Chapter X: Section III: Providence (3)

Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:272-284—“Judas’s treachery works the
reconciliation of the world, and Israel’s apostasy the salvation
of the Gentiles.... God smooths the path of the sinner, and gives
him chance for the outbreak of the evil, like a wise physician who
draws to the surface of the body the disease that has been raging
within, in order that it may be cured, if possible, by mild means,
or, if not, may be removed by the knife.”

Christianity rises in spite of, nay, in consequence of opposition,
like a kite against the wind. When Christ has used the sword with
which he has girded himself, as he used Cyrus and the Assyrian, he
breaks it and throws it away. He turns the world upside down that
he may get it right side up. He makes use of every member of
society, as the locomotive uses every cog. The sufferings of the
martyrs add to the number of the church; the worship of relics
stimulates the Crusades; the worship of the saints leads to
miracle plays and to the modern drama; the worship of images helps
modern art; monasticism, scholasticism, the Papacy, even sceptical
and destructive criticism stir up defenders of the faith.
Shakespeare, Richard III, 5:1—“Thus doth he force the swords of
wicked men To turn their own points on their masters’ bosoms”;
Hamlet, 1:2—“Foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o’erwhelm
them, to men’s eyes”; Macbeth, 1:7—“Even handed justice Commends
the ingredients of the poisoned chalice To our own lips.”

The Emperor of Germany went to Paris incognito and returned,
thinking that no one had known of his absence. But at every step,
going and coming, he was surrounded by detectives who saw that no
harm came to him. The swallow drove again and again at the little
struggling moth, but there was a plate glass window between them
which neither one of them knew. Charles Darwin put his cheek
against the plate glass of the cobra’s cage, but could not keep
himself from starting when the cobra struck. Tacitus, Annales,
14:5—“Noctem sideribus illustrem, quasi convinsendum ad scelus,
dii præbuere”—“a night brilliant with stars, as if for the purpose
of proving the crime, was granted by the gods.” See F. A. Noble,
Our Redemption, 59-76, on the self-registry and self-disclosure of
sin, with quotation from Daniel Webster’s speech in the case of
Knapp at Salem: “It must be confessed. It will be confessed. There
is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is
confession.”

(_c_) In cases of persistent iniquity, God’s providence still compels the sinner to accomplish the design with which he and all things have been created, namely, the manifestation of God’s holiness. Even though he struggle against God’s plan, yet he must by his very resistance serve it. His sin is made its own detector, judge, and tormentor. His character and doom are made a warning to others. Refusing to glorify God in his salvation, he is made to glorify God in his destruction.

_Is. 10:5, 7_—“_Ho Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, the staff in
whose hand is mine indignation!... Howbeit, he meaneth not so._”
Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago: “He [Treluddra] is one of those
base natures, whom fact only lashes into greater fury,—a Pharaoh,
whose heart the Lord himself can only harden”—here we would add
the qualification: “consistently with the limits which he has set
to the operations of his grace.” Pharaoh’s ordering the
destruction of the Israelitish children (_Ex. 1:16_) was made the
means of putting Moses under royal protection, of training him for
his future work, and finally of rescuing the whole nation whose
sons Pharaoh sought to destroy. So God brings good out of evil;
see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 28-35. Emerson: “My will
fulfilled shall be, For in daylight as in dark My thunderbolt has
eyes to see His way home to the mark.” See also Edwards, Works,
4:300-312.

_Col. 2:15_—“_having stripped off from himself the principalities
and the powers_”—the hosts of evil spirits that swarmed upon him
in their final onset—“_he made a show of them openly, triumphing
over them in it_,” _i. e._, in the cross, thus turning their evil
into a means of good. Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy,
443,—“Love, seeking for absolute evil, is like an electric light
engaged in searching for a shadow,—when Love gets there, the
shadow has disappeared.” But this means, not that all things _are_
good, but that “_all things work together __ for good_” (_Rom.
8:28_)—God overruling for good that which in itself is only evil.
John Wesley: “God buries his workmen, but carries on his work.”
Sermon on “The Devil’s Mistakes”: Satan thought he could overcome
Christ in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross. He
triumphed when he cast Paul into prison. But the cross was to
Christ a lifting up, that should draw all men to him (_John
12:32_), and Paul’s imprisonment furnished his epistles to the New
Testament.

“It is one of the wonders of divine love that even our blemishes
and sins God will take when we truly repent of them and give them
into his hands, and will in some way make them to be blessings. A
friend once showed Ruskin a costly handkerchief on which a blot of
ink had been made. ‘Nothing can be done with that,’ the friend
said, thinking the handkerchief worthless and ruined now. Ruskin
carried it away with him, and after a time sent it back to his
friend. In a most skilful and artistic way, he had made a fine
design in India ink, using the blot as its basis. Instead of being
ruined, the handkerchief was made far more beautiful and valuable.
So God takes the blots and stains upon our lives, the disfiguring
blemishes, when we commit them to him, and by his marvellous grace
changes them into marks of beauty. David’s grievous sin was not
only forgiven, but was made a transforming power in his life.
Peter’s pitiful fall became a step upward through his Lord’s
forgiveness and gentle dealing.” So “men may rise on stepping
stones Of their dead selves to higher things” (Tennyson, In
Memoriam, I).