him have his own way. He gives us a picture of omnipotence and omniscience unequalled in all poetry. If I say too much for Amos, produce the evidence to the contrary. The poetry of all languages is open to you; disprove the assertion that Amos's description of the omnipotence and omniscience of God is unparalleled in sublimity.

us.

What saith the Lord in his judgment tone? He says men cannot flee away from him. There is nothing beyond the sweep of his arm. But men may dig into hell? The Lord says, I am aware of it, but when they are in hell they shall feel my arresting hand; hell, define it as you may, is mine. But they may escape into heaven? True, yet thence will I bring them down. There is not a chamber in all the infinite palace of heaven from which

I am excluded; I built all the mansions in the house called heaven. But have not mountaineers and adventurers and spoilers found refuge in the caves of Carmel? Yes, I made the caves of Carmel; I am the architect and the builder, and I have the key of every cave: men cannot follow into the caves of Carmel, they are so close together, and when the pursuer comes up the hill he cannot tell into which aperture his foe has passed; they represent a network, a honeycomb, and man can hide from man in the caves of Carmel: but I settled the geometry of that honeycomb, I know every figure, and I can divide Carmel as if it were a cloud, and discover the runner in his deepest secrecy: I will search and take them out from thence. But men may drown themselves? True, but they shall not die; in the depth of the sea I will command a serpent, and he shall bite them: the serpent is my servant; I made his tooth, his fang; I entrusted him with his treasure of poison. All things are mine. But men may flee into captivity? True; and yet I will pick them out one by one, and say, You are the man I want. You cannot mingle yourselves up with other people, and be lost in the crowd. God, who holds in his hand the throng of the stars, cannot be baffled by any little crowd of our making. All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do; the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth; they flame and search; they spare not. Thou God seest me.

That is the lay prophet's description of the omnipotence and omniscience of God. He was no layman who had that vision. No matter where he began, he concluded in glory. No mere herdman ever dreamed that dream. There are some things men cannot do ; some thoughts men cannot think; some music men can only utter as the organ utters it, because the hand of skill and the soul of genius may be using the instrument for definite purposes. Thus the Bible proves its inspiration. It never made itself. The basket-work may be man-made-no doubt it is—but the fruit within-the treasure-are God's: the casket may have been found somewhere by man, and paid for as an article in merchandise, but the inner jewellery, the flaming stone, the stones that look all lights and tabernacle all glories, these were not man-made, they were only man-gathered, that man might see

some of the miracles of light, and fall down before new revelations of power and hints of possibility. No herdman and gatherer of sycamore fruit could have made that image of the omnipotence and omniscience of God.

But Amos does not rest there; he still pursues the fascination that is upon him, and still sees God in other aspects and relations: "It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven"; literally, It is he that has built the steps of the heavens; only each riser is millions of miles high, and each step lands the climber on some new world. Or, for stories read "spheres"; and the immensities, gleaming radiant worlds, how many are there of them? A thousand? Ten thousand? The poor little telescope has raked up more than a hundred thousand, and when the telescope is tired with looking, it says, I have not yet begun to see; beyond is the real life of the worlds: improve me, rub these lenses, burnish them, enlarge them, throw them away and replace them with others, for I have not yet begun to see the stories in God's palace. A few of the under-stories I have seen, and they are entrancingly and inexpressibly lovely and glorious; I cannot get inside them, but their windows are ablaze with light; yet I am sure I have only begun, or hardly begun; the stories are miles, millions at once, higher and higher. He was a singular herdman who saw that thousands of years ago. He had no telescope; he had only the natural vision as an outward instrument, but he had a soul that used that vision to advantage. What is the vision worth? Nothing, except for the merest appearances, the most transient and superficial coming and going of shape and colour and weight and bulk. What can you see upon a green leaf? Nothing; and yet there is a population on that green leaf, mayhap, outnumbering the population of the chief metropolis of the world. He was a singular gatherer of sycamore fruit who made all this up in his own mind; he might have made the whole Bible, he might have made the universe; there is fire enough in that man to warm a whole heaven. not insult us by suggesting that this man made it all out of his own mind, and had no warrant, guarantee, authority, or inspiration. If so, you increase the miracle, you stupefy the understanding of man.

VOL. XVII.

16

Do

"Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord" (ver. 8).

That is God's voice. Amos could not have said these words in his own person. God must create his own instruments for preaching, for revelation, for exposition, for all manner and quality of teaching; otherwise we misrepresent God. No man has a right to speak in the divine name, unless that right has been given to him by the divine Sovereign. It is impertinence, it is profanity, it is blasphemy, rank and black, for any man to stand up and say, "Thus saith the Lord, and thus will he do," if he be speaking only out of his own consciousness; then is he provoking men, taunting and mocking men; the words he uses are too large for his mouth, and the thoughts that he would express split him like thunderbolts, for they are not his own. That a herdman, a lay prophet, should have stood up and thus represented himself as the vicegerent and minister of God when he was nothing of the kind, adds to the miracle, and does not diminish it.

But will the Lord judge in fury? And will he proceed in his work with the indiscriminateness which makes no difference between old and young, right and wrong, good and bad? Hear this voice in the midst of the judgment storm :—

"I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth" (ver. 9).

We were terrified by the first loud burst of tremendous judgment; we thought it was indiscriminating, that it fell upon the earth in a fury of vengeance, and could make no distinctions between the right hand and the left: and, lo, the whole image is that of a man who is winnowing the corn. Watch him; he puts it all into the sieve; he takes it in his arms, he uses it so, putting it from point to point with his hands, and what falls out is blown away, and what remains is the wheat; and as he conducts this sifting process there breathes a voice through the wind, saying, What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord. Yet not the least grain shall fall upon the earth. This is minuteness, discrimination, careful criticism. Have no fear, therefore,