The sovereignty and fatherhood of God; a discourse, preached during his visit to England

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Bellows, Henrj'' iVhitney

The sovereignty and
fatherhood of God.

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THE

SOVEREIGNTY AND FATHERHOOD OF GOD :

A DISCOUESE,

PEEACHED, DUEING HIS VISIT TO ENGLAND,

BY THE

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EEV. HENRY W! 13ELL0WS, D.D.

MINISTER OP THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL (UNITARIAN) CHURCH, NEW YORK,
AND LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES SANITARY COMMISSION.

PUBLISHED BY REQUEST.

LONDON:
EDWAED T. WHITFIELD, 178, STEAND.

1868.

LONDON :
PRINTED BY C. GRKEN AND SON, 1/8, STKAND.

DEDICATED

TO THE

CONGREGATIONS AND HOMES AND HEARTS

WHOSE HOSPITALITY

I HAVE ENJOITID IN ENGLAND.

HENEY W. BELLOWS.

A DISCOURSE.

Luke xxii. 42 :

"KOT MY WILL, BUT ThINE, BE DONE."

In the Lord's Prayer, the permanent litnrgy of
the Christian Church, no clause is more pregnant
than that which says, ''Thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven." At first view, nothing could
seem more superfluous than a prayer addressed to a
supreme and irresistible Monarch, asking that His
own will, which is certain to rule in His dominions,
may be done. But when we look a little further,
and consider how much is done in the world we
occupy which we cannot piously ascribe to the will
of a good and holy Being, we feel that, without
supposing any infringement of the Divine attributes,
we must recognize a permitted resistance to God's
will, which constitutes the sin and causes the misery
of human life. To permit is not to approve, and is

not necessarily to become a party to wrong. I see
another man's child doing that which I know to be
injurious to him, and which I have the physical
strength to prevent; yet I do not consider myself
responsible for his conduct, though I do not inter-
fere with it. For I could not interfere, without
endangering the rights which belong to the child's
own parents. In like manner, God is not responsible
for our sins, because He might prevent them, and
does not ; for He could not prevent them without
invading the rights He has given us as free and
responsible beings. God's will, His supreme and
eternal will, was done in making us free. He chose
that, with all its possible consequences, as His
divinest will. But to make those consequences,
which are dependent exclusively on our wills, the
result of His will, is to confound matters which
conscience and the Bible keep separate.

To understand this subject clearly, we must care-
fully distinguish between the rule of God as a
Sovereign, and the design of God as a Father; in
other words, between God's will considered as His
decree, and considered as His desire. The will of
God as a Sovereign is always done. It is His un-
deniable will, not merely that physical and meta-
physical laws should be obeyed, but that the laws
of human freedom and personal responsibility should

be rigidly carried out in all their consequences.
Nor have we any reason to suppose that the per-
turbations and conflicts introduced into the moral
world by the element of free will, can by the con-
ditions of the case extend beyond a certain limit, —
a limit corresponding in the moral world to the
bounds of disorder fixed for the irregularities and
distui'bances which belong to the unmoral or mate-
rial universe.

It is a commonplace of pulpit rhetoric, I know,
to contrast the order of natiure with the disorder of
humanity ; the perfection of the mechanism of the
outward world with the imperfection of the workings
of the inner world. But the truth is, they are
counterparts of each other. There is the same
conflict of laws, the same number of ii-regularities,
mishaps and exceptions, in the natural as in the
moral world; in the kingdom in which God rules
without human resistance, as in the kingdom in
which the human will is a permitted and an impor-
tant element. The heavens are covered with the
Avreck of ancient systems of worlds; the earth is
fiill of dislocations and scars which mighty internal
convulsions have left. The strata of the world's
crust are the sepulchres of perished orders of life,
victims of sudden and violent changes in the course
of natiu'e. The tribes of animals and insects prey

8

upon each other's existence. There is not a vice in
humanity which is not personated by a whole class
of brute creatures; gluttony, lust, pride, cunning,
ferocity, tyranny, — each having its characteristic re-
presentative in the animal kingdom, whose voices
are all echoed by the elements of the inanimate world
with still more tremendous syllables. The sea roars
more fearfully than a den of lions; the winds are
more pitiless than the vulture and tiger ; the earth-
quake shakes, the volcano flames, the winter blasts,
the sun smites, the pestilence smothers, the marsh
poisons. Of the myriads of fish spawned on the
shallows, not a millionth part reaches its growth in
the sea. Of the innumerable blossoms of spring,
how insignificant a proportion turn to the fruit they
promised ! There is an immense waste in nature ;
a perpetual defeat in details ; a most obvious liability
to what we call accident ; a fearful struggle of forces
ending in ruin to the weaker power, be it animate
or inanimate. It is plain enough that the God of
natui-e does not allow His creation to stop because
the continuance of it causes pain and involves vio-
lence, risk, interference and conflict of parts. Were
the will of the Creator that dainty will which bears
with no imperfection, and allows nothing attended
with noise or confusion — ^were God a workman who
must make no chips — the outward universe would

9

necessarily be a very different thing from what we
see it to be. Nor does it answer to say that the
fall of man produced the discord and confusion of
nature ; for geology discloses the same disorder,
billions of years before he was created, and the
depths of space exhibit worlds that betray like im-
perfection where man's conduct was never felt.

No, my bretlu-en, while we cannot believe God
to be the Author of confusion in the material world
— seeing that harmony and perfection are the rule ;
but disorder and imperfection the exception — we
perceive that the disorder and imperfection inci-
dental to His plan do not deter Him from carry-
ing it out ; and we see, still further, that this dis-
order and imperfection have their providential limits
which they can never exceed. The stability of
the physical universe is constantly threatened by
the perturbations which the heavenly bodies cause
in each other's orbits ; but modern astronomy has
discovered that these disturbances can proceed only
to a certain extent, when they are corrected by other
laws. Disorder has its laws and limitations precisely
as order has. Thus the various species of animals
and plants may within certain limits mingle toge-
ther and modify each other's types ; but they
come against an impassable wall of law in a few
removes, and lose the power of reproduction. The

10

wonder in nature is tliat, with so miicli violence,
disruption and accident, there should be such grand
stability ; and that amid carnage, waste and storm,
there should be such overruling affluence, economy
and peace. No two springs, no two summers or
autumns, are alike; but seed-time and harvest do
not fail. Mildew, hail, wind and heat, may blast
the corn in a thousand fields; but wheat siu*mes
every accident, and bread is almost equally plentiful
at all seasons. Indeed, a very slight difference in
the total annual yield of com. makes all the contrast
between what we name scarcity and what we name
abundance. In short, vivid as the features of change,
uncertainty and reckless force are in outward nature,
the ^^.vidness is like the changing expression of a
beautiful countenance in a transport of momentary
suffering. The face of nature continues mild, kind
and generous, as its permanent and characteristic
expression.

God mils order, and permits disorder, in the out-
ward universe. The disorder comes of the limitations
of matter, as the painter's ideal is hindered by the
stubbornness of his pigments and his handling, or
the musician's song by the imperfections of his in-
strument. I am not so bold as to say that disorder,
excess and defeat in nature may not have final causes,
which would shew them to be in perfect harmony

11

with a law grander than any we can now fathom.
They may be designed to illustrate moral disorders ;
just as the absurd or hateful habits of animals may
be intended to hold a miiTor up to human vices.
But all we can now clearly see is, that nature, over
which God reigns supreme, like humanity, over
which He is not supposed to reign without the
mediation of free will, has exceptions, failures, fric-
tions and flaws, in her constitution.

If we tiu-n now to the moral world, we see that
there too, notwithstanding the freedom of the human
will, which produces the sins and miseries we deplore,
God's will is substantially done; that He has not
created a being whose powers of mischief are unli-
mited ; nor failed to frame a balance-wheel of moral
order out of the very conflict of free wills. Every
man's freedom of action is limited by the freedom
of all other men. Moreover, though the will of man
is free, he is a bondman to his natm*e. He cannot
but be hungiy; he cannot but love or hate, hope
and fear, look forward and backward, perceive accord-
ing to the laws of his intelligence, feel according to
the laws of his affections, judge according to the
laws of his conscience. His domain of freedom,
most important as it is, is hedged in by law on every
side. In the end there is so much more force of
law than of freedom, that the destiny of races,

12

nations and liumanity, is far more determined by
divine compulsion than effected by human caprice.
The progress of the world, the growth of civilization.,
the triumph of right and truth, are provided for
by law, the law of God's good providence in our
nature and circumstances. What each individual
man shall do or be, is a matter left, to a very con-
siderable and most responsible extent, to his own
will. He cannot transcend the limits of his consti-
tution, overleap his own faculties, or escape the
influences of his birth, education and lot ; but within
these limits he is his own master, responsible for
the use of his talents, the improvement of his oppor-
tunities, and the command of his nature. His will
is free, though his nature and lot are not. He is
free to do well or ill with his nature and lot, to use
or abuse them, to make the most and the best of
himself and his circumstances, or the least and the
worst. This freedom, existing to the same degree
in all other men, so far neutralizes itself in a wide
generalization, as to leave the fate of society very
little at the mercy of any human will. Society
advances according to the laws of human nature,
which embody God's purpose ; not according to the
caprices of human wills, which by a providential
arrangement in the long run essentially counteract
and balance each other.

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Nothing can be more opposed to the truth of
things, or to a becoming sense of God's sovereignty,
than the idea that the Divine will is ever success-
fully thwarted or withstood. Chaos is not lawless
in His sight. Grod's will is done, in the material
universe, by comets that seem to dash madly from
their spheres as well as by planets that roll steadily
in their orbits ; and, in the moral universe, by sinners
as truly as by saints. He makes the winds and
the lightnings his messengers, rides on the whirl-
wind, and directs the storm ; causes the wrath of
man to praise Him, and out of moral evil still
educes good. It is as much His will that fire
shall burn, as that water shall quench ; that frost
shall blight, as sunshine ripen; that sickness shall
weaken, as that health shall strengthen ; that hatred
shall sour, as that love shall sweeten the soul ; that
misery shall follow disobedience, as that happiness
shall succeed dutifulness. The law of God is vin-
dicated and upheld in the fate of the wicked, as
much as in the fortune of the good. Hell itself is
as much under law as Heaven. It is in this sense,
and in this sense only, that " whatever is, is right."

Here, then, comes into view the grand, the all-
important distinction between God's sovereignty
and His paternity. God's Avill is often done, when
God's wish is thoroughly disappointed. The mo-

14

narch wlio administers his kingdom with impartial
and irresistible justice, rewarding the faithful and
punishing the treacherous, though his royalty be
as perfectly maintained in the Jiangs of the guilty
as in the prosperity of the obedient, yet cannot be
supposed indijfferent to everything but the mere
maintenance of his kingly will. If he be a good
sovereign, he desires the reformation, and not simply
the correction, of the disloyal. He longs to see the
happiness of all his subjects ; and their conformity
to the conditions on which happiness depends, is
nearer to his heart than their mere subordination
to his crown. So, God's sovereign law is less than
His fatherly love. His decree is, and always must
be, perfectly executed. That decree enacts that
law, equitable, penal law, shall reign throughout
the universe ; and it does so reign, in hell as in
heaven. His desire is, however, that His subjects
may also be His childi-en, obedient because loving
to obey; and certainly, in this higher sense, the
will of God is not done on earth as it is in heaven.

The best tribute of our obedience cannot be
forced ; it owes all its value to its spontaneousness,
to the amoimt of heart there is in it. An earthly
father is also, to some extent, a ruler and a judge
in his family. He may compel his children, by his
authority, to obey him ; can he compel them to love

15

him, by any tiling less than the outpouring of his
affections towards them ? He can use only a moral
compulsion which leaves its subjects perfectly free.
Our Lord's prayer, " Thy will be done," is a prayer,
not to God as Sovereign of the universe, but to
" Our Father which art in heaven." The fulfil-
ment of this our Father's will, is by its very nature
dependent on our consent ; it waits on our choice ;
it is crossed and hindered by our perversity. For
our Father's will is, that we shall freely and from
the heart love what He loves, do what He does,
make His will our own, and so become one with
Him, in conduct and affection.

There is, then, a province within which Divine
compulsion, sovereignty, necessity, cannot enter. It
is true, the limits of this province from which God
jealously excludes His arbitrary rule, are small, and
no revolt within it can in the least endanger His
government. But, however small to Him, it is the
moral universe to us. And to God himself it has
that near and relative importance, which the mo-
narch's domestic interests bear to his public con-
cerns. Let a ruler's throne be ever so firm, his
foreign relations ever so satisfactory, his subjects
ever so loyal ; but let his own children be ungrate-
ful and careless of his love ; and not the undimmed

16

glory of his crown will save him from the misery
which sobs,

" How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is,
To have a thankless child !"

Let your son be ill, or your wife be false, and
what are your argosies and dividends, your com-
mercial position and social repute, as you sit broken-
hearted at your desolate hearth ?

God, my brethren, is a moral Being ; a holy, a
righteous, a loving Father, as well as an eternal
and irresistible Sovereign, To understand Him, or
our relations to Him, we must know Him in both
His characters; and while we obey Him as Law-
giver and Euler, we must love Him as Father and
Friend. It is for our comfort and our humility, as
well as for His honour and glory, to recognize the
unassailable might of His sovereignty. We must
not permit disorders in the physical or moral imi-
verse to hide from us the completeness and perfection
of His sway. " Thus far, and no further," he says
to the stormy waves of the sea, and to the tumults
of the people. The bounds of disorder are strictly
prescribed in the realm of matter and in the rational
world. His ark rides safely on the deluge of water
and of sin, and Ararat appears above the waves.
Yet while to all eternity His throne is steadfast. His

17

paternal heart may be wrung, and our filial affections
squandered, perverted and spoiled, because we fail
to know, to obey and to love God in His most per-
sonal, holy and lovely relation to us as the Father
of our spirits.

Our Father's will, my brethren, is to be honoured
in two ways ; it is to be done, and it is to be suffered.
Filial duty lies in submission and in obedience ; in
passive acquiescence and in active fulfilment. Our
different natures will furnish each of us with our
peculiar difficulties; some finding submission, and
some obedience, the severer cross. Our first care,
in every case, must be to know what the will of the
Father is. In a general way, that may be learned
by contemplating the universal ongoing of nature
and life as the grand expression of God's will, and
so bowing ourselves down in awe and wonder and
praise before the great God of nature, and of rational
and moral existence. To be reconciled to the uni-
verse as God's world, and to existence as His gift,
indejDendently of our special lot and relations, is our
first step, not indeed practically, but logically; for
practically it is often our last step. More directly,
the will of God is revealed to us in our moral
nature ; in that Eoason which includes the conscience,
and is the image and transcript of the Divine will.
That Reason, my bretln-en, we call ours ; but it is

B

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not ours; it belongs to no man, but to all men;
and to all men only as they are contained in or
partakers of the Divine natui-e. That pure and holy
light is impersonal. It has none of the errors of
passion and inclination. "When it is obscure, it is
only that we fail to see, not that it fails to shine.
When it flickers, it is only that we tremble, not
that it flares. That Divine presence in our souls,
God in us, is the authorized, infallible teacher of
the Divine will. We indeed, as mere rational and
moral persons, are fallible. But Eeason is infallible.
Like the unrusting gold of an ancient coin, on which
the dust of ages has been heaped, — its die as clear,
its motto as legible, as the day it fell from the mint,
— Eeason, the dimless, changeless mind of God, lies
at the bottom of the human soul. To clear away
the obstructions which unawakened powers of con-
sciousness, habits of inattention, undisciplined moral
senses, have interposed between ourselves and our
inmost souls, our selfish personality and our imper-
sonal nature, is the true business of moral education.
I^ay, this is the very ofiice which Christ came to per-
form. Eeason, the Eternal Word, the Logos, always
buried in our natui^e, once incarnate in Clmst ; God
sent to teach us by an external manifestation of it
what humanity is when restored to itself. To find
ourselves is the ultimate cause of coming to Chi-ist.

19

"When WG come to liim, he refers us back to '' tlie
light which lighteth every man that cometh into the
world," to Reason, to God in ns ; and by his precepts,
his example, his spirit, helps us to disentomb and
revive, and set in the glory of a resurrection, our
own God-given, God-inspired consciences.

Now, when w^e have found the Divine law and
will, w^e find another law in our members, warring
against the law of our mind. It is not merely the
law of our animal nature as opposed to our intellec-
tual, but our self-will, as antagonistic to the imper-
sonal will, the will of God. In this wilfulness, as
distinguished from a will submitted and conformed
to the Divine will, lies the virus, the malignity, the
peril of an irreligious and michi'istian soul. Sin is
not merely the violation of a law ; it is the spirit of
rebellion, of self-assertion. If we could make God's
will our o^Ti, and then declare our independence of
God, though we did thereafter precisely what He
would have us do, yet, doing it with a heart of self-
will, we should carry the worst poison of disobedi-
ence into our very virtues.

Have you not seen that hateful pride in natures
too grand and generous to stoop to idee or folly?
Have you not known otherwise blameless and fault-
less souls, in which you felt that the very essence
of goodness and piety was still wanting? How

20

many a rigid moralist, how many a character of im-
tarnished honour, has, in the middle of life, found
that the battle it supposed won (and it was won,
over the flesh and the world) had to be fought
again, with a deadlier strife ; fought with itself, its
own deep egotism, its rebellious will, its self-reliant
temper ! We talk of the pride of reason. It is the
pride of self-assertion we mean. Eeason has no
pride; she is the humble daughter of God. But
we may well talk of, and fear and disown, the pride
of self; for it is the ruin of a feai-ful portion of those
few who might not yaiuly boast in their undei^tand-
ings. To bow the imderstanding, the heai-t, the
will, before God, and do what He bids, because He
bids it, not because we choose it ; to bear what He
sends, because He sends it, not because we cannot
escape it, — this is the spirit and essence of Christian
duty and submission.

Eemember that this is not the spiiit of fear, or
the spirit of servility ; for there is nothing arbiti-ary
and nothing arrogant in the Divine will. We can-
not help revering the will of God, whether we do it
or not. But we cannot truly make the will of God
our own, without deliberately striking that pirate
flag of spiritual independence which we are so prone
to carry ; or, if we have not carried that but merely
sailed our ship uncoloured, without solemnly raisin

O

21

the flag of allegiance to God. You may try to evade
this great act of self-siuTender, this solemn service
of homage to your Maker ; you may substitute for
it a good life, a virtuous habit, a sound creed,
a philanthropic career. These are all fitting and
glorious things, but they will not take the place of
a God-subdued will. The one critical thing in a
religious life lies just here ; the one great point
unmade ; the one sin, in committing which we are
guilty of all. Eebellion — smothered, disguised,
latent, it may be, but real, and therefore deadly — ■
is our great spiritual offence.

I was not long since besought by a deeply
thoughtful and greatly gifted man of the world to
tell him, in the fewest words, wherein the essence of
Eeligion consisted. "Strip it," said he, "of all its
accidents ; pare away its superfluities ; condense it ;
reduce it to its last term ; give its inmost essence ;
let there not be a syllable in the definition that
could be spared." I paused ; considered ; questioned
heaven and earth, my own soul, the souls I had
known and revered, the word of God, the mind of
Christ — all in a rapid survey, as when a drowning
man reviews his life in the few seconds of his swift-
fading consciousness, — and then answered, "Thy
will, not mine, be done !" He listened reverently ;
pondered, and slowly said — "There are two super-

22

fluous words in that summary. Say, ' Thy will be
done,' and then I accept it gladly as the fimdamental
creed, the last analysis of religious faith." "Xot
for the world," I rejoined, "can I leave out the
words which you declare add nothing to the sense ;
they are the very essence and marrow of the state-
ment !"

Science, as she surveys the glorious ways of the
Creator, feeling the irresistible wealth of His power,
exclaims, in her consciousness of the futility of all
opposition, and in the pardonable pride of one who
reads the thoughts of the Creator in His works,
" Thy will be done !" Philosophy, as she sits apart
and contemplates the movements of the universe,
finding that she needs God, the primum mobile, the
intelligent mainspring of the half conscious machine,
serenely says, "Thy will be done I" Poetry, as she
soars above the dust and clamour of this work- day
world, fi^om her calm height beholding the insigni-
ficance of human concerns — how little the dust we
raise clogs the wheels of destiny, or the noise we
make untunes the spheres — exclaims in ecstacy,
" Thy will be done I" History, as she tells over the
rise and fall of empii-es, the flux and reflux of civi-
lization, the ebb and flow of the great tidal passions
of humanity — with a face solemn and remorseless as
the Sphinx looking across the deserts where Thebes

23

and Alexandria once were, pronounces, " Thy will
be done !"

" Thy will be done !" A will that shall be done,
that must be done ; done in spite of and in scorn of
human wishes; done in the ruin of mortal hopes
and the wreck of social systems ; done by brute
force ; done by the sands and sirocco of the desert,
and the tooth of pitiless time ; done alike in the
microscopic world of infusorial life, and in the vast
gulfs of nebulous Orion ! What have we to do with
such a Will, except to stand and wonder at it?
What matters it, whether we oppose or obey it?
What more can our service do for it, than our resist-
ance can do against it ? What cares such a Will for
us, less than the small dust of the balance as we are ?
Science, Philosoj)hy, Poetry, History, may say for
ever, "Thy will be done," and not one impulse of
duty, one consolation for sorrow, one hint for self-
discipline, one ray of Christian sentiment, break fi'om
the stony fatalism of that grand, icy creed. But
when religion, the religion of the Gospel, amends
them thus — "Thy will, not mine, be done," it is as
when light broke upon the weltering chaos of crea-
tion, as when Adam woke in Eden and made it a
Paradise by occupjdng it with a human soul 1

" Thy will, not mine, be done !" What a glorious
dignity for us, when oiu- wills are placed over

24 '

against the Divine will, as being deeply significant
and important to God ! " Thy will, not mine, be
done !" What an explosion of fatalism, when God's
will thns waits on ours ! How personal, direct,
affecting, the relation of the individual soul to its
Father, when it has leave to choose between its o^vii
will and God's will, and is besought freely to sur-
render its own to the Father's wisdom ! How dis-
ciplinary, pregnant with moral life, full of spiritual
humility and deliverance, are the words which, in
praying that God's will may be done, devoutly abjui-e,
sacrifice and surrender, all the wishes, thoughts and
yearnings which conflict with the Divine purpose !
There is, there can be, no full experience of religion
in the soul that feels not the difference, wide as
that twixt heaven and earth, between the words,
"Thy will be done," and these other words, "Thy
will, not mine, be done."

Brethren, fix your attention on this difference.
Ponder it ; ask yourselves if you perceive it. Sus-
pect your religious state if you do not. Rejoice in
your inmost hearts if you do. It will help you to
bring your doubts and difficulties to a speedy reso-
lution ; and may God give you all grace to see how
your spiritual destiny hangs upon this hinge — " Not
my will, but thine, 0 God, be done !"

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