By Rev. JOHN COLQUHOUN.
IN the seventh chapter of the First Book of Samuel we find that after the Philistines gathered against the children of Israel that “the Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomfited them; and they were smitten before Israel. . . Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” In our own land we have many war memorials which were put up after the first world war, but very few of these bear an inscription acknowledging the Lord’s help. This shows how blind we are, nationally, to the Lord’s great mercies towards us, for the history of our beloved land abounds with outstanding instances when we could say with the Psalmist, “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us” (Psalm ccxiv. 2, 3).
Like the children of Israel on the occasion referred to, we have been on many occasions unprepared to meet our enemies when they attacked us, but the Lord has often discomfited them, sometimes by the elements, and other times by the weakest instruments. A notable instance of the former mode may be noticed in the destruction of what is known as the Spanish Armada. In 1588 this Armada set sail from Spain with the avowed purpose of exterminating Protestantism in Britain. It received the blessing of the Pope, and no doubt plenty of so-called holy water was sprinkled on its sails according to the superstitious custom of the Roman Catholic Church. Faith in this trumpery, together with the material strength of the fleet and the known unpreparedness and numerical weakness of the English Navy, made the Spaniards confident of success. But neither Papal blessing nor holy water nor numerical strength could overcome Him whose Cause they sought to destroy. His name is the Lord of Hosts, and among these hosts which are at His command are the elements. He opened His arsenal and sent forth a mighty storm which made havoc of the brave Spanish galleons, so that His heritage could say with Israel’s Psalmist, “Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God” (Psalm xlviij. 7, 8).
An instance of God working by a very weak instrument is brought before us by Dr. McCrie in his Life of John Knox, when he tells of a time when the Provincial Council was sitting in the Monastery of the Greyfriars, Edinburgh, devising plans for the ruin of the Protestant religion in Scotland. Someone came in and informed them that John Knox was come from France and had slept the previous night in Edinburgh. McCrie says, “The clergy were panic-struck with the intelligence, and foreboding the ruin of all the plans which they had formed with so much care, they dismissed the council in great haste and confusion.” This was the man who, not so long before, was confined as a galley slave, and even now lacked earthly power so much that the queen-regent could within a few days proclaim him an out-law and a rebel. Knox
landed in Scotland on 3rd May, 1559, and the Protestant religion was established in 1560, largely through his instrumentality. Viewing impartially all the circumstances no credit can be given to human strength but all the glory must be given to Him who says to the “worm Jacob,” “Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shall make the hills as chaff” (Isaiah xli. 15). “The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect” (Psalm xxxiii. 10).
Another outstanding case of the Lord’s deliverance of His people in this country is to be seen during the reigns of Charles II and James II. True religion was being persecuted and the best of Scotland’s nobility and peasantry were being hunted like partridges because of their adherence to the faith once delivered to the saints. Black Prelacy had at its command the civil power of the British nation. It employed the most callous and ferocious type of commanders who recklessly thought not of the account they must render to God, and who took fiendish delight in the excruciating mental and physical tortures which they meted out to their victims. Satan did roar and seemed to challenge all and sundry to dispute his sway, or to overthrow his power. Scotland, the scene of a great and successful battle for the overthrow of Antichrist, the natural and spiritual birthplace, and the stage of martyrdom, of many among the ransomed throng on Mount Zion above, was, to all appearance to be made a spiritual desolation, an abode of the satyrs of the kingdom of darkness, where they were to remain in undisturbed possession, but when the ferocity with which the persecution was waged had reached its height, God appeared for the deliverance of the nation from Prelatical and Popish oppression and hurled the Stuart dynasty off the throne of Britain, never again to disturb the peace of these islands except in two abortive attempts to regain their former power. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Psalm lxxvi. 10). The Lord’s people could say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
Instances so numerous that they could fill volumes could be brought forward to show that nothing else but a clear interposition of Providence saved us from destruction as a nation during the first world war, and the second world war brings its own very large quota. What a wonderful example of this interposition is to be seen in the evacuation of our forces at Dunkirk. The Germans were sure that the most of them would be massacred; our statesmen had no hope of saving but a small number; it was a time when the natural elements were usually unfavourable to such work as ferrying troops across the Straits of Dover, yet He “who hath gathered the wind in his fists” caused that there was a great calm so that the smallest craft could be employed successfully in bringing a large number of our soldiers back to this country. Subsequently the weather, which proved so favourable to the ferrying of British troops, militated so much against German plans as to frustrate, time and again, efforts at invading this country when the preparations of our enemies were completed. Should they have succeeded, liberty of conscience and liberty to worship God would have gone, for their rage was against
everything by which God reveals Himself. The glory of this deliverance belongs to Him who has said in reference to another mighty enemy, “Because thy rage against me and thy tumult is come up into mine ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest” (II. Kings xix. 28).
Hitler’s attack on Russia at a time when everyone expected him to proceed with the total subjugation of Britain, then defenceless and bleeding, will no doubt remain an unsolved mystery to all who leave God out of account. Various reasons are given for it, and some are feasible while others are far-fetched. Some will trace it to insanity in the German arch-criminal, others to his incompetency as a military leader, while others, again, will put it down to lack of harmony among his associates. One thing, however, is sure, and, that is, that God rules in this world, and neither Hitler nor any other can move except as He permits, and in the way which He permits. Hitler, no doubt, concluded that Russia was to attack him and he wanted to be first in the field, but in this we have a repetition of God’s dealings with another war-monger. “Behold, I will send a blast upon him, and he shall hear a rumour, and shall return to his own land; and I will cause him to fall by the sword in his own land” (II. Kings xix. 7). Thus was Britain delivered from the continuous raids to which she was subjected previously, and God fulfilled on her behalf what He said to Israel of old, “And the Lord of hosts shall stir up a scourge for him according to the slaughter of Midian at the rock of Oreb: and as his rod was upon the sea, so shall he lift it up after the manner of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing” (Isaiah x. 26, 27). It was the same over-ruling Power who caused Japan to attack America and thus bring the latter country into the war on the side of Britain. “This also cometh from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working” (Isaiah xxviii. 29).
It is for us to ask, What are God’s purposes in thus dealing with us? The Scriptures represent Him as coming “out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,” and there are many reasons why He should punish us, who are so ready to pride ourselves on being the champions of what is right. Our love of the world, open and secret sins, irreligion and forgetfulness of past mercies are cesspools of corruption, the stench of which rises up to heaven, causing us to be an abomination to the Lord. These sins deserve the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, but the rich mercy of God is manifested towards us in that He is visiting us with the scourge of war by way of exhorting us to turn from that which causes war and bloodshed to serve Himself with fear. We have despised the Lord Jesus, who is King of Nations, and He is saying to us, “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little” (Psalm ii. 12). Thus He reveals that He has no delight in our overthrow as a nation.
His purpose may be yet to make us the centre from which the gospel
lamp will shine forth to the uttermost corners of the earth. Many take it as a matter of course that this country and the United States of America are Allies, seeing that both countries are the foremost champions of liberty, but a glance at the history of the past ought to make us wonder that it should be so. When the United States separated from Britain the injustice of our dealings with what had been our American Colonies, and the blindness and obstinacy of our politicians, awakened feelings the reverse of friendship, but now, in the mysterious Providence of the Most High we are Allies, sharing each other’s confidence to a remarkable degree. Is it the case that His purpose is that these two great nations who are so much indebted to the Bible are to be as polished shafts in His hand to break down the strongholds of Satan and to send His Word to “the dark places of the earth” which “are full of the habitations of cruelty?”
It may be that God purposes by giving us, as a nation, so many reasons for raising our Ebenezers, to give an answer to centuries of prayer. The prayer of David the son of Jesse was, “And let the whole earth be filled with his glory; Amen, and Amen” (Psalm lxxii. 19), and the true Church of God, and every individual believer in it have been adding their Amen to it down through the centuries. Some of the eminent Christians of the past century used to say that when they would be praying for the Millennium they would be brought to a stop when they would consider the awful happenings that were to precede it. The horrors of the present conflict do not appear to have any sobering effect upon us, and nothing short of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit will awaken us to the fact that it is God’s Word, received into the heart and practised in the life that will keep the potsherds of the earth from striving with each other. It may be God’s purpose, by His wonderful dealings with us as a nation, to teach us that lesson, and thus prepare us as instruments for advancing His kingdom. Should that take place it would afford another reason why we, as a nation, should raise our Ebenezer and say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”