DEC 1877

PODLEIAN

GOD'S LOVING PROVIDENCE OVER HIS PEOPLE.

"For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect before Him."-2 Chron. xvi. 9.

Ir would be a strangely harsh voice and unfortunate manner which could present to us the doctrine of God's loving providence over His people so that it would not be pleasant to hear it.

The occasion upon which the text was uttered suggests a peculiar class of persons, who should 'think more than they do of the doctrine of Divine keeping. We are accustomed to tell the poor, "The Lord will provide; the bereaved, "Our light affliction worketh out a weight of glory;" those loaded down to the water's edge with anxiety, "Cast thy burden on the Lord." But observe that God sent this choicest expression of His loving providence to one who was only foolishly vexed with an annoyance quite common-place to persons in his position, and far less serious than many dangers from which God had readily delivered him. Perhaps no man ever had greater reason for calmly submitting all his interests to Divine keeping than had Asa, King of Judah. He was the Lord's anointed. All the Divine deliverances of the kings before him were so many precedents for his confidence Besides, Asa was in special covenant with God. Once, when the Ethiopians had marched against Judah, and the King raised the battle cry, "Help us, O Lord our God, for we rest in Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude!" the men of Judah had little to do but gather up the spoil of the encampment and cities from which the terror-stricken Ethiopians precipitately fled.

But Baasha, King of Israel, provoked himself into a fit of petty jealousy at the prosperity of Asa, and then, very naturally, fomented a quarrel with his brother monarch. As a sign of his petulant envy he began to build Ramah, a fortified place, on the north border of Judah. The demonstration need not have excited more than the exercise of common precaution on the part

PRICE TWOPENCE.

of Asa. But he is taken with one of those unaccountable freaks of fear which our unreliable human nature often plays with our most confident faith; he forgets his God, and bustles about Jerusalem as if he were a heathen man, and a cowardly one at that. He takes the silver and gold out of the temple, and out of his own palace, and sends it off as a royal bribe to Benhadad, King of Syria, that he would defend him by making a diversion on the north of Israel. The movement is apparently successful. The armies of Judah take possession of the half-built and now deserted walls of Ramah. But the silly pride of Asa in the success of his diplomacy is humiliated by the revelation of what had been God's plan had Asa remembered his alliance with Him instead of seeking that with Benhadad. He would have conquered Israel, and assumed a superiority to even the King of Syria; but now, through his own miserable but worldly-shrewd management, the power of Israel remains unbroken, the treasures of Judah are in the coffers of Syria, and Benhadad looms up as the great man and protector of Palestine. Then came the rebuke of the prophet Hanani, "The eyes of the Lord," etc.

There is something sadly natural in this conduct of Asa. It is so hard for us to feel that our interests are secure unless we are manipulating them ourselves.

A soldier in the battle seizes yonder knoll, driving off with his superior valor the enemies who were holding it. It is nobly done, and it will be well if the plan of his general includes the capture of that knoll. But if not, when the tide of battle rolls off in another. direction, the valiant soldier will be left unsupported in the midst of the returning enemies. How many men have been utterly undone by the accomplishment of their own plans, through their own vast industry and heroic enterprise, simply because they had not made their plans subordinate to the purposes of God, the Supreme commandant of every life! Keep your eye upon the pillar of fire and cloud which moves over the desert! That will surely lead you to the

now unseen borders of the Land of Rest; while what seems a smooth path to your feet may lead you deeper into the terrors of the wilderness.

But the text is immensely wider than its application to the mistake of Asa. All over it, in almost every word, are very consolatory truths for all of us who have a feeling that we need some better and happier confidence than that we have in either ourselves or our fellowmen.

1. How eagerly, then, God consults the welfare of His people! We can hardly think of the Omniscent One looking down upon the earth except with infinite calmness. But the figure of His eyes running to and fro is that of earnest intention and alert watchfulness. His whole soul on guard in solicitude.

"Those watchful eyes that never sleep Shall Israel keep when dangers rise." Why, then, should there be any such thing as solicitude among Christians, since God is solicitous for us? He sees Ramah on the border long before you, and has completed His plans for its overthrow before you have reconnoitered its shadow over the plain. God's watchfires are all around the border of your soul-land: you can rest quietly within.

2. And how minutely careful of us is God? I stood leaning over a case of quartz and other crystals in the School of Mines, wondering at the endless variety of shape, each perfect after its kind, and according to its angles and hue being a diamond, ruby, onyx, sapphire, or other form, yet each one so accurate in its lines that an apt student could tell in the dark what it was by feeling it between his thumb and finger. Such, I thought, are God's purposes in our lives; His providence tending to the perfecting of our being according to some one of His myriad standards of infinite beauty, if only we do not in our self-will disturb the silent process of crystalization. Every moment, every circumstance, every trial work into the amazing harmony, that by and by we may be gems for His own crown of glory.

It is, in some respects, a startling thought that our welfare is so involved in minutiæ that the least thing may determine the whole. And a full comfort is it that His eye, which sees great and small alike, directs them all.

3. And how complete is God's supervision of our welfare? His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show Himself strong for us. If it is a great comfort that he takes note of the least thing that happens to us, turning it to our advantage, how much grander the lesson that there is nothing, however minute, anywhere in the world that we need which that same loving eye does not discover, and which the winds of Providence will not waft to us! It is interesting to notice what once distant things have now

become involved in our daily lives. The friends who now gather about us a few years ago were strangers. The books which have most spurred and quickened our minds were penned in remote places, which, except as the author's nest, we would never have heard of. Think of this Book, the Bible, its leaves floating on the winds of centuries: some from the desert of Midian, some from the palace of Jerusalem, some from the plains of Babylon or the cities along the Mediterranean, written in what are to-day unspoken tongues, and yet all lying here, the comfort of our special sorrows, and the offer of remission for this very day's sins. Where do not those eyes search for me? Through all the mysterious passages of suffering and trial, opening vaults of treasure for my experience; beneath even my temptations, that the stone over which I stumble, if I rise again, may give up some good that was buried beneath it; through the hearts of my enemies, that honey may be found in these hives which I thought were filled only with stings. Wonderful light, burning its way through all obstacles, that it may discover good for me; but to me softer than the light of mother's eyes as it beams upon me with infinite love and carefulness, that He may show Himself infinitely strong for me; but oh, how infinitely tender with me! Let me give myself up to this precious faith. God asks it, and pointing to one evidence of His solicitude and love surpassing all others, the Divine sacrifice for sin, He asks, "If I spared not my only Son, but gave him up for you all, how shall I not with Him freely give you all things?" We cannot answer that question except in accordance with our deepest hopes. It is infallible in its logic and love.

But of whom is it said that God will show Himself strong in their behalf? Note the gracious carefulness of the expression. It does not read, "whose heart is perfect" only, nor

perfect before Him," "in His sight;" but, "whose heart is perfect toward Him." It requires no mirror, broad as the sun's disk, to reflect the whole form of the sun. Any broken, jagged piece of glass, lying in the dirt, will do it, if only it be turned perfectly toward the sun. And my poor guilt-broken, sin-soiled heart, will reflect the face of my Heavenly Father, and the full form of this His wonderful promise, if only I turn it perfectly toward Him.

Hearer, can you say "My heart, O God, is fixed?" Perhaps not, so timid have our past experiences made us. But you can say, "Turn us, O God of our salvation." And that cry, honestly uttered, is the righting of the soul so far as man can accomplish it. His grace must do the rest, and it will.

J. M. LUDLOW, D.D.