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THE RESERVED RIGHTS OF GOD. 



79 



will clear it all up. But He knows the meaning of it all 

 now. 



This is not blind-man's buff in the universe. The all-knowing 

 God sees far ; all forces are within His ken and His control. The 

 total effect is beyond my arithmetic, but it is not beyond the 

 calculus of Omniscience. The reflection is to some degree an 

 intellectual anchorage amid the depths of the world-flood that 

 threatens to engulf all security of thinking or of trust. 



The second question that is in many hearts is this, How can 

 we believe in a Divine Fatherhood at all that can complacently 

 endure the mass of misery — mental, moral, physical, social, 

 national — that now exists in the world. No face, no form of ill, 

 is wanting to the picture. Death, mutilation, outrage, destitu- 

 tion, flight, famine, fire, and wounds, are all horribly familiar. 

 To these are added desolation of heart, irreparable hopelessness, 

 long-drawn suspense, hourly shock and stress of nerves, scarcity 

 of food, and innumerable minor discomforts. Waste in substance, 

 loss in art, diminution of energy, lowering of health, decline of 

 faculty, chaotic change of plan — these are present on top of all 

 the rest. 



Again, it must be said that the solution is not with us. Yet, 

 again, it must be said that the truth of the Divine Sovereignty 

 does help us. It appertains to the sovereign God to dispose of 

 the creatures of His hand absolutely at will. That will is a will 

 of sovereign love, but it is the Sovereign Will of one who made 

 all things for itself and for themselves. 



Nothing is further from my intention than to offer this answer 

 in the spirit of old-fashioned Calvinism. I believe to the full in 

 the rights of the human heart to question, to mourn, to com- 

 plain, in the tenor of the psalm. To soothe and mollify hearts 

 tortured by doubt and lacerated by bereavement, one must 

 begin by the sympathy that understands, and the reverence 

 that acknowledges. Yet in administering the consolation which 

 they need, one finds some strength in the doctrine that the God 

 of all is a sovereign and faithful Creator ; and that nothing can 

 alter the elemental truth, "It is lawful for Him to do what He 

 wills with His own.'"' 



The tempered and balanced view of sovereignty just expressed, 

 will not please some. It involves consequences that do not 

 belong to the present lecture. It is prior to, and independent of, 

 any dealing of God with sin as such. It necessitates a happy 

 issue to all out of their afflictions unless they will not have it so. 



