21. Ugo Bassi, central figure in H. E. Hamilton King's epic, The Disciples, published in 1873.
74 Baffled to Fight Better
cannot be explained on the line of reason, but only on the line of the a-logical, that which goes beyond and underneath the logical. Job recognises this, and he implies, "If you imagine you can explain the deeper sublimities of a man's soul, you have not pondered human life enough." The Psalmist puts it in this way—"My God, Thou art the God of the mountains and of the fathomless deep, the God of the early mornings and late at nights; but there are deeper depths than these in me, my God; more mysterious things in my soul, and I cannot fathom my own way, therefore search me, O God" (see Psalm 139). Job is on the same line.
against my conscience, and say that you have told the truth whereas in reality you have told a lie."
There is a difference between the subtlety of Eliphaz and the subtlety of Job. Eliphaz sums up the history of the wicked man and says that God does all these things to punish him, whereas Job recognises that the history of any man cannot be accounted for on the surface, and that God alone can explain His own dealings. The description Eliphaz gives of the wicked man is a covert condemnation of Job; he takes the facts of Job's present condition and puts them as the picture of a wicked man, while all the time he implies, "Thou art the man." "That is not the way to comfort me, or bring me any help," says Job. He does not brag and say he is a good man, but he does maintain that the reason he suffers is not because he is bad. "You pretend to know the attitude of God to things, but all that you describe as the experience of a wicked man I can give as my experience of being a good man."
"Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways: and how small a whisper do we hear of Him!" ( Job 26:14 rv). In the Book of Job Nature is always referred to as being wild; this is a point of view we have forgotten nowadays. We talk about laws and findings, we give scientific explanations of thunder and of a sunset, and come to the conclusion that there is no unexplained sublimity in Nature at all. The wildness of Nature has to be recognised, there are forces in the earth and air and sea which baffle attempts at explanation or of control; all we can do is to give a direction for thought along certain lines.
The explanation of Job's suffering is the fact that God and Satan had made a battleground of his soul. It was not for Job's chastening or his perfecting, but for an ulterior purpose which he did not know, but his intuition made him stick to the fact that the only One who could explain the sublimities of Nature was the One who could explain what he was going through. "Though He slay me, though my creed goes and everything is destroyed, "yet I will trust in Him"—not trust Him to deliver me, but trust that He is honourable and just and true, and that I shall yet be justified in sticking to my faith in His honour, though meantime it looks as if He is deliberately destroying me.
Neither logic nor science can explain the sublimities of Nature. Supposing a scientist with a diseased olfactory nerve says that there is no perfume in a rose, and to prove his statement he dissects the rose and tabulates every part, and then says, "Where is the perfume? It is a fiction; I have demonstrated that there is none." There is always one fact more that science cannot explain, and the best thing to do is not to deny it in order to preserve your sanity, but to say, as Job did, "No, the one fact more which you cannot explain means that God must step in just there, or there is no explanation to be had."
There is a lot of cheap-jack talk just now regarding the British Empire, viz., that God is punishing us for our sins—a hopeless misrepresentation. The Cross of Calvary and the Redemption have to do with the sins of the world. If God began to punish the nations for their sins there would be no nation left on the face of the earth. Job takes the right line, that the difficulties are produced by a conflict of wills.
2. God and the Subtleties ( Job 27) Moreover Job continued his parable, and said, . . . God forbid that I should justify you: till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: my heart shall not reproach me so long as I live. ( Job 27:1, 5–6)
Beware of the subtleties which twist facts. It is possible to torture a man with a delicate type of mind, as in the case of Ugo Bassi,21 torture him not physically, but by suggesting that he has been guilty of base motives and deeds. The sensitiveness of Ugo Bassi's mind was such that after a while he began to believe he had been guilty unconsciously of the things he was accused of. Job's friends said to him, "We have all these facts about you, and they are only explainable along the line that you are a bad man; you may not be conscious of your badness, nevertheless you are a hypocrite, because our creed says that if a man trusts God, God will bless him; and instead of being blessed, you have been cursed in
God is never subtle in His revelations, but always elemental and simple. The "simple Gospel" does not mean simple to understand, but simple in the way God Himself is simple. Job says, "I have no explanation as yet of what I am going through; your explanation on the line of your creed is irritating nonsense, because it makes you leave out the facts which I know, while you try to explain the One none of us can get at, viz., God." Job is not speaking in spite, but in honesty—"If I were to justify you in your explanation I should sin
21. Ugo Bassi, central figure in H. E. Hamilton King's epic, The Disciples, published in 1873.