The divine storyteller

The position we have laid down might suggest that the history of mankind, or perhaps of God's people, could we but read it rightly, would show the working of a continuous and tranquil providence, leading God's creatures to their perfection; much as we might hope to see the superficially disconnected passages composing a certain sort of novel or play fall into a continuous march of meaning. But the God of revelation, unlike the storyteller or playwright, continually interrupts his own composition and talks to his characters, not that his interventions are really interruptions, but it is through them that he steers the characters and makes the plot. Sacred history is primarily concerned with the actions and fortunes of people in dialogue with God; natural events serving providential ends, and ungodly men forwarding purposes which are nothing to them, play a part, but an altogether subsidiary part. A. Farrer, Faith and Speculation (T&T Clark 1967/1988), 97.