Section III. God Sought and Found
The life of the Blessed Sacrament towards God may be considered from three different points of view. From one point it is a life of love; for the Sacred Humanity of Jesus upon earth alone loves and worships adequately the presence and the majesty of God on earth. The worship of the Blessed Sacrament is co-extensive with the perfections of God, by reason of the worth which the worship of the Sacred Humanity derives from its Union with the Word. It is from this point of view that gentle and self-forgetting hearts, sick with the world's forgctfulness of God, and frightened with the world's irritability with God, delight to look at this sweet Sacrament. There is rest and satisfaction, balm and fragrance, shade and coolness, to the weary mind, in the thought of all the love and worship which God is thus receiving from out the invisible depths of the Holy Eucharist. From another point of view it is a life of equality, of equality with God; for the Blessed Sacrament is actively ruling the world, and is felt contemporaneously in every point of space, at every moment of time, in every cause that is anywhere producing an effect, and in every force that is thrilling, moving, acting, re acting, adjusting, and balancing, in all the mechanism of heaven and earth. And this is a view peculiarly dear to the lovers of Jesus, in that it magnifies His divinity even in the very dimmest caverns of His obscurity and seeming littleness. It is the underground thought in all meditation of His mysteries which gives them their peculiar attraction and unearthly beauty. From the third point of view it is a life of imitation; and it is from this point of view that we are now regarding it. It is a copy of God, an image, a transcript, a shadow, an impression, a sign, a mould. Nay, more, it is God copying and tran scribing Himself, reflecting Himself in the spotless mirror of Transubstantiation. It is His own imitation of His own life in His own world.
We must keep this single view clearly before us, while we travel as it were through the world, and range through its sciences and the kingdoms of its knowledge, and see with what closeness of similitude, varying here and there, yet never discrepant, all manifestations of God are analogous to the Blessed Sacrament. It seems to have been modelled on some idea in the Divine Mind, and to express what might be reverently and metaphorically called His centre of gravity, that is, the point on which all the forces of His character (may I dare to use the word?) would in our human way be said to be collected; for the Divine Simplicity is really inexpressible. God's sacra mental Presence is an exact image of His natural presence and of His grace-giving presence; neither is it opeu to any additional objections, to any objections to which they are not equally and undoubtedly liable. Thus, in answering objections to the doctrine of the Blessed Sacrament, we keep opening out continually new and rich mines of devotional thought and feeling.
Seen by the moonlight of reason, as well as by the sunshine of revelation, all creation lies before us as a vast region, every point of which is a hiding-place of Him who made it. With Him, to reveal Himself is to conceal Himself. It seems a sort of necessity of His in comprehensible perfections. It adheres inseparably to the mystery of the Infinite stooping to disclose Himself to the finite. As we see a star sometimes when we do not look directly at it and lose it from the field of vision when we do, or as we smoke and stain the glass in order to sea the sun, so is it with God; we see Him best when He is veiled. He is to us what the face of Moses was to the people: we cannot look upon it because of its exceeding brightness. However much we might expect beforehand that God would interfere in His own world in some brilliant, striking, majestic, and overwhelming manner, however much it would seem desirable that He should so interfere for the greater sanctifying of His creatures and the swifter destruction of evil, it appears that He does not do so, for reasons drawn from our side of the question as well as from His own. His character, or which with Him is the same thing, His perfection, so 27 far as lie has been mercifully pleased to let us know any thing about it, makes Him desire to be sought, and to be found, but only to be found by diligent, humble, awe-stricken, and worshipful investigation. His boundless perfection, as well as His love of us, render this in some way necessary. Creation is as it were the exhibition to us of the various magnificence of His attributes; and yet we do not see Him; we cannot make sure of Him. We know when He has been and gone, as Jacob knew, when he said, God was here and I knew it not; or as the disciples at Emmaus said when He disappeared, Did not our hearts burn within us? He is truly almost as hid den under the many-coloured veil of external nature as in the home of His inaccessible Essence, nearly as in comprehensible in His outward operations as in His intrinsical perfections. Meanwhile, constituted as we are, it is best also for the ennobling of our moral and spiritual nature that we should have to seek Him before we find Him. With men the process of learning is both more precious and more instructive than the result of learning; and the use of our powers of greater consequence than their acquisitions. So in its measure is it in our relations with God. Our present life is not one of enjoyment, but one of probation. Virtue is the meritorious seeking of Him; the finding of Him at last our gratuitous reward. The possession of God is our eternal joy; to ufeel after Him if haply we may find Him" in the dark, near to every one of us, though to all of us invisible, this is faith, hope, and charity, and the exercise of all the vir tues. And thus it is for reasons drawn from our side as well as His, that God does not reveal Himself to us except by concealing Himself: and as the Blessed Sacrament is His chief hiding-place, so is it His chief reve lation.
Let us take the Bible as an illustration of this principle. It is eminently a revelation of God. This is its professed object. It was written for this end, to be a plainer world than the world without us, easier to read than nature, safer to decipher than the documents of our own consciences, to tell us deeper things in a plainer way and with a completer sympathy. Yet who will not acknowledge that the extent of our knowledge also widens the horizon of our ignorance? He hid Himself under a strange trivial law in paradise, and in the cool time of the evening air He walked hiddenly amid the thickets of its aromatic shrubberies. He hid Himself under the promise of Mary's seed, and forthwith Eve misinterpreted it with natural human hurry. He hid Himself with the seed of Seth, and then with eight persons in an ark. He hid Himself with one family of patriarchs, and then with one people, anything but remarkable for goodness, greatness, or attractiveness. The system of the synagogue was a system of mysteries, and it preluded to the hidd°n-ness of the Incarnation. He disclosed Himself to men in the Bible as having human passions and giving way to human inequalities. He seems to praise deceit, and to sanctify the patriarchs by what appear on the surface *x> be dubious actions. The destiny of the Canaanitish nations perplexes men's ideas of right and wrong, and cases are put and left which seem incompatible with either human liberty on the one hand or divine predestination on the other. What is told of us is more often than not a veil cast over God, and what is left untold seems often to be just what the nature of a revelation would lead
Him to disclose. It is more narrative than didactic, and the amount and manner of its inspiration it is quite a problem to fix. Hence it is not so much a systematic body of teaching, as a collection of supernatural principles, of divine axioms, of celestial definitions, out of which as many sciences and theologies might be de duced. What is iraitable is not clearly marked off from what is only admirable; and the allegorical is continually encroaching on the literal. Miracles assume laws, and prophecies look onward to fulfilments. In a word, re garded in «, merely human way, the Bible is the most unexpected kind of book which could be conceived. It is a system of hieroglyphics, and Jesus is the key to it all. By the light of the Incarnation, of which the Blessed Sacrament is the special and living mystery, all is plain. Nothing can be more wonderful, more magnificent, more deep, more wise, more harmonious, more self-consistent. But without that light what can crea tures do but " wrest to their own destruction" one of God's chiefest mercies?
But it is not only in its matter and structure that the Bible so plainly discloses a hidden God. Its direct teaching expressly asserts it as a doctrine. Let us consider what results from a collective view of the following passages, some of which have already been quoted. It is the glory of God to conceal the word.1 Although Thou conceal these things in Thy heart, yet I know that Thou rememberest all things. f Christ says in Isaias, He hath made My mouth like a sharp sword: in the shadow of His hand He hath protected Me, and hath made Me as a chosen arrow: in His quiver He hath hidden Me.J
In a moment of indignation have I hid My face a little while from thee, but with everlasting kindness have J had mercy on thee.* Thou hast hid Thy face from us.f The dispensation of the mystery which hath been hidden from eternity in God.J The mystery of God the K^ther and of Christ Jesus, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge § Your life is hid v'th Christ in God. || All darkness is hid in His &ec-et places.^ I will give thee hidden treasures and the coDoealed riches of secret places, that thou mayest kuof that I am the Lord that calleth thee by thy name. I have made a likeness of thee, and thou hast not kr.own Me. I girded thee, and thou hast not known Me.* See now all the things which thou hast heard. I have shewn thee new things from that time, and things are kept which thou knowest not. They are created now, and not of old; and before the day, when thou heardest them not, lest thou shouldst say: Behold I knew them! Thou hast neither heard, nor known, neither was thy ear open of old. David so looks at God as if He were the hiding-place Himself of His vexed creatures, that he prays Him one while to hide him under the shadow of His wings, another while in His pavilion, and again in the secret of His tabernacle: and the hiding of God's face is spoken of as the customary punishment, the standing trouble, of His creatures. God's very presence is a presence so bright that it hides all that comes under the law of its light; His Face is itself a secret. ft Thus David in an extasy sings the following inspired words, 0 how great is the multitude of Thy sweetness, 0 Lord, which Thou
• Job liv. 8. f IWd* lxiy- 1- t Eph- »»• 9- $ Col. ii. 2-3. | Ibid, iii. 3. f Job «. 26. ** Isaias xlv. ft Ibid> hast hidden for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that hope in Thee, in the sight of the sons of men. Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy Face, from the disturbance of men. Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for He hath shown His wonderful mercy to me in a fortified city.2 Verily thou art a hidden God, the God of Israel, the Saviour. | When He hideth His countenance, who is there that can behold.Him, whether it regard nations or all men?J Again, He is described as the Lord that hideth His Face from the House of Jacob. Neither can all these passages be ex plained in the sense of a temporary punishment, neither when they refer to punishment are they the less illustrative of the principle under consideration^ The kingdom of heaven itself is like unto a treasure hidden in a field, and when a man found it, he hid it.|| Three times David calls God his hiding-place: and our Lord is spoken of by Tsaias as the Man that shall be as when one is hid from the wind, and hideth himself from a storm, as rivers of water in drought, and the shadow of a rock that standeth out in a desert land.^f And so Habacuc says, God will come from the south, and the Holy One from mount Pharan. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His brightness shall be as the light: there is His strength hid.** I have brought all these passages together to make you familiar with the way in which this figure of a hiding-place was continually present to the minds of the inspired writers. Sometimes it is God who is hiding Himself, and in light and brightness, and in His own presence. Sometimes it is man who de sires to hide himself in God, as if there was ever an enviable darkness round about Him which the intrusive eye of creatures could not penetrate. Sometimes God bides Himself for awhile, and for a reason, and in the way of chastisement, and men cry out because of the pain of it. The visions and apparitions of God, such as those to Abraham, Moses, Eliphaz, and Elias, might be abundantly quoted in the same sense. But the following passage from the book of Job treats so fully the whole subject of seeking for God, that in spite of its length I will introduce it here.3
Now also my words are in bitterness, and the hand of my scourge is more grievous than my mourning.
Who will grant me that I might know and find Him, and come even to His throne?
I would set judgment before Him, and would fill my mouth with complaints, that I might know the words that He would answer me, and understand what He would say to me.
I would not that He should contend with me with much strength, nor overwhelm me with the weight of His greatness.
Let Him propose equity against me, and let my judgment come to victory.
But if I go to the east He appeareth not: if to the west, I shall not understand Him. If to the left hand what shall I do? I shall not take hold on Him: if I turn myself to the right hand I shall not see Him.
But He knoweth my way; and has tried me as gold that passeth through the fire.
My foot hath followed His steps, I have kept His way and have not declined from it. I have not departed from the commandments of His lips, and the words of His mouth I have hid in my bosom.
For He is alone, and no man can turn away His* thought j and whatsoever His soul hath desired, that hath He done; and when He shall have fulfilled His will in me, many other like things are also at hand with Him.
And therefore I am troubled at His presence, and when I consider Him I am made pensive with fear.
God hath softened my heart, and the Almighty hath troubled me. For I have not perished because of the darkness that hangs over me, neither hath the mist covered my face.
Times are not hid from the Almighty: but they that know Him, know not His days.
It is then the good will and pleasure of God that He is so in His own creation that He will only be found out by those who seek Him. He will neither overwhelm their minds with the oppression of His majesty, nor constrain their wills by the visible pageant of His justice It is our greatest glory and highest privilege thus to seek after God. When we consider our own vileness, it is wonderful that we should be allowed to do so. We do not deserve to be permitted to do anything with God or for Him. Yet in His compassion He has made it our one sole duty, as it is our inestimable right. When we do not think of God, we seem to have many rights; and in truth we have; and they are all derived from Him, and rest immoveably on the basis of His fidelity. But in the thought of God, they all seem to die away, and to wither as flax in the fire. We see that He is all in all, that there is no justice but His absolute will, which is the perfection of justice, that on His majesty we can have no claims but such as He first invents and then secures to us. Thesenso of our dignity, which in the practice of virtue it is so often needful for us to remember, passes away from us, as a star fades in the sunrise. Then, in such hours, it dawns upon us, like a new idea, how glorious a thing it is for us to be allowed to seek God, tofiud Him everywhere, to be ever lifting His veils, and looking into His beautiful sanctuaries, while He leads us with His fascinations, and encourages us by His rays of light, and fills our hearts with all manner of sudden sweetnesses, and melts us into prayers and tears. And yet how often we forget all this! We observe, and our observations are not hung on Him. We think, and He is not in all our thoughts. We reason, and our reasoning is not His. We read, but we are not broadening or deepening our knowledge of Him, " whom to know is life, and joy to make mention of His Name." Nay, we even separate what is intellectual from what is devotional, as if the mind and heart were as two scales, and one could not rise but the other must sink. Let it be in no such spirit as this that we now proceed to see how far God's manner of disclosing Himself in the various kingdoms of nature and of grace, of the Church and of the world, furnishes us with analogies to the Blessed Sacrament. As God wills that we should seek Him, let us show our love by being eager and diligent in the search, applying, if we may, to Him the words of Saul to Ziphites,4 Blessed be ye of the Lord, for you have pitied my case. Go therefore I pray you, and use all diligence, and curiously enquire, and consider the place where His Foot is, and who hath seen Him there; for He thiuketh of ine, that I lie craftily in wait for Him. Consider and see all His lurking holes where He is hid, and return to me with the certainty of the thing, that I may go with you. And if He should ever go down in the earth to hide Himself, I will search Him out in all the thousands of Juda.
The most part of His works are hidden, says the Sage; but when by His help we discover Him, then we must remember the Sage's advice, Be not exalted; for the works of the Highest only are wonderful, and His works are glorious and secret and hidden; * and the whole world before Him is as the least grain of the balance, and as a drop of the morning dew that falleth down upon the earth."}" And when we come to difficulties, the same in spired philosopher is at hand to instil into us true and wise and reverent dispositions, as when he considers the extermination of the Canaanites, he cries out, " O how good and sweet is Thy Spirit, 0 Lord, in all things! For who shall say to Thee, What hast Thou done? or who shall withstand thy judgment? or who shall come before Thee to be a revenger of wicked men? or who shall accuse Thee, if the nations perish which Thou hast made? For there is no other God but Thou, who hast care of all, that Thou shouldst show that Thou dost not give judgment un-, justly. Neither shall king, nor tyrant in Thy sight en quire about them whom Thou hast destroyed. For so much then as Thou art just, Thou orderest all things justly: thinJving it not agreeable to Thy power, to condemn him who deserveth not to be punished. For Thy5 power is the beginning of justice: and because Thou art Lord of all, Thou makcst Thyself gracious to all. For Thou showest Thy power, when men will not believe Thee to be absolute in power, and Thou conviricest the boldness of them that know Thee not. But Thou, being master of power, judgest with tranquillity and with great favour disposest of us: for Thy power is at hand when Thou wilt."
Footnotes
Chapter 19 of 31