For she did not know.
Agnosticism
There is a theory which is known to-day by the difficult name Agnosticism. A great deal of worthless thinking may be hidden under that dark term. The meaning is supposed to be “not-know-ism.” Men do not now say, “There is no God”; they say, “If there is a God, we do not know Him.” If this were an intellectual doctrine only, there might appear to be about it somewhat of the charm of modesty. But it is more. What great case does the intellect wholly cover? Is man all intellect? Agnosticism cannot begin and end where it likes. God cannot be expelled from the intellect without the moral quality of the whole nature going down; without the heart also being as agnostic as the mind. Agnosticism is a larger question than any that can be limited to the mere dry intellect. And agnosticism of this kind means not only deprivation of moral sensibility, as expressed in the action of gratitude, but it makes responsibility at once frivolous and impossible. Responsible to whom? Responsibility never reaches its true realisation until it touches the point of reverence--simple, earnest, continual dependence upon God. When a man denies God he cannot do his duty to his fellow-men. The man that does not know God does not know himself. No man can love God without loving God’s image as seen in human kind. Theology--not formal and scientific, but spiritual and inspired--is the fount and origin of beneficence and exalted morality. What is God’s reply to agnosticism? See Hosea 2:9. “Therefore will I return, and take away My corn,” etc. This is rational, just, and simple. Where God is not known, why should He continue His bounty? God never gives bread by itself. When God gives bread to the body He does not want to keep our bones together; He only feeds the body that He may get at the soul. God has therefore determined that if men do not know Him, or ask concerning Him, or recognise the purpose of His ministry, He will come down and claim His corn and wine and wool and flax. This is just. God must keep some control over things. It is good of Him now and then to send a bad harvest. Men begin to ask questions, and to wonder. And what is the issue of this agnosticism? See Hosea 2:11-12. This is not vengeance, this is reason; this is not arbitrary punishment, this is a natural consequence and necessity. Divine gifts are abused, are misunderstood, are in some sense resented; what if Divine patience should be outworn, or if only through a temporary suspension of his fortunes man can be brought to consideration 7 Providence is not an arbitrary beneficence, but a critical and discriminating ministry. And there comes a time when God will say to the cloud, Rain no more on that unthankful life; and to the sun, No longer shine on ingratitude so base and desperate. This is God’s method; it is not mysterious; it is simple, frank, direct, intelligible, and just. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
The blindness of ingratitude
The superstitious sin twice, or in two ways.
1. They ascribe to their idols what rightly belongs to God alone.
2. They deprive God Himself of His own honour, for they understand not that He is the only giver of all things.
Hence the prophet now complains of this ingratitude. And this was an inexcusable stupidity in the Israelites, since they had been abundantly instructed that the abundance of all good things, and everything that supports man, flow from God’s bounty. (John Calvin.)
That I gave her corn, and wine, and oil.
The misimprovement of providential layouts
The particular offences here charged, are those of a wilful blindness with regard to the source of their temporal blessings, and a guilty perversion of them to sinful and idolatrous uses. They ascribed them to the agency of their heathen deities, to whom they were also in the habit of consecrating them in sacrifice. But the misimprovement of providential favours is very offensive to God.
I. When are men properly guilty of this conduct?
1. When they fail to recognise God as the sole bestower of them. This was the sin of Israel. Absolute ignorance of the source whence temporal blessings flow is not affirmed. It was that God’s agency was ignored. Israel rested in second causes. Men talk of their good fortune, or their luck, or their well-to-do ancestors, but God is not in all their thoughts.
2. When they withhold the due acknowledgment of them. Not to know a thing, in Scripture language, often means not to act in a manner corresponding with our knowledge. The people did not render to God according to that which they had received. For all His gifts God expects a proper return, the return of thanksgiving and service. But how universally is this withheld.
3. When they pervert them to evil and illegitimate uses. “They prepared for Baal.” The people took their blessings from God, and devoted them to the service of an idol. This was translating indifference into insult and defiance. And the guilt is as common now as in the olden time.
II. What are the features in it that:evince its peculiar sinfulness?
1. It involves the sin of inconsideration. It argues a mind wrapped up in utter heedlessness of all that is most adapted to awaken and engage its powers.
2. It is characterised by the basest ingratitude. This is a positive element. Ingratitude implies an actual check put upon man’s feelings--a sort of moral pressure brought to bear upon them, to prevent their proper exercise and expression. And man wills it. It is not simply the negation of thankfulness; it is the deliberate exercise of its contrary. And this is the sin of the many.
3. It is a species of practical atheism. It is animated by a spirit that militates against the very being of God. Or, if it stop short of this, it yet seeks to limit the extent of His rule, and to shut Him out of this earthly province of His dominions. Atheism is but the bud of dislike to God unfolded and outspread into the garish flower.
III. What is the punishment to which this conduct justly exposes? The misimprovement, by neglect or perversion, of Divine favours incurs the danger of their resumption by their great Bestower. Blessings unimproved will not always be continued. There is a point beyond which even the patience and forbearance of the God that “delighteth m mercy” will not hold out. Neglect, insult, and defiance must end in condign punishment. Then let us be warned. Let us search into our ways. Let us acknowledge our transgressions, and put away our sins from us. So, in wrath will He remember mercy, and avert the punishment that we have so righteously deserved. Timely humiliation, repentance, and prayer are never ineffectual. (C. M. Merry.)
God’s hand to be acknowledged in His good gifts
This was God’s charge against His ancient people, a very heavy charge. They were unmindful of their benefactor. The thanks which they owed to Him they paid to devils. This is human nature; it is what we still see continually. It is a great part of religion to see God’s hand in everything, to trace every instance of protection to His providence, of deliverance to His care, every good gift to His love. The Bible refers everything either directly or indirectly to God.
I. God is constantly represented as the author and giver of all good things (by Jeremiah 5:21-23). God is declared to be the author of all the fruitfulness and plenty which are so beautifully described in Psalms 65:1-13. Take St. Paul’s words to the people at Lystra, or Moses’ last charge to the Israelites (Deuteronomy 8:11-20). In these passages we have the rain, the harvest, the fruitfulness of the fields and the increase of the cattle, preservation in danger, support in want, power to get wealth, daily protection, the gift of children--all ascribed to God.
II. Examples of good men of old, who referred every blessing they enjoyed to God. Abraham’s servant, Jacob, Psalmists, etc. These men had an abiding sense of God’s interference in all their concerns. They looked beyond second causes, and fixed their thoughts at once upon the great First Cause. One feels how different from theirs is the way of speaking common among ourselves. We cannot, indeed, prudently use the name of God as freely as they did. But we may err with undue reticence. If God’s name is seldom in our mouths, there is reason to fear it is seldom in our hearts. It were well that God’s name were more frequently introduced, so it were done with reverence, when we speak of the good gifts which we enjoy. The fixed habit of ascribing all our blessings to God would--
1. Be the surest way to secure the continuance of God’s mercies, and to draw down more.
2. It would keep our faith in exercise. It would enable us to realise God’s presence as our friend and benefactor. It would bring us into sensible communion with God daily. It would draw out our love to Christ. Seeing God in all things helps to make the sunshine of life. To be forward in recognising God’s hand, and blessing Him for His good gifts, is an excellent help to diligence and zeal in God’s service. It only remains that we each press home upon ourselves this blessed duty; and especially that we make sure of our interest in the greatest of all God’s gifts, the gift of His dear Son. (C. A. Hewitley, B. D.)
Misusing gilts
1. How graciously their plenty was given to them. God is a bountiful benefactor.
2. How basely was their plenty abused by them.
(1) They robbed God of the honour of them.
(2) They served and honoured His enemies with them.
3. How justly should their plenty be taken from them. Those that abuse the mercies God gives them to His dishonour cannot expect to enjoy them long. (Matthew Henry.)
All is of God
On the forefront of the Royal Exchange in London are inscribed the words, “ The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof.” There is also stamped on all our coins of the realm the same acknowledgment, Dei gratis; it is all of God’s grace and goodness.
God acknowledged
Jenny Lind always kept the 7th of March most religiously. She asked her friends--and she was a Christian--always to pray for her on the 7th of March. She kept it as a trysting-day with God. What was the reason? It was that on the 7th of March she rose from her bed unaware of the God-given gift that was in her. By the evening she had realised it; she had got the baptism of her life--she realised that God had put into her a gift of song, the notes of which seemed to have been stolen from an angel in the heavenly choir; and she went to her bed conscious that God had called her to the sacred service of song. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Everything from God
The scribe is more properly said to write than the pen; and he that maketh and keepeth the clock is more properly said to make it go and strike, than the wheels and pegs that hang upon it; and every workman to effect his work, rather than the tools which he useth as his instruments. So the Lord, who is the chief agent and mover in all actions, may more fitly and properly be said to effect and bring to pass all things which are done in the earth, than any inferior or subordinate causes, as meat to nourish us, clothes to keep us warm, the sun to lighten us, friends to provide for us, etc., seeing they are all but His tools and instruments, but as they are ruled and guided by the power and providence of so heavenly a workman. (H. G. Salter.)
God overlooked
In Madeira there is a grove of camelia trees. A gentleman went to see the flowers, and returned much disappointed, as not one was visible. He made a second visit, and was delighted when, looking up, as he had been told to do, he saw a canopy of large white and scarlet flowers, forty feet overhead. In times of difficulty we are apt to look round on earthly agencies for aid, forgetting to look up to God, who in spite of all His glory, is willing to be our helper. (J. Marrat.)
The worship of fortune
Archbishop Trench says, How prone are we all to ascribe to chance or fortune those gifts and blessings which indeed come directly from God--to build altars to Fortune rather than to Him who is the author of every good thing which we have gotten. And this faith of men, that their blessings, even their highest, come to them by a blind chance, they have incorporated in a word; for “happy” and “happiness” are connected with “hap,” which is chance; how unworthy, then, to express any true felicity, whose very essence is that it excludes hap or chance, that the world neither gave nor can take it away. Against a similar misuse of “fortunate,” “unfortunate,” Wordsworth very nobly protests, when, of one who, having lost everything else, had yet kept the truth, he exclaims--
“Call not the royal Swede unfortunate,
Who never did to Fortune bend the knee.”
Success rightly ascribed
“In all my career,” General Gordon once wrote, “I can lay no claim to cleverness, discretion, or wisdom. My success has been due to a series of (called by the world) flukes. When one knows the little one does of oneself, and any one praises you, I, at any rate, have a rising in the gorge which is a suppressed, ‘You lie!’ Who is he, or who is any man, that he should be praised? I do nothing. Do not flatter yourself that you are wanted--that God could not work without you; it is an honour if He employs you. No one is indispensable, either in this world’s affairs or in spiritual works.” “Do not send me your paper with anything written about me,” he said on parting. “I do not want to see it, or to have anything to do with it. These things are not in my hands, and mind, do not forget--no gilt!”
God the source of blessings
At the close of the cotton famine in Lancashire the mills in one village had been stopped for months, and the first waggon load of cotton which arrived before they recommenced, seemed to the people like the olive-branch, “newly plucked off,” which told of the abating waters of the deluge. The waggon was met by the women, who hysterically laughed and cried, and hugged the cotton bales as if they were dear old friends, and then ended by singing that grand old hymn--a great favourite with Lancashire people--“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”
Which they prepared for Baal.--
Political and social ungodliness
The sin of the nation, the misery which Hosea here laments, was this--the people worshipped their prosperity, unmindful of the God who gave it. Baal-worship was substantially a worship of the forces of nature. Ethically, Baal-worship was the enthronement of force; it was the worship of possession. The Jewish idea in calling Jehovah “Lord” was that of righteous authority. The character of God was His supreme claim to government. Baal, as “Lord,” was simply the mysterious unknown proprietor of powers of nature: a mighty possessor, to be honoured as one who could give, propitiated as one who could withhold, or trouble and afflict. Ungodliness in Christian nations corresponds to idolatry among the Jews; the refusal to recognise any higher law than the right of possession, to acknowledge any other rule of conduct than what is prescribed by the necessity of holding and increasing what one has. Baal-worship did not displace the worship of Jehovah, the two existed side by side. Jehovah for the inspiration of their loftiest sentiment; Baal for the meaner concerns of corn and wine and oil. A similar confusion of godliness and ungodliness is found in many a man, perhaps in the most immediately influential majority of the English people to-day. The Gospel has done too much for us to be lightly abandoned. We cannot afford to dispense with the sanctity, the inspiration, the ennobling thoughts and feelings which Christianity brings into individual and family and Church life. But then, how many would confine the Gospel to individual and family and Church life? For politics and society the New Testament morality is too far-fetched, too fine-drawn. This is what we mean by political and social ungodliness. Many a man is personally godly, politically ungodly. This is a fatal mistake. No amount of personal piety will buy God over to give us national and social prosperity while we contemn the principles of righteousness, and regard for men, which the Bible reveals. There is one God, one morality, one rule; the same for nations as for individuals; the same for our social relations with the world as for our Christian relations within the Church. Political ungodliness has to be rebuked by Christian people. We are called on to be watchful, even jealous, in our criticism of public men and measures. Your judgment on political matters will affect the integrity of your personal character, the clearness of your personal faith. Indifference to righteousness in any sphere will sap the foundation of your piety, and blight your spiritual life. Deal with social ungodliness in relation to the conduct of commercial life. We do not find any such toleration of immorality as is common in political life. The conscience of the community is quick to assert itself; the supremacy of righteousness is vindicated, but we do not find godliness absolute and supreme. Deal with the morality of strikes; the utter bewilderment in which the commercial complications of the day, have found men. How is social life presented to us in the Gospel? It says, “We are members one of another,” Every one of us lives in a community, for the benefit of which he has been called into being, and all social advantages are conferred on him for the sake of the community. We are here in the world to be trained into spiritual manhood, and all material advantages are conferred on us for the sake of the character they help to form and develop. Consider how commercial activity and social life tend to form spiritual character. Social godliness looks for the fulfilment of God’s will in all the action of society. Social godliness and ungodliness are measured if we consider how far we habitually exercise this spirit. (A. Mackennal, D. D.)