The Secret of the Divine Ways

E. Bersier, D.D.
Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
1. How many among you have felt, at the reading of my text, an involuntary doubt cross their mind! And, beyond the circle of believers, with what a smile of pity or of indignation is it greeted!

2. Moreover, the manner in which this truth is often presented revolts generous hearts. When I see a Christian overwhelmed by trials, yet not doubting the Divine goodness, blessing the hand which afflicts, I recognise both the tone of Paul and the spirit which animated him. But when, in the midst of a tame and easy existence of selfish happiness, I see a Christian delight in the thought that his lot is privileged above others, I can understand the sceptic's smile and indignation. Under this narrow aspect the great thought of God's intervention is often presented. Here is an epidemic; a believer who is spared pretends to see in this fact the mark of the special preference of God. Another is the only one who escapes from a shipwreck; he lets it be understood that God had cares and tenderness only for him. The atheist Diagoras, disembarking at Samothracia, went to the temple, where they showed him the offerings of voyagers rescued from shipwreck. "Canst thou deny the providence of the gods," they said to him, "when thou seest all those testimonies of their intervention?" "Ah!" replied Diagoras, "we should also hear the testimony of those who rest buried beneath the waves!" If we must recognise with pleasure that God acts in preserving us from danger or suffering, we must also repel the theory of a special preference. God loves those unfortunate victims of epidemic or shipwreck as much as He loves us, and more perhaps. I cannot tell what I experience when I see Christians interpreting God's dispensations in the sense which corresponds to their narrow hearts. In vain has the Book of Job condemned that error; in vain the Master has declared that the Galileans upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not guiltier than others. We hear such explaining the ways of the Lord with a cold and axiomatic tone. A child is taken away; they ask if it was not made an idol of. A humiliating misfortune overtakes one of their neighbours; they conclude that it was undoubtedly necessary — an idea directly opposed to that of St. Paul, who affirms that all things work together for good to them that love God.

3. Now this error manifests itself under forms which are singularly hurtful to Christian beliefs. There are men who can see Divine intervention only in what is extraordinary. There are Christians who do not perceive God acting in the uniform laws by which He governs the world. A cure, for example, in which human science has taken no part, seems to them, should be attributed directly to God; if the physician had interfered, in their eyes he would have relegated God to the background. Thence proceeds a consequence which unbelief does not fail to draw. "Ignorance is the mother of faith. In a dark century such an event is attributed to God; but to-morrow a more enlightened generation will know the law thereof." Now that is what we ought to fight against. God does not manifest Himself to us in that alone which astonishes and disconcerts us. All things work together for His plans. Let us now penetrate to the real centre of the apostle's thought.

I. ALL THINGS TEND TOWARDS ONE END. That thought was born the day when Jesus taught His disciples to say, "Thy kingdom come." Reason alone would conclude in an opposite sense. How can we recognise a Divine plan in that bloody play which is called history, in those ancient civilisations which have so thoroughly disappeared, in those insolent triumphs of force or cunning, in those miscarriages of the best causes? A deep thinker sums up his science on this point by saying that "humanity, like a wheel, describes a fatal circle." And yet one would not dare to repeat this to-day. Progress is believed in; men have taken from Christianity their belief in the final triumph of justice and truth. Well! that belief belongs to us; we have given it to the world; do not let the world turn it against us. I see Christians confounded at the sight of this world, despairing of the future. Let that cowardly attitude be far from us! All serves to erect that eternal temple where God shall be adored by all His creatures; each generation which passes lays its stone there, and the building rises.

II. To believe in that general plan by which all things work together for the glory of God is not enough. I want to know what HIS PLAN IS WITH REGARD TO ME. But how shall we show this without dashing against objections?

1. Our belief is taxed with pride. "What presumption to believe ourselves objects of the vigilant care of God!" So then, when you see your little child relating his faults to God, and asking Him to make him better, is that a teaching of pride? But you will answer, Have all Christians the admirable simplicity of that child? No. But that proves that they are men and sinners — nothing more. The ideal for them (the gospel declares it) would be to become children again. You insist on our insignificance. But if we are great enough to believe in God, to love Him, what pride is there in believing that God responds to that desire which He has Himself inspired? Would you charge with pride the feeble plant which, each day at sunrise, holds up its head and half opens to inhale its vivifying heat? God, you say, is too great to make all things work together for our good. What! — that God who has poured forth on the meanest of His creatures treasures of wisdom, of foresight; that God who decks the birds of the air and the flowers of the field would be too great to count our sorrows and our prayers! You accuse us of pride? But suffer me, in turn, to distrust your humility. A thousand times I have seen the rebel creature escape from God under pretext of his insignificance, and shelter his revolt under the veil of humility. Where is pride if not in that attitude of a feeble and sinful being who says, "Let others call upon Thee; I can do without Thee"?

2. Our modern stoics accuse us of obeying an interested sentiment. To hear them, man ought never to seek his own good. He ought to obey duty — that is all. But we may well remark that the gospel has said all that with an incomparable power. Never has the mercenary spirit been more mercilessly condemned than by Jesus Christ. But because I ought to serve God without calculation, does it follow that I ought to reject, in the name of my dignity, that Providence which makes all things work together for my good? No, certainly, for that would be to lie to my nature.

3. "Why pretend that God occupies Himself with each of His creatures, since He governs the world by invariable laws?" So then, in a well-ordered state, because the sovereign has made and observes the laws, he cannot testify his benevolence to any of his subjects, and the order which he has made to prevail will hinder him from ever manifesting his love. To be logical, we must go further, and say that God is chained by the laws, He has made, that there is no other God than those laws, and return to the inexorable fatality of the heathen.

4. Appeal is made to experience. "Are you spared more than others, you who pray? And when you would escape from the evils which threaten you, are you not, like us, obliged to resort to the human means which experience points out?" But have the objectors reflected that they confound the good of believers with their visible happiness, a confusion which the Bible never makes? Distinguish those two things, and light already begins to come. What God calls our good is not what we call our happiness. Happiness for us is success, health, glory, fortune, the affection of mankind, pleasure; in the sight of God the good for us is holiness, is salvation. God does not to-day attach happiness to faith, and success to piety; if He did so, we should obey Him in order to be happy, and God would be served only by mercenaries. But it is true only in appearance that all men suffer alike. Question believers, and they will tell you that in the severest trials they have discovered signs of the Divine goodness, Now, even when outwardly all seems to be identical in the life of him who loves God and of him who does not, we must admit that events will work upon men according to the mind with which they are accepted. Behold in nature those forces which frighten us by their power of destructiveness. In the plant, beneath a lovely flower, is a subtle poison; in the atmosphere is the hurricane and the electricity. Put the savage in presence of those forces, he will find only suffering and death. But the scientist extracts that poison, and finds in it a remedy for his ills; to the breath of the wind he spreads the sails of his mills or of his ships; he lays hold of the lightning, and upon an imperceptible thread cast into the depths of the ocean he commands it to carry his thoughts to the ends of the world. Well, this is a faithful picture of the manner in which the believing soul can turn to his good all the events of life, all the evils which overwhelm it. Here is failure, mourning, suffering alighting on a Christian soul. Well, you will see that soul seizing those terrible forces which might crush it under their strokes, humbling itself, praying, blessing, and drawing from what might be its death the secret of true greatness, of spiritual triumph and of holiness.

(E. Bersier, D.D.)