SERMON I.

REV. WILLIAM R. WILLIAMS, D. D.

"Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour."-ISAIAH xlv. 15.

THE nation staggers, as if, besmeared and blinded with their own gore, and stunned with amazement and indignation, each of the people felt on his own front the bludgeon, and found delivered on his own brow or throat, the assassin's shot and the assassin's knife, which have been aimed at the chief magistrate of the land, and at the household and person of the statesman highest in position among the counselors who formed that President's cabinet. To calm, to guide, and to brace us, let us recur to the lesson of our text. It is a portion of Holy Writ, which was a favorite theme for meditation, and a frequent citation with Blaise Pascal, one of the brightest and profoundest intellects in the history of our race; and one too, whom the grace of God had made as eminently devout and Christian as he was great; leading him to consecrate the splendor of his genius and the fervor of his nature, in lowly and hearty service to Christ and His truth. Amid the lurid tempest of calamity that lowers and growls and howls around us, this great principle stands immovable and serene, that the God of Israel, the Saviour, rules yet;

and that, all-wise and almighty as He is, He shall yet yoke even the whirlwinds of carnage and civil war among the outriders of his own predestined triumph. He is hidden in a dim, untraceable majesty, but though thus invisible, is not aloof from the turmoil. In justice and in mercy, in faithfulness and in vigilance, He is hidden behind all this dun, crimson hurricane, which for the time casts its ominous shadow over all the homes, and activities, and charities of the land. The storm is but the dust of his feet. "Clouds and darkness are round about him;" yet none the less is it true that "righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his throne." Jehovah vailed-and vailed as the Bringer of Salvation-behind the commotions and distresses that most perplex and overwhelm a people is the truth of which we are here reminded. And it is a lesson that may well cheer and hearten us, under losses had they been even more sudden, more startling and irreparable than ours now are.

God hides himself. We could not, with our present organization, bear the full, bright blaze of His glories; and would be consumed, instead of being enlightened, by the blasting splendor of the vision. Even the favored Moses might not see Jehovah's full majesty and live. And yet he would not and does not leave himself without sufficient witness of his being and his constant power and supervision. The outer world of material Nature, and the inner witness of reason and conscience in man's own bosom, are more than intimations of the Maker's character and will. Hence there is no inconsistency between the sentiment of our text, on the one hand, of a withdrawn and shadowed Majesty, and the language of the context,

on the other hand, where in the same chapter,* our Maker and Ruler asserts: "I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, seek ye me in vain: I, the Lord, speak righteousness. I declare things that are right." The hiding was not entire and absolute. Nature and history throb and palpitate evermore as in the conscious presence of their God. It was in no muttered, grovelling, and darkling oracle that the Most High addressed his Israel. In the centre of the world's ancient civilization, and not in any dark nook and remote corner of barbarism, was his revelation spoken. To prayer he turned no deaf ear, and gave no dilatory response. The Hearer of prayer who answered Jacob at Bethel, answered also Jacob's children as well, not at Shiloh and Mount Zion only, but wherever they kneeled. Nor were his edicts flagrant wrongs and palpable contradictions, that violated all natural equity, and which shocked all right reason, as was the character of the teachings of the forged and rival deities of the heathen. But yet, though an outspoken revelation, and a prompt response to supplication, and a righteous and wise government were evermore allowed to his people, on his part, no visible, outlined form shone out upon the Shekinah. And hence, the classical Pagans who worshiped carved wood, and chiseled marble, and molten brass, contemned in their supercilious ignorance the Hebrew as worshiping empty air, because his God was a Spirit; because the sanctuary at Jerusalem displayed no picture or statue like the shrines of the Gentiles.

And even in the word of Revelation, that he gave, there

* Verso 19.

was, beside the much that was plainly told, much that was withheld, or that was but remotely indicated. An attitude of docile faith and habitual dependence was exacted from the worshipers, and even when he spake to an Abraham or a Moses as a man talked with his friend, it was not to make the favored patriarch the depositary of all God's councils, or to let either of them into the reserved store of his kingly and divine mysteries. They surveyed the day of the Messiah as at a distance; and saw Canaan's King, as the one of them saw Canaan itself, in the broader, fuller manifestations of his dominion, only as from the remote peaks of Pisgah, seeing but "parts of his ways," and but "a little portion of Him,"* and were reminded that they could not "understand the thunder of his power." Even the most honored thus touched but the hem and outer fringe of Jehovah's vestments. And in this way, there were clues given which left none at a loss who honestly desired guidance and defense: there were obscurities and difficulties left which taught the most favored and the most highly advanced their need of meekness, lowliness, and reverence in approaching the Holy, the Only Wise, and the Infallible, as well as the Unfathomable. And these same difficulties, in God's wise arrangement of discipline and retribution, afforded grounds of caviling to those who sought pretexts for their disobedience; and became occasions of fatal stumbling to those who, in levity and insincerity, sought such occasion. The very book of divine teachings thus became not merely an intellectual discipline to its students, but a moral test. There was light to beam with growing

*Job xxvi. 14.

brightness on the children of light, who earnestly sought and honestly followed it. There was interspersed gloom, that, to those who loved darkness rather than light, furnished plausible coverts under which they might burrow their way back to unbelief, atheism, and perdition.

And when God came in human flesh, and the Incarnate walked the hill-sides of Palestine, and the streets of Jerusalem, how wondrously did this-the Unfolding of the divine character and nature-yet retain, in itself, traits of the Enfolding and covering up of the Divine Majesty. The Manifestation enshrouded, on some sides and at certain times, very much of the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father, which, on other sides and at other times, it allowed brightly to stream forth. It shone on Tabor, but how did it seem eclipsed on Calvary. As the Son of God, how startling and towering were his claims, and how full his divine credentials. Yet, as the Son of Man, how did he wear our sinless infirmities as the exterior wrappers of the Indwelling Divinity, and the mortal Tabernacle and Vail of the Incarnate Jehovah. On the side of his abasement, who stooped lower? On the side of his proper and hereditary honor, who towered higher? What Rabbi, or Sanhedrim, or Prophet, or Sovereign, uttered a loftier claim than that which called men to honor him, the Son, even as they honored the Father? Verily, from the manger to the Cross, the Saviour was a God "hiding himself;" and yet, along his whole career, in his discourses and in his miracles, how did he allow the streams of his majestic brightness to break out, as at every window, and loophole, and crevice, of the pavilion under which he moved. Hie entrance upon the mortal stage, and his withdrawal from