in bewildering disappointments, in
bereavements which empty the heart and empty the world, millions have
thus cried Why in every age. It seems an irreligious word. When
Jeremiah says, "O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived," or
when Job demands, "Why did I not from the womb? why did I not give up
the ghost when I came out of the belly?" it sounds like the voice of a
blasphemer. But indeed it is into the most earnest and delicate souls
that this despair is likeliest to slip. The ignorant, the frivolous
and the time-serving are safe from it; for they are well enough
satisfied with things as they are. Callous minds learn to be content
without explanations. But the more deeply pious a mind is, the more
jealous must it be for justice and the glory of God; the appearance of
unwisdom in the government of the world shocks it; to be able to trace
the footsteps of God's care is a necessity of its existence. Hence its
pain when these evidences disappear. Now, all the contradictions and
confusions of the world were focussed on Golgotha. Injustice was
triumphant; innocence was scorned and crushed; everything was exactly
the reverse of what it ought to have been. And all the millions of
Whys which have risen from agonized souls, jealous for the honour of
God but perplexed by His providence, were concentrated in the Why of
Christ.

How near to us He is! Never perhaps in His whole life did He so
completely identify Himself with His poor brethren of mankind. For
here He comes down to stand by our side not only when we have to
encounter pain and misfortune, bereavement and death, but when we are
enduring that pain which is beyond all pains, that horror in whose
presence the brain reels, and faith and love, the eyes of life, are put
out--the horror of a universe without God, a universe which is one
hideous, tumbling, crashing mass of confusion, with no reason to guide
and no love to sustain it.

Can we advance a step farther into the mystery? The deepest question
of all is whether the desertion of Jesus was subjective or
objective--that is, whether He had only, on account of bodily weakness
and a temporary obscuration of the inward vision, a sense of being
abandoned, or whether, in any real sense, God had actually forsaken
Him. Of course we are certain that God was infinitely well pleased
with Him--never more so, surely, than when He was sacrificing Himself
to the uttermost on behalf of others. But was there,