SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE SILENCE OF GOD
CHAPTER ONE
A SILENT Heaven is the greatest mystery of our existence.
Some there are, indeed, for whom the problem has no perplexities. In a
philosophy of silly optimism, or a life of selfish isolation, they have
"attained Nirvana." For such the sad and hideous realities of life around us
have no existence. Upon their path these cast no shadow. The serene atmosphere
of their fools' paradise is undisturbed by the cry of the suffering and the
oppressed. But earnest and thoughtful men face these realities, and have ears
to hear that cry; and their indignant wonder finds utterance at times in some
such words as those of the old Hebrew prophet and bard, "Doth God know? And is
there knowledge in the Most High? Society, even in the great centres of our
modern civilisation, is all too like a slave-ship, where, with the sounds of
music and laughter and revelry on the upper deck, there mingle the groans of
untold misery battened down below. Who can estimate the sorrow and suffering
and wrong endured during a single round of the clock even in the favoured
metropolis of highly favoured England? And if it be thus in the green tree,
what shall be said of the dry! What mind is competent to grasp the sum of all
this great world's misery, heaped up day after day, year after year, century
after century? Human hearts may plan, and human hands achieve, some little to
alleviate it, and the strong and ready arm of human law may accomplish much in
the protection of the weak and the punishment of the wicked. But as for God -
the light of moon and stars is not more cold and pitiless than He appears to
be! Every new chapter in the story of Turkish misrule raises a fresh storm of
indignation throughout Europe. The conscience of Christendom is outraged by
tales of oppression and cruelty and wrong inflicted on the Christian subjects
of the Porte.
Here is a testimony to the Armenian massacres of 1895
"Over 6o,ooo Armenians have been butchered. In Trebizond, Erzeroum,
Erzinghian, Hassankaleh, and numberless other places the Christians were
crushed like grapes during the vintage. The frantic mob, seething and surging
in the streets of the cities, swept down upon the defenceless Armenians,
plundered their shops, gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the
terrified victims, as cats play with mice. The rivulets were choked up with
corpses; the streams ran red with human blood; the forest glades and rocky
caves were peopled with the dead and dying; among the black ruins of once
prosperous villages lay roasted infants by their mangled mothers' corpses; pits
were dug at night by the wretches destined to fill them, many of whom, flung in
when but lightly wounded, awoke underneath a mountain of clammy corpses, and
vainly wrestled with death and with the dead, who shut them out from light and
life for ever.
"A man In Erzeroum, hearing a tumult, and fearing for
his children, who were playing in the street, went out to seek and save them.
He was borne down upon by the mob. He pleaded for his life, protesting that he
had always lived in peace with his Moslem neighbours, and sincerely loved them.
The statement may have represented a fact, or it may have been but a plea for
pity. The ringleader, however, told him that that was the proper spirit, and
would be condignly rewarded. The man was then stripped, and a chunk of his
flesh cut out of his body, and jestingly offered for sale: 'Good fresh meat,
and dirt cheap,' exclaimed some of the crowd. 'Who'll buy fine dog's meat?'
echoed the amused bystanders. The writhing wretch uttered piercing screams as
some of the mob, who had just come from riffing the shops, opened a bottle and
poured vinegar or some acid into the gaping wound. He called on God and man to
end his agonies. But they had only begun. Soon afterwards two little boys came
up, the elder crying, 'Hairik, Hairih (Father, father), save me! See what
they've done to me!' and pointed to his head, from which the blood was stream
ing over his handsome face, and down his neck. The younger brother - a child of
about three - was playing with a wooden toy. The agonising man was silent for a
second and then, glancing at these his children, made a frantic but vain effort
to snatch a dagger from a Turk by his side. This was the signal for the renewal
of his torments. The bleeding boy was finally dashed with violence against the
dying father, who began to lose strength and consciousness, and the two were
then pounded to death where they lay. The younger chlld sat near, dabbling his
wooden toy in the blood of his father and brother, and looking up, now through
smiles at the prettily dressed Kurds and now through tears at the dust-begrimed
thing that had lately been his father. A slash of a sabre, wound up his short
experience of God's world, and the crowd turned its attention to others.
"These are but isolated scenes revealed for a brief second by the light, as it
were, of a momentary lightning-flash. The worst cannot be
descrthed."-Contemporary Review, January, 1896.
The following refers to
still more recent horrors :-
"In no place in this region has the attack
upon the Christians been more savage than in Egin. Every male above twelve
years ot age who could be found was slain. Only one Armenian was found who had
been seen and spared. Many children and boys were laid on their backs and their
necks cut like sheep. The women and children were gathered together in the yard
of the Government building and in various places throughout the town. Turks,
Kurds, and soldiers went among these women, selected the fairest, and led them
aside to outrage them. In the village of Pinguan fifteen women threw themselves
into the river to escape dishonour."-The Times, December 10, 5896.
And
what is the element in all this that most exasperates the public sentiment? It
is that the Sultan has the power to prevent all this, but will not. That, while
possessing ample means to restrain and punish, he remains unmoved, and in the
safe seclusion of his palace gives himself up to a life of luxury and ease. But
has Almighty God no power to check such crimes? Even Abdul Hamid has been
shamed into laying aside the dignity of kingship, and making heard his personal
voice in Europe to repel the charge his seeming inaction has raised to his
discredit. But in vain do we strain our ears to hear some voice from the throne
of the Divine Majesty. The far-off heaven where, in perfect peace and
unutterable glory, God dwells and reigns, is SILENT!
"So I returned, and
considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and behold, the
tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of
their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter." And this in a
world ruled and governed by a God who is Almighty!
And when we withdraw our
thoughts from the great world around us, and fix them upon the narrow circle of
His faithful people, the facts are no less stern, and the mystery grows more
inscrutable. Devoted men leave our shores, forsaking the security, the
comforts, the charms, the countless benefits of life in the midst of our
Christian civilisation, to carry the knowledge of the true God to heathen
lands. But by and by we hear of their massacre by the hands of those whom thus
they sought to elevate and bless. And where is "the true God" they served? The
little band of Christian men who were in a special sense His accredited
ambassadors, noble women too, who shared in their exile and their labours, and
little children whose tender helplessness might excite the pity of a very
devil, in their terror and agony cried to Heaven for the succour which never
came. The God they trusted might surely have turned the hearts, or restrained
the hands, of their brutal murderers. Is it possible to imagine circumstances
that would more fitly claim the help of Him whom they worshipped as
all-powerful both in heaven and on earth? But the earth has drunk in their
blood, and a silent Heaven has seemed to mock their cry!
And these horrors
are but mere ripples on the surface of the deep, wide sea of the Church's
sufferings throughout the ages of her history. From the old days of Pagan Rome
right down through the centuries of so-called "Christian" persecutions, the
untold millions of the martyrs, the best and purest and noblest of our race,
have been given up to violence and outrage and death in hideous forms. The
heart grows sick at the appalling story, and we turn away with a dull but
baseless hope that it may be in part at least untrue. But the facts are too
terrible to make exaggeration in the record of them possible. Torn by wild
beasts in the arena, torn by men as merciless as wild beasts, and, far more
hateful, in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, His people have died, with
faces turned to heaven, and hearts upraised in prayer to God; but the heaven
has seemed as hard as brass, and the God of their prayers as powerless as
themselves or as callous as their persecutors!
But most men are selfish in
their sympathies.
Some private grief at times looms greater than all the
sum of the world's miseries and the Church's sufferings. If ever there was a
saint on earth, it is the mother to whose deathbed sons and daughters have been
summoned from various pursuits of business or of pleasure. In all their
wanderings that mother's piety and faith have been a guiding and restraining
influence. And now, thus gathered once more in the old home, they are keen to
watch how, in the solemn crisis of her last days on earth, God will deal with
one of the loveliest and truest of His children. And what do they behold? The
poor body racked with pain that never ceases till all capacity for suffering is
quenched by the hand of Death! If human skill could give relief the attending
physician would be dismissed as heartless or incompetent. Is God, then,
incompetent or heartless? To Him they look to relieve the death agonies of the
dying saint, but they look to Him in vain!
Or it may be some grief more
selfish still. The crash of some great sorrow that turns a bright home into a
waste, and leaves the heart so be-numbed and hard that even the so-called
"consolations of religion" appear but hollow platitudes. Why should God be so
cruel? Why is Heaven so terribly silent?
The most prolific fancy, the most
facile pen, would fail to picture or portray, in their endless variety, the
experiences which have thus stamped out the last embers of faith in many a
crushed and desolated heart. "There are times," as a Christian writer puts it,
"when the heaven that is over our heads seems to be brass, and the earth that
is under us to be iron, and we feel our hearts sink within us under the calm
pressure of unyielding and unsympathising law." How true the statement, but how
inadequate! If it were merely on behalf of this or that individual that God
failed to interfere, or on one occasion or another, belief in His infinite
wisdom and goodness ought to check our murmurs and soothe our fears. And,
further, if, as in the days of the patriarchs, even a whole generation passed
away without His once declaring Himself, faith might glance back, and hope look
forward, amidst heart searchings for the cause of His silence. But what
confronts us is the fact, explain it as we may, that for eighteen centuries the
world has never witnessed a public manifestation of His presence or His
power.
"Doth God know?" At first the thought comes up as an impatient yet
not irreverent appeal. But presently the words are formed upon the lip to imply
a challenge and suggest a doubt; and at last they are boldly uttered as the
avowal of a settled unbelief. And then the sacred records which awed and
charmed the mind in childhood, telling of "mighty acts" of Divine intervention
"in the old time," begin to lose their vividness and force, till at last they
sink to the level of Hebrew legends and old-world myths. In presence of the
stern and dismal facts of life, the faith of earlier days gives way, for surely
a God who is entirely passive and always unavailable is for all practical
purposes non-existent.
WHEN we turn to Holy Writ this mystery of a silent Heaven,
which is driving so many to infidelity, if not to atheism, seems to become more
utterly insoluble. The life and teaching of the great Prophet of Nazareth have
claimed the admiration of multitudes, even of those who have denied to Him the
deeper homage of their faith. All generous minds acclaim Him as the noblest
figure that has ever passed across the stage of human life. But Christianity
claims for Him infinitely more than this. The great and unknown God had dwelt
in impenetrable darkness and unapproachable light - seeming contradictories
which harmonise in fact in a perfect representation of His attitude toward men.
But now He at last declared Himself. The Nazarene was not merely the pattern
man of all the ages, He was Himself Divine, "God manifest in the flesh." The
inspired prophets had foreshadowed this: now it was accomplished. The dream of
heathen mythology was realised in the great foundation fact of Christianity -
God assumed the form of a man and dwelt as a man among men, speaking words such
as mere man never spoke, and scattering on every hand the proofs of His Divine
character and mission.
But the sphere of the display was confined to the
narrowest limits - the towns and villages of a district Scarcely larger than an
English county. If this was to be the end of it, a theory so sublime must be
exploded by its inherent incredibility. But throughout His ministry He spoke of
a mysterious death He had to suffer, and of His rising from the dead and
returning to the heaven from which He had come down, and of triumphs of His
power to follow upon that ascension - triumphs such as they to whom He spoke
were then incapable of understanding. And, in keeping with the hopes He thus
inspired, among His latest utterances, spoken after His resurrection and in
view of His ascension, we find these sublime and pregnant words-"All power is
given unto Me in heaven and on earth." The position of avowed unbelief here is
perfectly intelligible; but what can be said for the covert scepticism of
modern Christianity which explains this to mean nothing more than the assertion
of a mystical authority to send out preachers of the gospel!
Accept the
scheme of revelation as to man's apostasy and fall, and his consequent
alienation from God, and the history of the world down to the time of Christ
can be explained. But type and promise and prophecy testified with united voice
that the advent of Messiah should be the dawn of a brighter day, when "the
heavens should rule," when all wrong should be redressed, and sorrow and
discord should give place to gladness and peace. The angelic host who heralded
His birth confirmed the testimony, and seemed to point to its near fulfilment.
And these words of Christ Himself ring out like a proclamation that earth's
great jubilee at last was come. Nor did the events of the early days which
followed belie the hope.
If because of a great public miracle wrought by
them in His name the apostles were threatened with penalties, they appealed
from men to God, and then and there God gave public proof that He heard their
prayer, for "the place was shaken where they were. Sudden judgment fell upon
Ananias and Sapphira when they sinned, and as a consequence "great fear came
upon all." a "By the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought
among the people." From the surrounding villages "the multitude "-that is the
inhabitants en masse -gathered to Jerusalem carrying their sick, and they were
healed every one." And when their exasperated enemies seized the apostles and
thrust them into the common prison, "the angel of the Lord by night opened the
prison doors and brought them forth." At this very period it was, no doubt,
that the martyr Stephen fell. Yes, but ere he sank beneath the blows showered
upon him by his fierce murderers, the heavens were opened, and revealed to him
a vision of his Lord in glory. If martyrdom brought such visions now, who would
shrink from being a martyr! By a like vision the most prominent witness to his
death became changed into an apostle of the faith he had resisted and
blasphemed. And when he in his turn, found himself in the grasp of cruel
enemies at Philippi, his midnight prayer was answered by an earthquake which
shook the foundations of his prison. Unseen hands struck off the chains which
bound him, freed his feet from the stocks in which they had been made fast, and
threw the gaol doors open.
The Apostle Peter, too, had experienced a like
deliverance when held a prisoner by Herod at Jerusalem, and this on the very
eve of the day appointed for his death. The record is definite and thrilling.
"Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains; and the
keepers before the door kept the prison, and behold the angel of the Lord came
upon him, and a light shined in the prison; and he smote Peter on the side and
raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his
hands." "The iron gate" of the prison "opened to them of its own accord," and
together they passed into the Street.
These are but gleanings from the
narrative of the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. Divine
intervention was no mystic theory with these men. "All power in heaven and on
earth" was no mere shibboleth. The story of the infant Church, like the early
history of the Hebrew nation, was an unbroken record of miracles. But there the
parallel ends. Under the old economy the cessation of Divine intervention in
human affairs was regarded as abnormal, and the fact was explained by national
apostasy and sin. And the times of national apostasy were precisely the period
of the prophetic dispensation. Then it was that the Divine voice was heard with
increasing clearness. But in contrast with this, Heaven has now been dumb for
eighteen long centuries. This fact, moreover, might seem less strange if
prophecy had ceased with Malachi, and miracles had not been renewed in
Messianic times. But though miraculous powers and prophetic gifts abounded in
the Pentecostal Church, yet when the testimony passed out from the narrow
sphere ofo Judaism, and was confronted by the philosophy and civilisation of
the heathen world - at the very time in fact when, according to accepted
theories, their voice was specially required - that voice died away for
ever.
Is there nothing here to excite our wonder? Some of course will
dispose of the matter by rejecting every record of miracles, whether in Old
Testament times or New, as mere legend or fable. Others again will protest that
miracles are actually wrought today at certain favoured shrines. But here in
Britain, at least, most men are neither superstitious nor infidel. They believe
the Biblical record of miracles in the past, and they assent to the fact that
ever since the days of the apostles the silence of Heaven has been unbroken.
Yet when challenged to account for this, they are either wholly dumb or else
they offer explanations which are utterly inadequate, if not absolutely
untrue.
To plead that the idea of Divine intervention in human affairs is
unreasonable or absurd is only to afford a proof how easily the mind becomes
enslaved by the ordinary facts of experience.
The believer recognises that
such intervention was common in ancient times, and the unbeliever most fairly
argues that if there really existed a God, all-good and almighty, such
intervention would be common at all times. The taunt would be easily met if the
Christian could make answer that this world is a scene of probation where God
in His infinite wisdom has thought fit to leave men absolutely to themselves.
But in presence of an open Bible such an answer is impossible. The mystery
remains that "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past
unto the fathers," never speaks to His people now! The Divine history of the
favoured race for thousands of years teems with miracles by which God gave
proof of His power with men, and yet we are confronted by the astounding fact
that from the days of the apostles to the present hour the history of
Christendom will be searched in vain for the record of a single public event to
compel belief that there is a God at all!
CHAPTER
THREE
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