God's various modes of manifesting himself.
It has been well said that "when God reveals himself it is in a manner suitable to the occasion." No revelation that he has made of himself has ever been so terrible in its material accompaniments as that at Sinai; and no occasion can ever be conceived of as more needing the employment of solemn, startling, and impressive circumstances. Here was a people gross of heart, delighting in flesh-pots, debased by slavery, careless of freedom, immoral, inclined to idolatry, which had to be elevated into God's living witness among the nations, the depositary of his truth, the teacher of the rest of mankind for ages. Given the object of impressing such a nation permanently with the conviction that it had received a Divine revelation, and that very dreadful consequences would follow the neglect of it, and the need of the thunders and other terrors of Sinai becomes manifest. At other times and in other places God has pursued quite different methods. To Elijah he revealed himself in the "still small voice;" to Isaiah and St. John in visions; to the apostles generally in the solemn teaching of his Son; to St. Paul in ecstasies, wherein he heard unspeakable words. The contrast between the day of the giving of the law on Sinai and the day of Pentecost has often been noticed.
"When God of old came down from Heaven,
In power and wrath he came;
Before his feet the clouds were riven,
Half darkness and half flame."
"But when he came the second time,
He came in power and love:
Softer than gale at morning prime,
Hovered his holy Dove."
The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost and the coming of Jesus were, both of them, gentle and peaceful Epiphanies, suited to the time when God, having educated the world for four thousand years or more, was about to seek to win men to himself by the preaching of "good tidings"—of the gospel of love. The clouds and terrors of Sinai would here have been out of place—unsuitable anachronisms. In complete harmony with the two occasions were—at Bethlehem, the retired village, the humble stable, the angels singing of peace on earth, the lone shepherds watching their flocks at night—in Jerusalem the voiceless wind, "mighty" yet subdued, the lambent light playing round the heads of holy men, the unseen inward influence shed into their hearts at the same time, impalpable to sense, but with power to revolutionise the world. And as God reveals himself to his Church in manifold ways, each fitting the occasion, so does he reveal himself to individuals. Now he comes clothed in his terrors. He visits with calamity or with sickness, or with that awful dread which from time to time comes over the soul, that it is lost, hopelessly lost, alienated from God for ever. Anon, he shows himself in gentler guise—he whispers hope, he instils faith, he awakens love. In every case he studies the needs of the individual, and adapts his revelation of himself to them. Now he calls by his preachers, now he warns by the "still small voice" of conscience; now he wakes men out of sleep by a sudden danger or a sudden deliverance; anon, he startles them out of a self-complacency worse than sleep by withdrawing himself and allowing them to fall. It is for man to take advantage of every Divine manifestation, to listen when God speaks, to obey when he calls, to make the use of each occasion which it was intended to have, to "receive God's revelations of himself in his own way."