was a deeply practical religion; much of it seems shallowly liberal by our own standards of today and in comparison with classical Christianity. But at one point Elsmere showed genius. He transformed the midday meal in the workman’s cottage into a simple sacrament. Let me read you a description of the noon meal in the carpenter’s home:
Inside was a curious sight. The table was spread with the midday meal. Round the table stood four children, the eldest about fourteen and the youngest six or seven. At one end of it stood the carpenter himself in his working apron, brawny . . . bowed a little by his trade. Before him was a plate of bread, and his horny hands were resting on it . . .
Something in the attitude of all concerned reminded me, kept me where I was silent.
The father lifted his right hand.
“The Master said, Do this in remembrance of Me!”
The children stooped for a moment in silence. Then the youngest said slowly, in a little softened cockney voice that touched me extraordinarily, “Jesus, we remember Thee always.” It was the appropriate response.
Robert Elsmere had to rethink the traditional faith, as his honesty required him to do, but he was satisfied with no mere negations or denials.
So my advice is two-fold. First see whether those doubts are honest or dishonest. If they are dishonest, then there is nothing that can be done until God, by some tragedy in your life, shows you the superficiality of materialism. If there is also the least admixture of honest doubt, then the true response is: “Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” Build upon the faith you have, use all the means of grace: the Bible as the record of God’s gracious dealings with men, the encouragement of friends who have been humble enough to put their hands in the hand of God, the lives of the great servants of God, and the greatest of all Christian services, which God is to share, the Communion.
the hidden god
Verily Thou art a God that hidest thyself.
—Isaiah 45:15
Belief in God is easy when the sun is shining, but not when the blinds in the house are all drawn. Sorrow, misfortune, pain come and we cry: “Where is God?” He is hidden, or so it seems to us, and we say in despair: “Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.”
We feel this doubly so in war-time. Twenty-five years ago saw the close of a world catastrophe, the Great War, with its ten million dead and its four years of mental and physical agony. Where was God then? Where is God today? Did H. G. Wells speak for the majority when he said: “If I thought there was a God who looked down on battles and death. . . . able to prevent these things . . . I would spit in His empty face”?
I. Why God Hides Himself
(1) His purposes are greater than our imaginings. He is the high and holy One dwelling in light unapproachable. His ways are higher than our ways; his thoughts than our thoughts. God is perfect holiness and we have sinned against the light.
(2) Because of his respect for human personality, he will not thrust himself upon men. If he did, he would undo his own work in us: he would take from us the most precious thing that we have—our freedom of choice and will.
In the creation of man two possibilities were open to God. He could bring into being a creature whose every thought and action were determined by the divine will; or he could give him a will of his own.
Suppose God had chosen the former way: then there would be no moral evil in the world: no greed, no lust, and no war. Man would always live uprightly and honestly, serving his fellows and obeying his God. But what would be the value of such service, when the creature who gave it was not free to do otherwise? Men would be marionette dolls in the hand of Omnipotence. No, there would be no virtue in goodness if it were not the result of man’s own free choice. What light does this throw on the war?
I am often asked: “Why doesn’t God intervene and stop the war?” The answer is that having made man as he is, God will not mar his own creation, by taking away the power of choice. If man by his ignorance, folly and sin, turns this world into a hell then he cannot blame God for it; he has only himself to blame for it. God hides himself because of his respect for our freedom.
(3) God hides himself that our powers may develop and grow. If he hides himself when we suffer, it is only that through pain we may come to maturity; that patience and bravery may be born; that we may become strong.
A modern writer tells of a man whose wife was an invalid. For some time, he had been accustomed to carrying her about the house, but all his attentions only encouraged her to pander to her weakness. One day he discovered this. He realized that she must exert her own powers, that she would never be strong if she leaned on his support. It was difficult to refuse to carry her; it was still more difficult to stand aside and watch her painful, stumbling attempts to walk. But his restraint meant her development. So, also, God hides himself that we may develop our own powers.
II. Though God Is Hidden, He Is Not Absent
He has not flung the world into space and then left it to take its own course. He is quite near to us, because he has come to us, hidden, but hidden in the form of a man. That is what the Incarnation means that God came down in hidden form, in this carpenter of Nazareth, this man Jesus. If the infinite and holy God were to enter this realm of space and time, to draw near to his rebellious children, he must hide himself in the form of a man. The Christian Gospel is the Good News that this has happened. The hidden God has come near to us in his Son: that his Word is spoken to us in Jesus Christ. His is a truth that was born in the experience of those who trod the streets of Palestine with Jesus of Nazareth. It has been authenticated in the lives of men and women since.
Job’s question rings across the centuries: can man by searching find out God? The answer is: no, he cannot. God remains for ever hidden from the unaided human reason. But the only begotten Son has declared him. In Christ, God has entered into those very experiences in which we feel he is farthest away. He shared our sorrows and our pain; he shed tears at the news of his friend Lazarus’s death. He shared our agony, more than our agony, at the Cross. In death itself where God seems most hidden, at the darkest point of our existence, we see most brightly that God is there. We watch the net closing around him. We stand by the Cross; there evil triumphs, scatters his friends, wrecks his ministry, crushes his life. There the incarnate Son of God dies. Jesus drains the last bitter dregs of the cup of human experience. He too feels that the face of God is hidden. In despair he cries: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” So Jesus felt, yet men have realized that there, more than in all else he did, there was God.
That was how the centurion felt at the Cross. There was the confidence of Christ, commending his soul to his father, in that black hell of despair. His was no hardened or dangerous criminal. The hardened soldier looked, and as he looked, the truth dawned upon him. “Truly” he cried “this was the Son of God.”
Darkness will come, even to the Christian, days and nights when God seems far away. Nevertheless, as we stand beneath the Cross of Christ, we know that Faber’s words are true:
Thrice blest is he to whom is given
The instinct which can tell
That God is on the field when He
Is most invisible.
1943
the god of nature and the god of grace
