O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.
Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there;
O’er us sin no more hath dominion—
For more than conqu’rors we are!
His Word shall not fail you—He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Man's Mistakes Rectified by God
H. W. Beecher.
Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
I sometimes think of it as of a child sitting in a boat. The child does not know the coast, and it very little understands how to row. If the child were left to itself, pulling upon the oars, its right hand being a little stronger than the other, it would be all the time veering the boat to the right, and the boat would be constantly turning round and round. The child would, perhaps, make its way out of the harbour and into the ocean, and be carried away and lost, if there were no guiding power in the boat but its own. But there in the stern sits the father. The uneven strokes of the child would carry the boat this way or that out of its course; but the steady hand of the father overcomes those uneven strokes; and all the mistakes with the oars are rectified by the rudder, and the boat keeps its right course. So that the force exerted by the child, though misdirected, all works for good when the father guides.
(H. W. Beecher.)
H. W. Beecher.
Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
I sometimes think of it as of a child sitting in a boat. The child does not know the coast, and it very little understands how to row. If the child were left to itself, pulling upon the oars, its right hand being a little stronger than the other, it would be all the time veering the boat to the right, and the boat would be constantly turning round and round. The child would, perhaps, make its way out of the harbour and into the ocean, and be carried away and lost, if there were no guiding power in the boat but its own. But there in the stern sits the father. The uneven strokes of the child would carry the boat this way or that out of its course; but the steady hand of the father overcomes those uneven strokes; and all the mistakes with the oars are rectified by the rudder, and the boat keeps its right course. So that the force exerted by the child, though misdirected, all works for good when the father guides.
(H. W. Beecher.)
What God calls our good is not what we call our happiness. Happiness for us is success, health, glory, fortune, the affection of mankind, pleasure; in the sight of God the good for us is holiness, is salvation. God does not to-day attach happiness to faith, and success to piety; if He did so, we should obey Him in order to be happy, and God would be served only by mercenaries. But it is true only in appearance that all men suffer alike. Question believers, and they will tell you that in the severest trials they have discovered signs of the Divine goodness, Now, even when outwardly all seems to be identical in the life of him who loves God and of him who does not, we must admit that events will work upon men according to the mind with which they are accepted. Behold in nature those forces which frighten us by their power of destructiveness. In the plant, beneath a lovely flower, is a subtle poison; in the atmosphere is the hurricane and the electricity. Put the savage in presence of those forces, he will find only suffering and death. But the scientist extracts that poison, and finds in it a remedy for his ills; to the breath of the wind he spreads the sails of his mills or of his ships; he lays hold of the lightning, and upon an imperceptible thread cast into the depths of the ocean he commands it to carry his thoughts to the ends of the world. Well, this is a faithful picture of the manner in which the believing soul can turn to his good all the events of life, all the evils which overwhelm it. Here is failure, mourning, suffering alighting on a Christian soul. Well, you will see that soul seizing those terrible forces which might crush it under their strokes, humbling itself, praying, blessing, and drawing from what might be its death the secret of true greatness, of spiritual triumph and of holiness.
The Secret of the Divine Ways
E. Bersier, D.D.
Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
1. How many among you have felt, at the reading of my text, an involuntary doubt cross their mind! And, beyond the circle of believers, with what a smile of pity or of indignation is it greeted!
2. Moreover, the manner in which this truth is often presented revolts generous hearts. When I see a Christian overwhelmed by trials, yet not doubting the Divine goodness, blessing the hand which afflicts, I recognise both the tone of Paul and the spirit which animated him. But when, in the midst of a tame and easy existence of selfish happiness, I see a Christian delight in the thought that his lot is privileged above others, I can understand the sceptic's smile and indignation. Under this narrow aspect the great thought of God's intervention is often presented. Here is an epidemic; a believer who is spared pretends to see in this fact the mark of the special preference of God. Another is the only one who escapes from a shipwreck; he lets it be understood that God had cares and tenderness only for him. The atheist Diagoras, disembarking at Samothracia, went to the temple, where they showed him the offerings of voyagers rescued from shipwreck. "Canst thou deny the providence of the gods," they said to him, "when thou seest all those testimonies of their intervention?" "Ah!" replied Diagoras, "we should also hear the testimony of those who rest buried beneath the waves!" If we must recognise with pleasure that God acts in preserving us from danger or suffering, we must also repel the theory of a special preference. God loves those unfortunate victims of epidemic or shipwreck as much as He loves us, and more perhaps. I cannot tell what I experience when I see Christians interpreting God's dispensations in the sense which corresponds to their narrow hearts. In vain has the Book of Job condemned that error; in vain the Master has declared that the Galileans upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not guiltier than others. We hear such explaining the ways of the Lord with a cold and axiomatic tone. A child is taken away; they ask if it was not made an idol of. A humiliating misfortune overtakes one of their neighbours; they conclude that it was undoubtedly necessary — an idea directly opposed to that of St. Paul, who affirms that all things work together for good to them that love God.
3. Now this error manifests itself under forms which are singularly hurtful to Christian beliefs. There are men who can see Divine intervention only in what is extraordinary. There are Christians who do not perceive God acting in the uniform laws by which He governs the world. A cure, for example, in which human science has taken no part, seems to them, should be attributed directly to God; if the physician had interfered, in their eyes he would have relegated God to the background. Thence proceeds a consequence which unbelief does not fail to draw. "Ignorance is the mother of faith. In a dark century such an event is attributed to God; but to-morrow a more enlightened generation will know the law thereof." Now that is what we ought to fight against. God does not manifest Himself to us in that alone which astonishes and disconcerts us. All things work together for His plans. Let us now penetrate to the real centre of the apostle's thought.
I. ALL THINGS TEND TOWARDS ONE END. That thought was born the day when Jesus taught His disciples to say, "Thy kingdom come." Reason alone would conclude in an opposite sense. How can we recognise a Divine plan in that bloody play which is called history, in those ancient civilisations which have so thoroughly disappeared, in those insolent triumphs of force or cunning, in those miscarriages of the best causes? A deep thinker sums up his science on this point by saying that "humanity, like a wheel, describes a fatal circle." And yet one would not dare to repeat this to-day. Progress is believed in; men have taken from Christianity their belief in the final triumph of justice and truth. Well! that belief belongs to us; we have given it to the world; do not let the world turn it against us. I see Christians confounded at the sight of this world, despairing of the future. Let that cowardly attitude be far from us! All serves to erect that eternal temple where God shall be adored by all His creatures; each generation which passes lays its stone there, and the building rises.
II. To believe in that general plan by which all things work together for the glory of God is not enough. I want to know what HIS PLAN IS WITH REGARD TO ME. But how shall we show this without dashing against objections?
1. Our belief is taxed with pride. "What presumption to believe ourselves objects of the vigilant care of God!" So then, when you see your little child relating his faults to God, and asking Him to make him better, is that a teaching of pride? But you will answer, Have all Christians the admirable simplicity of that child? No. But that proves that they are men and sinners — nothing more. The ideal for them (the gospel declares it) would be to become children again. You insist on our insignificance. But if we are great enough to believe in God, to love Him, what pride is there in believing that God responds to that desire which He has Himself inspired? Would you charge with pride the feeble plant which, each day at sunrise, holds up its head and half opens to inhale its vivifying heat? God, you say, is too great to make all things work together for our good. What! — that God who has poured forth on the meanest of His creatures treasures of wisdom, of foresight; that God who decks the birds of the air and the flowers of the field would be too great to count our sorrows and our prayers! You accuse us of pride? But suffer me, in turn, to distrust your humility. A thousand times I have seen the rebel creature escape from God under pretext of his insignificance, and shelter his revolt under the veil of humility. Where is pride if not in that attitude of a feeble and sinful being who says, "Let others call upon Thee; I can do without Thee"?
2. Our modern stoics accuse us of obeying an interested sentiment. To hear them, man ought never to seek his own good. He ought to obey duty — that is all. But we may well remark that the gospel has said all that with an incomparable power. Never has the mercenary spirit been more mercilessly condemned than by Jesus Christ. But because I ought to serve God without calculation, does it follow that I ought to reject, in the name of my dignity, that Providence which makes all things work together for my good? No, certainly, for that would be to lie to my nature.
3. "Why pretend that God occupies Himself with each of His creatures, since He governs the world by invariable laws?" So then, in a well-ordered state, because the sovereign has made and observes the laws, he cannot testify his benevolence to any of his subjects, and the order which he has made to prevail will hinder him from ever manifesting his love. To be logical, we must go further, and say that God is chained by the laws, He has made, that there is no other God than those laws, and return to the inexorable fatality of the heathen.
4. Appeal is made to experience. "Are you spared more than others, you who pray? And when you would escape from the evils which threaten you, are you not, like us, obliged to resort to the human means which experience points out?" But have the objectors reflected that they confound the good of believers with their visible happiness, a confusion which the Bible never makes? Distinguish those two things, and light already begins to come. What God calls our good is not what we call our happiness. Happiness for us is success, health, glory, fortune, the affection of mankind, pleasure; in the sight of God the good for us is holiness, is salvation. God does not to-day attach happiness to faith, and success to piety; if He did so, we should obey Him in order to be happy, and God would be served only by mercenaries. But it is true only in appearance that all men suffer alike. Question believers, and they will tell you that in the severest trials they have discovered signs of the Divine goodness, Now, even when outwardly all seems to be identical in the life of him who loves God and of him who does not, we must admit that events will work upon men according to the mind with which they are accepted. Behold in nature those forces which frighten us by their power of destructiveness. In the plant, beneath a lovely flower, is a subtle poison; in the atmosphere is the hurricane and the electricity. Put the savage in presence of those forces, he will find only suffering and death. But the scientist extracts that poison, and finds in it a remedy for his ills; to the breath of the wind he spreads the sails of his mills or of his ships; he lays hold of the lightning, and upon an imperceptible thread cast into the depths of the ocean he commands it to carry his thoughts to the ends of the world. Well, this is a faithful picture of the manner in which the believing soul can turn to his good all the events of life, all the evils which overwhelm it. Here is failure, mourning, suffering alighting on a Christian soul. Well, you will see that soul seizing those terrible forces which might crush it under their strokes, humbling itself, praying, blessing, and drawing from what might be its death the secret of true greatness, of spiritual triumph and of holiness.
(E. Bersier, D.D.)
E. Bersier, D.D.
Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
1. How many among you have felt, at the reading of my text, an involuntary doubt cross their mind! And, beyond the circle of believers, with what a smile of pity or of indignation is it greeted!
2. Moreover, the manner in which this truth is often presented revolts generous hearts. When I see a Christian overwhelmed by trials, yet not doubting the Divine goodness, blessing the hand which afflicts, I recognise both the tone of Paul and the spirit which animated him. But when, in the midst of a tame and easy existence of selfish happiness, I see a Christian delight in the thought that his lot is privileged above others, I can understand the sceptic's smile and indignation. Under this narrow aspect the great thought of God's intervention is often presented. Here is an epidemic; a believer who is spared pretends to see in this fact the mark of the special preference of God. Another is the only one who escapes from a shipwreck; he lets it be understood that God had cares and tenderness only for him. The atheist Diagoras, disembarking at Samothracia, went to the temple, where they showed him the offerings of voyagers rescued from shipwreck. "Canst thou deny the providence of the gods," they said to him, "when thou seest all those testimonies of their intervention?" "Ah!" replied Diagoras, "we should also hear the testimony of those who rest buried beneath the waves!" If we must recognise with pleasure that God acts in preserving us from danger or suffering, we must also repel the theory of a special preference. God loves those unfortunate victims of epidemic or shipwreck as much as He loves us, and more perhaps. I cannot tell what I experience when I see Christians interpreting God's dispensations in the sense which corresponds to their narrow hearts. In vain has the Book of Job condemned that error; in vain the Master has declared that the Galileans upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were not guiltier than others. We hear such explaining the ways of the Lord with a cold and axiomatic tone. A child is taken away; they ask if it was not made an idol of. A humiliating misfortune overtakes one of their neighbours; they conclude that it was undoubtedly necessary — an idea directly opposed to that of St. Paul, who affirms that all things work together for good to them that love God.
3. Now this error manifests itself under forms which are singularly hurtful to Christian beliefs. There are men who can see Divine intervention only in what is extraordinary. There are Christians who do not perceive God acting in the uniform laws by which He governs the world. A cure, for example, in which human science has taken no part, seems to them, should be attributed directly to God; if the physician had interfered, in their eyes he would have relegated God to the background. Thence proceeds a consequence which unbelief does not fail to draw. "Ignorance is the mother of faith. In a dark century such an event is attributed to God; but to-morrow a more enlightened generation will know the law thereof." Now that is what we ought to fight against. God does not manifest Himself to us in that alone which astonishes and disconcerts us. All things work together for His plans. Let us now penetrate to the real centre of the apostle's thought.
I. ALL THINGS TEND TOWARDS ONE END. That thought was born the day when Jesus taught His disciples to say, "Thy kingdom come." Reason alone would conclude in an opposite sense. How can we recognise a Divine plan in that bloody play which is called history, in those ancient civilisations which have so thoroughly disappeared, in those insolent triumphs of force or cunning, in those miscarriages of the best causes? A deep thinker sums up his science on this point by saying that "humanity, like a wheel, describes a fatal circle." And yet one would not dare to repeat this to-day. Progress is believed in; men have taken from Christianity their belief in the final triumph of justice and truth. Well! that belief belongs to us; we have given it to the world; do not let the world turn it against us. I see Christians confounded at the sight of this world, despairing of the future. Let that cowardly attitude be far from us! All serves to erect that eternal temple where God shall be adored by all His creatures; each generation which passes lays its stone there, and the building rises.
II. To believe in that general plan by which all things work together for the glory of God is not enough. I want to know what HIS PLAN IS WITH REGARD TO ME. But how shall we show this without dashing against objections?
1. Our belief is taxed with pride. "What presumption to believe ourselves objects of the vigilant care of God!" So then, when you see your little child relating his faults to God, and asking Him to make him better, is that a teaching of pride? But you will answer, Have all Christians the admirable simplicity of that child? No. But that proves that they are men and sinners — nothing more. The ideal for them (the gospel declares it) would be to become children again. You insist on our insignificance. But if we are great enough to believe in God, to love Him, what pride is there in believing that God responds to that desire which He has Himself inspired? Would you charge with pride the feeble plant which, each day at sunrise, holds up its head and half opens to inhale its vivifying heat? God, you say, is too great to make all things work together for our good. What! — that God who has poured forth on the meanest of His creatures treasures of wisdom, of foresight; that God who decks the birds of the air and the flowers of the field would be too great to count our sorrows and our prayers! You accuse us of pride? But suffer me, in turn, to distrust your humility. A thousand times I have seen the rebel creature escape from God under pretext of his insignificance, and shelter his revolt under the veil of humility. Where is pride if not in that attitude of a feeble and sinful being who says, "Let others call upon Thee; I can do without Thee"?
2. Our modern stoics accuse us of obeying an interested sentiment. To hear them, man ought never to seek his own good. He ought to obey duty — that is all. But we may well remark that the gospel has said all that with an incomparable power. Never has the mercenary spirit been more mercilessly condemned than by Jesus Christ. But because I ought to serve God without calculation, does it follow that I ought to reject, in the name of my dignity, that Providence which makes all things work together for my good? No, certainly, for that would be to lie to my nature.
3. "Why pretend that God occupies Himself with each of His creatures, since He governs the world by invariable laws?" So then, in a well-ordered state, because the sovereign has made and observes the laws, he cannot testify his benevolence to any of his subjects, and the order which he has made to prevail will hinder him from ever manifesting his love. To be logical, we must go further, and say that God is chained by the laws, He has made, that there is no other God than those laws, and return to the inexorable fatality of the heathen.
4. Appeal is made to experience. "Are you spared more than others, you who pray? And when you would escape from the evils which threaten you, are you not, like us, obliged to resort to the human means which experience points out?" But have the objectors reflected that they confound the good of believers with their visible happiness, a confusion which the Bible never makes? Distinguish those two things, and light already begins to come. What God calls our good is not what we call our happiness. Happiness for us is success, health, glory, fortune, the affection of mankind, pleasure; in the sight of God the good for us is holiness, is salvation. God does not to-day attach happiness to faith, and success to piety; if He did so, we should obey Him in order to be happy, and God would be served only by mercenaries. But it is true only in appearance that all men suffer alike. Question believers, and they will tell you that in the severest trials they have discovered signs of the Divine goodness, Now, even when outwardly all seems to be identical in the life of him who loves God and of him who does not, we must admit that events will work upon men according to the mind with which they are accepted. Behold in nature those forces which frighten us by their power of destructiveness. In the plant, beneath a lovely flower, is a subtle poison; in the atmosphere is the hurricane and the electricity. Put the savage in presence of those forces, he will find only suffering and death. But the scientist extracts that poison, and finds in it a remedy for his ills; to the breath of the wind he spreads the sails of his mills or of his ships; he lays hold of the lightning, and upon an imperceptible thread cast into the depths of the ocean he commands it to carry his thoughts to the ends of the world. Well, this is a faithful picture of the manner in which the believing soul can turn to his good all the events of life, all the evils which overwhelm it. Here is failure, mourning, suffering alighting on a Christian soul. Well, you will see that soul seizing those terrible forces which might crush it under their strokes, humbling itself, praying, blessing, and drawing from what might be its death the secret of true greatness, of spiritual triumph and of holiness.
(E. Bersier, D.D.)
After having heard it all, this is the conclusion: Fear God, and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.
The Moral of it All
E. Johnson, M. A.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
There are times when every one of us is either constrained by sorrow, or invited by the hope of profit, to take stock of his recollections. We have all desired eagerly, we have all toiled; not one of us but has had his aspirations and his disappointments. Life has turned out, and will, we suppose, turn out differently from what we either hoped or found when we sallied forth upon its ways untried. The book is sympathetic with all who have lost their illusions; with all who watch the bright dreams die out one by one like the fairy lamps of some summer's festival. How often have we exclaimed with the Preacher, as the hollowness of each pretence of this most pretentious world has been exposed by our own trial: "This also is vanity!" But there is another side to the subject. Some things are real. Never does the author of this book speak of religion as if it were an illusion, or of God as if He were other than true. The spiritual part by which we are related to God and know God is our genuine self. It is because the soul wants truth that it discards so impatiently the counterfeits of truth that press upon its notice. If there were not a vital spark of worth in the soul it would never criticize so severely the mass of worthlessness which surrounds it. That, then, is our subject — the vanity of the world and the worth of religion, and each of these seen, and seen only, in contrast and foil to the other.
1. We may name three things on which the moralist writes the legend of vanity — human labour, human knowledge, human pleasure.
(1) One of his thoughts about labour is that it seems a fruitless fretting against the fixed forces of nature. "The earth abideth for ever." Suns arise and set; the wind shifts from quarter to quarter; the rivers flow to the sea, and the brooks flow to the rivers. There are times when we are oppressed with this thought, and it becomes unbearable. As one of our English noblemen, who had a mansion overlooking the beautiful valley of the Thames, said: "I cannot understand why people delight in the view of the river; there it is — flow, flow, flow, always the same!" How speedily the effect of man's toil vanishes from the face of Nature! There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of well-ordered gardens or cultivated field; yet how quickly does Nature, as if in defiance of man's effort at improvement, come rushing back with her weeds and wildness!
(2) Again, the contrast of human knowledge and wisdom with the sameness of human nature leads to the same reflection of disappointment. Increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow. The study of history brings to light a long series of passionate struggles after truth and good, which have incessantly to be begun anew.
(3) The Preacher turned with sickness of heart from the toil of knowledge, and betook himself to refined pleasures. The thought of death, levelling all distinctions, intruded itself upon him. The wise man is equalled in the earth at last with the fool. Life became odious to him because the work wrought under the sun was grievous to him; for all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
2. And now we come to "the conclusion of the whole matter." If this legend, "Vanity and vexation of spirit," is to be written upon the objects of human desire and delight, if the world sounds hollow wherever we touch it, where is reality to be found? The simple answer of the Preacher is, it is to be found in religion: "Fear God, and keep His commandments." God is real as the soul is real. He is, as describes Him, the Life of our life, the core of our hearts. God is that pure and perfect Being for alliance and communion with whom we long. And it is the light we have from Him and in Him which makes the world look so dark, the perception of His rightness which throws into painful contrast the crookedness of men's ways, and of His beauty which makes their wickedness so deformed. And our happiness must lie, for each one of us, in loyalty to Him, in the keeping of His laws, whether they be known to us through the study of Nature or of sacred Scriptures, or by attentive study of our own hearts and the oracular spirit of holiness, whose influence is felt therein. It is in weariness of the world that we fall hack upon the sweetness and truthfulness of pure religion for our refreshment and solace; it is when we have given up the conceit of being wiser than our forefathers, and the hope of setting crooked things straight, that we see distinctly the cultivation of our souls to be our main concern, and the only way to better the world is by reverently attending to our duty in wholeness and simplicity of heart. It is an ill thing for us if, when we have found out the hollowness of this bubble-like world, the trickiness and imposture of human nature, we say: "We will live like the rest, we will not take things seriously, we will pass on our way with a smile and a jest, trusting nothing, hoping nothing." It is only the presence of God that is of substantial and eternal good, that can console us for the vanity of earthly things, as the Preacher found so long ago.
(E. Johnson, M. A.)
The Moral of it All
E. Johnson, M. A.
Ecclesiastes 12:13
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
There are times when every one of us is either constrained by sorrow, or invited by the hope of profit, to take stock of his recollections. We have all desired eagerly, we have all toiled; not one of us but has had his aspirations and his disappointments. Life has turned out, and will, we suppose, turn out differently from what we either hoped or found when we sallied forth upon its ways untried. The book is sympathetic with all who have lost their illusions; with all who watch the bright dreams die out one by one like the fairy lamps of some summer's festival. How often have we exclaimed with the Preacher, as the hollowness of each pretence of this most pretentious world has been exposed by our own trial: "This also is vanity!" But there is another side to the subject. Some things are real. Never does the author of this book speak of religion as if it were an illusion, or of God as if He were other than true. The spiritual part by which we are related to God and know God is our genuine self. It is because the soul wants truth that it discards so impatiently the counterfeits of truth that press upon its notice. If there were not a vital spark of worth in the soul it would never criticize so severely the mass of worthlessness which surrounds it. That, then, is our subject — the vanity of the world and the worth of religion, and each of these seen, and seen only, in contrast and foil to the other.
1. We may name three things on which the moralist writes the legend of vanity — human labour, human knowledge, human pleasure.
(1) One of his thoughts about labour is that it seems a fruitless fretting against the fixed forces of nature. "The earth abideth for ever." Suns arise and set; the wind shifts from quarter to quarter; the rivers flow to the sea, and the brooks flow to the rivers. There are times when we are oppressed with this thought, and it becomes unbearable. As one of our English noblemen, who had a mansion overlooking the beautiful valley of the Thames, said: "I cannot understand why people delight in the view of the river; there it is — flow, flow, flow, always the same!" How speedily the effect of man's toil vanishes from the face of Nature! There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of well-ordered gardens or cultivated field; yet how quickly does Nature, as if in defiance of man's effort at improvement, come rushing back with her weeds and wildness!
(2) Again, the contrast of human knowledge and wisdom with the sameness of human nature leads to the same reflection of disappointment. Increase of knowledge means increase of sorrow. The study of history brings to light a long series of passionate struggles after truth and good, which have incessantly to be begun anew.
(3) The Preacher turned with sickness of heart from the toil of knowledge, and betook himself to refined pleasures. The thought of death, levelling all distinctions, intruded itself upon him. The wise man is equalled in the earth at last with the fool. Life became odious to him because the work wrought under the sun was grievous to him; for all was vanity and vexation of spirit.
2. And now we come to "the conclusion of the whole matter." If this legend, "Vanity and vexation of spirit," is to be written upon the objects of human desire and delight, if the world sounds hollow wherever we touch it, where is reality to be found? The simple answer of the Preacher is, it is to be found in religion: "Fear God, and keep His commandments." God is real as the soul is real. He is, as describes Him, the Life of our life, the core of our hearts. God is that pure and perfect Being for alliance and communion with whom we long. And it is the light we have from Him and in Him which makes the world look so dark, the perception of His rightness which throws into painful contrast the crookedness of men's ways, and of His beauty which makes their wickedness so deformed. And our happiness must lie, for each one of us, in loyalty to Him, in the keeping of His laws, whether they be known to us through the study of Nature or of sacred Scriptures, or by attentive study of our own hearts and the oracular spirit of holiness, whose influence is felt therein. It is in weariness of the world that we fall hack upon the sweetness and truthfulness of pure religion for our refreshment and solace; it is when we have given up the conceit of being wiser than our forefathers, and the hope of setting crooked things straight, that we see distinctly the cultivation of our souls to be our main concern, and the only way to better the world is by reverently attending to our duty in wholeness and simplicity of heart. It is an ill thing for us if, when we have found out the hollowness of this bubble-like world, the trickiness and imposture of human nature, we say: "We will live like the rest, we will not take things seriously, we will pass on our way with a smile and a jest, trusting nothing, hoping nothing." It is only the presence of God that is of substantial and eternal good, that can console us for the vanity of earthly things, as the Preacher found so long ago.
(E. Johnson, M. A.)
Eagle conveys the powers and messages of the spirit; it is man's connection to the divine because it flies higher than any other bird. ... If eagle has appeared, it bestows freedom and courage to look ahead. The eagle is symbolic of the importance of honesty and truthful principles.
In storm eagles spread its wings and uses current to soar to great heights
The Eagle does not fight the snake on the ground. It picks it up into the sky and changes the battle ground, and then it releases the snake into the sky. The snake has no stamina, no power and no balance in the air. It is useless, weak and vulnerable unlike on the ground where it is powerful wise and deadly.
Symbolism and Power
The eagle is the chief over all the winged creatures. Eagle conveys the powers and messages of the spirit; it is man's connection to the divine because it flies higher than any other bird. The eagle brings the message of renewed life because it is associated with the east winds - the direction of spring, dawn and rebirth.
If an individual has been going through a hard time, eagle not only signals a new beginning, but provides that person with the stamina and resilience to endure the difficulties. If eagle has appeared, it bestows freedom and courage to look ahead. The eagle is symbolic of the importance of honesty and truthful principles. Summon the eagle when you are about to embark on a challenge, a massive life change or a creative endeavor.
Eagle people are seen as visionaries, those who are seekers and who are willing to push the limits of self-discovery and personal freedom. The eagle person is a born leader and may become impatient with those who cannot fly as high or as fast. Despite the fact that eagle with hold aloof or retreat to the skies, people will naturally gravitate to them.
In storm eagles spread its wings and uses current to soar to great heights
The Eagle does not fight the snake on the ground. It picks it up into the sky and changes the battle ground, and then it releases the snake into the sky. The snake has no stamina, no power and no balance in the air. It is useless, weak and vulnerable unlike on the ground where it is powerful wise and deadly.
Symbolism and Power
The eagle is the chief over all the winged creatures. Eagle conveys the powers and messages of the spirit; it is man's connection to the divine because it flies higher than any other bird. The eagle brings the message of renewed life because it is associated with the east winds - the direction of spring, dawn and rebirth.
If an individual has been going through a hard time, eagle not only signals a new beginning, but provides that person with the stamina and resilience to endure the difficulties. If eagle has appeared, it bestows freedom and courage to look ahead. The eagle is symbolic of the importance of honesty and truthful principles. Summon the eagle when you are about to embark on a challenge, a massive life change or a creative endeavor.
Eagle people are seen as visionaries, those who are seekers and who are willing to push the limits of self-discovery and personal freedom. The eagle person is a born leader and may become impatient with those who cannot fly as high or as fast. Despite the fact that eagle with hold aloof or retreat to the skies, people will naturally gravitate to them.
God's Restraining Power
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Job 38:11
And said, Till now shall you come, but no further: and here shall your proud waves be stayed?
(New Year's Day.)
TEXT: JOB xxxviii.11. "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
THESE words are taken from a sublime discourse, which -- is put by the writer in the mouth of the Highest Himself, the Creator and Preserver of the world. In it He answers Job out of the whirlwind, when he had complained, though reverently and humbly, that the Lord did not allow men to find Him; that, moreover, He gave no account of His matters to them, and that therefore nothing remained for them but silently to fear Him. Then the Lord came forth, it is said, out of the whirlwind, and talked with Job about his want of understanding; and from this discourse the words of our text are taken. And when, on a day such as this, we look back on the past, on so many unexpected disasters, so many hopes left unfulfilled, wishes disappointed, complications, as the results of which the Lord brought about something totally different from what we had anticipated and hoped, not always, perhaps, out of mere human selfishness, but out of genuine love to what is good, and from wise desires for the common welfare -- when all this is gathered into one view before us, how ready are our thoughts to take the same direction as Job's! The Lord is not to be found out by men; we do not divine His counsel, either in our most aspiring hopes or our most moderate wishes. He renders no account to us; for as one year after another passes, none of them solves the problem of those that went before; His ways are ever unsearchable, and His thoughts beyond the comprehension of us poor children of men. But if the Lord had wished us to rest content in this state of apparent submission, He would not have answered Job out of the whirlwind, and -- which signifies still more -- His Son could not have said to us, "Ye are no longer servants, but friends, for ye know what your Lord doeth."
To this knowledge of the doings of the Lord we shall be helped by this sublime address, the kernel of whose whole contents is contained in the few words of our text. The Lord represents Himself, throughout this discourse, as He who has called into being and who sustains by His almighty word all things that are, and has also appointed to everything in the world its measure and rule; nothing can hold back from obeying His mighty word, nor may any thing go beyond what He commands it. "Hitherto, . . . and no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!"
Let us, then, consider more closely how the spirit and meaning of all the Divine counsels, the great secret of the Divine government of the world, is contained in this fact, that God the Lord has appointed to all things their fixed and definite limits. And in connection with this day, let us see, first, how we find in this truth our best comfort in turning our eyes from the past into the future; and, secondly, how these words also contain for us the most sacred and precious example, the great law, according to which we are to regulate our whole life in the service of God.
I. A great part of the discourse which is ascribed to God the Lord in this ancient and sacred book is occupied with the works of Nature, and sets forth how, even in the natural creation, God has appointed all things their measure. As when the world came into being, and took shape at His word, He set free the infinite variety of forces by whose active agency all things consist, He also held them in check. Each of those forces is in itself just as proud and ungovernable an agent as that element to which the words of our text directly refer, and, tends to go on extending in all directions, and to overwhelm everything, far and wide. But the Lord calls forth an opposing force, and checks the one by means of the other. In this way, at the creation, He separated and united all things; thus He separated the light from the darkness, while He caused to remain, in fixed and definite degrees, the beneficent alternation of day and night; thus He separated the solid land from the waters, and yet, by means of the appointed proportion between them, each supports, preserves, and fertilizes the other.
But looking at the natural world as it lies before us in these days, we know even by our own eyesight, and still more from the well-grounded and harmonious testimony of those who have seriously and continuously occupied themselves in studying those natural facts, that there are to be found manifold traces, both on the surface and in the depths of the earth, of great and repeated disturbances. The hidden subterraneous fire has cast up vast masses from below, devastating and transforming the face of Nature; the sea, which the Lord seemed to have gathered together and shut up within impassable barriers, has yet often over flowed; but only thus, by the repeated mingling and dividing of the solid and the fluid, could the earth gain that perfect proportion by which it becomes capable of supporting and nourishing the whole mass of infinitely diversified life that moves upon it.
And even yet, though all these natural forces seem partly to be brought into equilibrium through the often recurring alternation of agitation and repose, and partly to be turned into other directions and controlled in various ways by human intelligence, the Lord sometimes allows them -- though mostly in small and isolated instances -- to overpass their ordinary limits, so that men again become afraid that this force or that might work its way to uncontrollable power, and sweep away all the rest. Often still the fires of the abyss, released from their bonds, burst forth into the air, and cover the ground with flaming death; the waters still often pour down in torrents from above, and far over flow their accustomed shores, destroying the works of men, and laying waste great tracts of the laboriously cultivated land; but the Lord, in His own time, extinguishes the fire, and causes the waters to go down, and man gathers again the spoil they have left; and everywhere it is God who determines, and gradually develops more and more clearly and exactly, the right proportions; and everywhere we see arise out of the seeming destruction a new and better order of things. But where one natural force seems to rise uncontrollable after having been confined, and in its unmeasured power threatens the ruin of all that is calm and peaceful, the presence of the Eternal is more hidden from us; just as the prophet did not find Him in the whirlwind and in the fire. Our predominant impression at such times is that of a force of Nature which has, as it were, broken loose; and we are overpowered by a sense of our own helplessness, and of the insignificance of man in presence of those universal powers. But when the floodgates of heaven or the doors of the lower world are closed, when the destroying tempests are stilled, and that which had poured forth without control returns to the limits within which it can subsist alongside of all other forces, then we perceive the Lord; then He makes Himself known to us, where order arises and is exercised, where a kindly and benignant rule prevails. And when we have thus grasped the idea that it was the Lord who spoke, saying, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed," then we begin also to reflect that the two aspects of Nature are closely connected, and we no longer see in that apparent destruction a revolted power of mere Nature, but the governing will of Him who commanded that the waves should so far overflow, in order that the just proportions should be obtained for each new step in the order of things.
But all natural things are really for us either a feeble shadow of spiritual things or a specially significant emblem of them. Let us therefore consider in particular that part of His creation into which the Lord breathed the breath of life; let us consider man, whom He formed into a living soul. Oh! here it is above all, my friends, that we have so often to exclaim that the ways of the Lord are unsearchable and His thoughts past finding out. Those who, by natural relationship, are meant to be bound together in love, are severed by pride and selfish passion; those who should be of one heart, often scorn even the most superficial connection; those who should be serving each other as equals having mutual interests, aim only at lording it over others. Wild passions break out and distract men's minds, so that there is an end to all rule and unity, not only for each individual but even for society as a whole. Thus in this department also we see Nature, after being brought into some degree of order, ready to destroy itself and to perish in confusion. And it is not always self-interest alone that kindles this fire, nor is the fire itself always a strife only over the possession of earthly things. This state of things occurs very specially when opposite views are taken in consulting and arranging about ordinary affairs; or as to the deepest sources of the public and common weal and woe; or the most efficient means, in difficult given circumstances, for promoting one object and discouraging another. And when such views are no longer confined to discussion, but each party, believing himself obliged to take precautions against the damage that might result from the other view, sets him self to oppose his antagonist by force, then what rumpus disorders take place in human affairs! How eagerly do men toil in their fury, believing that they are only destroying in order to build up what is fairer, but only building what must in its turn be overthrown. What a horrible game is then carried on with this as its watchword, that it is better for a few to perish, and so the mass be preserved, than that all should be corrupted through weakly sparing some infected members! and into what an abyss of ruin do great portions of our race sometimes plunge in this manner! But be it arrogant self-seeking and criminal ambition, or wild passions and burning rage; be it sensual lusts and ignoble pleasures, or only the man's better will, aiming at what is really good, but misguided, and so inflamed into the resemblance of those evil motives; sooner or later a point is reached at which the Lord says, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed." If men are no longer willing to derive their knowledge of sin from the law, God allows all the horrors of lawlessness to break loose, that they may see what is hidden in their hearts. But yet the Lord does not permit the reign of reason and morality to be utterly subverted. He has laid their foundations in human nature with a power that can never be entirely overcome. So if the wild flood has overflowed those shores, God brings man back to his senses, matured by sorrowful experiences; if there have been fierce outbreaks of hatred, the counsel of the Lord brings about a heartfelt love, made stronger by sufferings endured in common.
But let us turn our eyes from this chequered and tumultuous scene of outward acts and circumstances, and look into the more silent depths of the human soul. Think of a reflecting man who studies the mysteries of man's mind, and seeks to understand the internal nature of the world in which he lives, and to search out the laws according to which everything in it goes on. In thus penetrating ever more deeply into his own nature and into the essential nature of all things, he may soon become aware how much nobler a pursuit such investigations are than those in which the greater number of our brethren, constrained by the cares of daily life, are obliged to toil. But if he then begins to imagine that they are too noble to be mixed up in any degree with common life, and therefore more and more withdraws from it, then the balance of the soul and of life is in danger. Actual life appears to him petty, or even contemptible, in comparison with the ideals with which his mind is occupied; then, in a very different spirit from the humility of those in this book of Job, who, in their debates and interchange of thought, sought to vindicate God's hiding of Himself, he imagines that he has fathomed the mystery of the world and its laws; nay, that even the Highest Himself is not hidden from him, but that he stands within that light which is inaccessible to all others. Thus he builds for himself a temple of pride and sets himself up in it as the object of worship. And from this temple flows forth an icy stream of loveless and unbelieving sophistry, chilling to death the tender life of the spirit, and often even making the wonderful life-giving fountains of the Divine word for long periods unavailable to many because of its sweeping flood. But this flood also can only rage for its appointed time; then, to those spiritual elements that have burst their bonds, the voice of the Lord calls, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed." New problems arise in the mysteries of Nature as well as in the human mind, and bring to nought the premature self-complacency of the wise of this world, who thought they had grasped and fathomed everything: they seek in vain the key to the riddle, and are obliged to acknowledge that they have unwisely spoken about what they did not understand, that which concerns them most nearly becoming indeed a witness to their ignorance. And when this spell of self-conceit is dissolved, then the killing frost also begins to yield, and a more genial atmosphere is spread over the spiritual life. That life absorbs only the more eagerly all the renewing and refreshment of childlike confidence; and the spirits that had grown afraid to trust accept all the more cordially the wholesome mysteries of faith, the longer they have been deprived of these comforts. And so these proud waves of the human mind not only subside, but leave a permanent blessing be hind them, and thus God appoints measure and limits to everything that seems to rise against His rule, and even to that which appeared to intend to take heaven by violence.
But however comforting are the prospects for the future which the knowledge of these truths opens to us, we have one point more to consider in this respect; that is, the new creation of God which has only taken shape since the Word was made flesh, and appeared to us in the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. In this new creation which the Spirit of God establishes in the hearts of men, and from which we more and more expect, as time goes on, a new heaven and a new earth to result, it might be supposed that all would go on within right limits, and that the new earth would be distinguished mainly by this, that it should never again be the scene of ruin and devastation, though only in appearance; but that everything should progress in regular and successful order. But unhappily we nowhere see this. The praise of never swerving from the fairest and most perfect rule, and of maintaining the most perfect harmony of character, belongs exclusively to One, after whose measure we, indeed, are to become a perfect man, but only taken as a whole; and from whom, according to the measure that pleases Him, each of us, as a portion of the whole, receives manifold but variously diversified gifts of the Spirit, which manifest themselves in different ways according to differences of time and situation as well as of Nature. And already in the earliest times, when it was a still easier thing for all Christendom to agree, did there not arise under the very eyes of the apostles, as we see from Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, an emulous contention as to those separate gifts, which presents to us an idea of confusion, in the single member separating itself from the body and wishing to be something by itself, as if it could do with out the rest. That was not the effect of the Spirit's guidance, it was the impulse of human nature that did not yet understand itself in these higher circumstances, and which in newly receiving the gifts of the Spirit, wished to break away from obedience to His control. God allowed this to occur that it might be seen how much this mysterious bond still needed to be strengthened, and then the authoritative voice of the apostle interposed, reconciling and laying down rules. And when the Spirit of God was no longer confined to the limits of the Jewish nation, but brought heathen also to the knowledge of the truth in Christ, and the Church rejoiced that out of every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him, to be brought to the knowledge of the Gospel; how soon was that first joy disturbed by hot contentions that threatened to rend the Church of God even in its earliest infancy! But through the wisdom of the apostles and the earnestness and love of the primitive Church, God spoke a calming word of peace, and the waves stopped short at threatening, and were not permitted to overflow. And when the Divine word in its rapid course laid hold of widely different peoples, and the diversity of tongues refused to be brought into harmony; when the variety of dispositions in the Church of God was always becoming greater, and each one had something different to fear as being injurious to the new life in him, as well as some point in the doctrines of salvation that he felt peculiarly bound to maintain; when, as the result of this, doctrine was presented in various lights and the Christian life assumed various forms, according to the riches of the Divine wisdom, which provided that the Gospel should be all things to all men so that by any means some might be gained; how very far were the minds of men from recognising and entering into the purpose of this rich wisdom! What strife and misunderstandings arose! and how quickly in this sacred territory of the Christian Church and of the Divine Word sprang up all the overbearing arrogance of a fancied exclusive knowledge, all passionate desire to persecute and destroy, by which means it is falsely imagined that social relations are best protected, and the fruits of human wisdom most securely preserved and extended! It was difficult to believe that there yet lay in the inmost hearts of the excited disputants, as the cause of all this, a true zeal for the kingdom of God. These sad scenes of devastation with in the Lord's vineyard have indeed always been the most dreadful of all the manifestations of human nature broken loose from restraint. The Most High, in permitting them, wished to appoint a sign by which Christians might discern in how small a degree that word of Christ, "My kingdom is not of this world," had yet become spirit and life in their hearts. Often has the bloody sign been repeated, but ever again came the command of the Lord, "No further! "to those waves also; and so strife was again turned into peace, estranged hearts were again bound together, and always new light and life were gained. But now? Has not a permanent separation taken place since the time when a part of Christendom came to the conclusion in regard to all the teaching that still inculcates the legal spirit of the Old Testament, making much of outward ceremonial and never allowing men to feel secure; in regard to all the worship that is borrowed from the glittering pomp of sensuous paganism, and everything that compromises the equality of all believers under the one Master -- that these are nothing but a defiling of our holy temple? And what a distracted condition was that of the Christian world so long as the warfare on this matter went on! -- a warfare that was only ended by a schism which still continues, and makes itself from time to time more sharply felt; and the end of which we cannot forecast! Yet even in this case the Lord has spoken the same word of power, "One Lord, one Spirit, one baptism, one God and Father of us all." At this watchword of the apostle, for unity in the Spirit by the bond of peace, a halt was bound to be made; this barrier could not be forced; before it even those waves of strife were compelled to subside.
Oh, what comfort for the future is warranted to us by such a retrospect! what comfort both in view of that which lies directly before us, and for the more distant future! All the forces that have ever been roused to strife and contention against each other, not only still exist among men, but are still far from being bound in an indissoluble union. On the contrary, as the summit of perfection has in no respect been reached, the same occasions still present themselves from time to time, now for one force, now for another, to break out, and with destructive power to overpass their boundaries, so that the Lord must again draw them within their lines, and prescribe bounds and limits. And even in the Church of Christ -- nay, within the borders of our own Church -- the thing that has been still is. Vanity still stirs up rivalry in connection with men's different gifts; and the great diversity of views and opinions, instead of throwing increasing light on each, and helping men towards the truth in mutual love, still stimulates them to passionate contention, through their narrow and partial reliance on their own investigations on the one side, or the traditions of the elders on the other. Be it so! Even with these things in prospect we will look forward cheerfully to the future. The Lord has hitherto appointed limits in the natural world; and in the time to come that world will not deviate from His rule, according to which temporary disturbances are ever becoming of less significance. He has hitherto set limits to every outbreak of human passions; to all the complications that have arisen from men's conflicting dispositions and wishes, up to the present time; He has thrown over the kingdom of grace the defence that He promised to Him whom He set on His right hand; and He will do so still in the future. And this is not all. Out of every apparent convulsion Nature has come forth into more fixed order, and more receptive to the formative influences of man. All the often-recurring ruptures and wars have brought the relations of the nations to each other, as well as the internal relations of each people, into such a form, that their brotherly connection comes out more distinctly, and peace and concord are gaining a firmer footing and more enduring power. After every display of the overweening extravagances of the human mind, the chasm between what is evolved out of its own depths, and what is produced in devoutly exercised spirits by the power of the divine Word, is gradually becoming less. Through all the sufferings of the Christian Church, she has fought her way to a blessed liberation from the bondage of human authority, and to a clearer light of truth. And so it will be with all the troubles that may be before us in the future. God the Lord will set bounds and limits to them with the same result as before, and not without an equal blessing; and we may indulge the special hope that the Church of God, although passing through many forms of strife and division, will, as the salt of the earth, be ever attaining a closer likeness to the perfection of Him in whom, as the express image of God, there can be nothing discordant, but all is holy unity and blessed peace.
II. But we are to find in the consideration of this truth, not only our comfort for the future, but our direction and the law of our life, for this and for every year which the Lord is still pleased in His grace to grant us on earth.
But we need to be on our guard in this matter against two forms of error. Men are often inclined, with an only too easy indifference, to accept it as a settled thing that the ways of the Most High are unsearchable. Out of this easy acquiescence the Lord thundered Job by the power of His sublime discourse. When men's views on this point are in some degree corrected, and they allow themselves to be persuaded that though they cannot understand God's doings in detail, or all at once -- in which sense we may say everything is unsearchable to us -- yet that at least in the great, general course of human affairs, they do see, though but as in a glass darkly, something of the beneficent rule and glorious wisdom of the Most High, in connection with all the struggles and commotions in this world; when this point is reached, most men are apt to fall into error, which takes with some the form of a culpable carelessness in regard to their own conduct; with others, that of an entirely passive expectation of coining events.
The latter class, when they see excess and overbearing pride bearing sway in the circle in which they move, and outbreaks of hostile and excited passions -- though they are not without anxiety and concern as to how far the evil may have power to go, and all that may be ruined or retarded by it -- yet console themselves with the thought that the Lord holds the reins over all, and directs in such a way that they may hold themselves entirely aloof, and regard themselves as not at all called on to co-operate in those divine plans. But for this comforting thought they would probably have taken some action, but now they wish to be mere spectators of what the Lord may bring about, as if in regard to human things, He carried out His purposes otherwise than by means of human instruments. The former class are persons who, if they believed that human instrumentality alone came into play, would perhaps often be alarmed at the manner in which they yield to their depraved inclinations; but they cherish the thought that the Lord Himself appoints bounds and limits, and restores order after confusion; and therefore they hold themselves no longer bound to feel any anxiety about the consequences of their acts, but think that, for their part, they can all the more readily follow, without measure or rule, the desires of their own mind. For, according to their theory, even though they could do no otherwise than obey the impulse of inward inclination and external necessity, the Most High will no doubt see to it that the consequences are neither more nor less than what He has determined. But what can we call this but a criminal indifference as to whether the will of God is to be done through us with our own will, or against it? And yet this is just what makes the essential difference between those who are God's servants and friends, and those who are only His slaves -- involuntary and unconscious instruments. What can we call it but criminal indifference as to whether the things we desire belong to what God will establish and maintain, or to what He can only suppress and destroy? And yet in the one case we belong, by our will, to the kingdom of God; in the other case, to the world.
And to return to that class of persons who -- while recognising God as the upholder and mover of all, who out of everything can bring good -- are yet pleased to wait in slothful inaction for what may happen, without caring to take a share in His work -- have they not cause to charge themselves with knowing God and seeing Him, only apart from themselves?
So let it never be with us! -- us who claim to be not far from God, but in Him to live and move and have our being; not so with us, who have not merely a God working apart from us, but to whom Christ has promised to come, and with the Father take up His abode in our hearts! And if it is this very Father in heaven who appoints to everything its just limits and appropriate law, and if He has given us of His Spirit, manifestly this cannot but have the effect of leading us also to endeavour to maintain and restore limits and law everywhere. First, in the kingdom of Nature; for when, in the beginning, the Most High made over the earth, with all that breathes and moves on it, to the first parents of our race, it was His design that man should subdue it, and have dominion over it. Thus we ourselves are to be the standard of all earthly things; their relation to us is to be brought out in all circumstances, and is to be the true law of their being, and to this we are to direct our efforts. And if the Lord should again, for the moment, set free the forces of Nature from this law which is ordinarily in operation, so that they overpass the bounds appointed to them, and lay in ruins, more or less of the works of men, then what is the only wise and fitting course? Not, surely, to sit calmly waiting to see what the issue may be; still less to allow ourselves foolishly to be seduced into irregularity and strife, throwing it over on the Lord to restore, as He may please, the old state of things out of the new disorders. No; all such events should be a new call to us to bring our measure and rule to bear more powerfully on external Nature, to establish more and more the dominion of mind over it, and to impress on it ever more deeply the stamp of that dominion; in short, to subdue it more and more, by every means, under the spiritual power of man, whom the Most High Himself has appointed as its ruler. The more we unite our powers on every such occasion, in this new year; the more faithfully we support each other in this work, each one with the gift that he has received, whether it be clear insight into affairs, or power over minds, or abundance of outward means; so much the more shall we glorify the Name of the Most High, by making progress in fulfilling the great vocation to which He has called us.
But this is no doubt only the outside view of the subject, that to which the better educated part of the community, who decide the action of the rest, are naturally prompted by the well-understood motive of personal advantage, or the most careful calculation as to the best means of securing what is required by their social life, which is constantly becoming more artificial and complex, as well as mutually dependent. Much more should we be concerned to keep rule and order in the spiritual world, and generally where man has to do with man. Nowhere should we be able to look on idly at men wandering away into error. Wherever the restless excitement and inflamed passions of the human soul have broken out in fury; where selfishness and lust of power have engaged in conflict with the right and good, and are reaching the point of tyranny; there we are to interpose: wherever arrogance and violence work hand in hand with cowardice and servility, in the most mischievous alliance that can be formed against right and truth, we must, as a matter of course, come openly and boldly for ward. Only we are to do this, not at all in the way of bringing to bear a force equally lawless and out of bounds, though of an opposite kind; but in this way, that by our whole life, by our opinions and modes of action, we really and truly represent law and order. And not only so: the spirit of order, that is a vital principle in us, should make us quick to detect the very first indications of the approach of a condition of things that in its consummation annihilates safe boundaries, and threatens to endanger and destroy all that promotes and preserves social life. But even without such premonitions, and without a definite purpose on our part, every one of us ought, in the circle of his work and of his social relations, so to contribute to the maintaining and strengthening of rule and order, that efforts in the opposite direction are restrained beforehand. Well for that community -- and for such a community alone -- in every rank of which there is a goodly number of those who, by their manner of life and the whole tone of their daily conduct, serve as a mighty voice of God, sounding out on every side the cry, "Hitherto and no further: here shall the proud waves be broken!"
But, my friends, if we are in earnest in this matter -- and what could more nearly concern us on such a day as this? -- if we really long that in each new year of our lives these principles should come more powerfully into action, we must guard with special care against what happens only too easily, allowing ourselves to be carried away either by the violent or the more insidious evil ways of men; and so, perhaps with the best inte
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Job 38:11
And said, Till now shall you come, but no further: and here shall your proud waves be stayed?
(New Year's Day.)
TEXT: JOB xxxviii.11. "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed."
THESE words are taken from a sublime discourse, which -- is put by the writer in the mouth of the Highest Himself, the Creator and Preserver of the world. In it He answers Job out of the whirlwind, when he had complained, though reverently and humbly, that the Lord did not allow men to find Him; that, moreover, He gave no account of His matters to them, and that therefore nothing remained for them but silently to fear Him. Then the Lord came forth, it is said, out of the whirlwind, and talked with Job about his want of understanding; and from this discourse the words of our text are taken. And when, on a day such as this, we look back on the past, on so many unexpected disasters, so many hopes left unfulfilled, wishes disappointed, complications, as the results of which the Lord brought about something totally different from what we had anticipated and hoped, not always, perhaps, out of mere human selfishness, but out of genuine love to what is good, and from wise desires for the common welfare -- when all this is gathered into one view before us, how ready are our thoughts to take the same direction as Job's! The Lord is not to be found out by men; we do not divine His counsel, either in our most aspiring hopes or our most moderate wishes. He renders no account to us; for as one year after another passes, none of them solves the problem of those that went before; His ways are ever unsearchable, and His thoughts beyond the comprehension of us poor children of men. But if the Lord had wished us to rest content in this state of apparent submission, He would not have answered Job out of the whirlwind, and -- which signifies still more -- His Son could not have said to us, "Ye are no longer servants, but friends, for ye know what your Lord doeth."
To this knowledge of the doings of the Lord we shall be helped by this sublime address, the kernel of whose whole contents is contained in the few words of our text. The Lord represents Himself, throughout this discourse, as He who has called into being and who sustains by His almighty word all things that are, and has also appointed to everything in the world its measure and rule; nothing can hold back from obeying His mighty word, nor may any thing go beyond what He commands it. "Hitherto, . . . and no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed!"
Let us, then, consider more closely how the spirit and meaning of all the Divine counsels, the great secret of the Divine government of the world, is contained in this fact, that God the Lord has appointed to all things their fixed and definite limits. And in connection with this day, let us see, first, how we find in this truth our best comfort in turning our eyes from the past into the future; and, secondly, how these words also contain for us the most sacred and precious example, the great law, according to which we are to regulate our whole life in the service of God.
I. A great part of the discourse which is ascribed to God the Lord in this ancient and sacred book is occupied with the works of Nature, and sets forth how, even in the natural creation, God has appointed all things their measure. As when the world came into being, and took shape at His word, He set free the infinite variety of forces by whose active agency all things consist, He also held them in check. Each of those forces is in itself just as proud and ungovernable an agent as that element to which the words of our text directly refer, and, tends to go on extending in all directions, and to overwhelm everything, far and wide. But the Lord calls forth an opposing force, and checks the one by means of the other. In this way, at the creation, He separated and united all things; thus He separated the light from the darkness, while He caused to remain, in fixed and definite degrees, the beneficent alternation of day and night; thus He separated the solid land from the waters, and yet, by means of the appointed proportion between them, each supports, preserves, and fertilizes the other.
But looking at the natural world as it lies before us in these days, we know even by our own eyesight, and still more from the well-grounded and harmonious testimony of those who have seriously and continuously occupied themselves in studying those natural facts, that there are to be found manifold traces, both on the surface and in the depths of the earth, of great and repeated disturbances. The hidden subterraneous fire has cast up vast masses from below, devastating and transforming the face of Nature; the sea, which the Lord seemed to have gathered together and shut up within impassable barriers, has yet often over flowed; but only thus, by the repeated mingling and dividing of the solid and the fluid, could the earth gain that perfect proportion by which it becomes capable of supporting and nourishing the whole mass of infinitely diversified life that moves upon it.
And even yet, though all these natural forces seem partly to be brought into equilibrium through the often recurring alternation of agitation and repose, and partly to be turned into other directions and controlled in various ways by human intelligence, the Lord sometimes allows them -- though mostly in small and isolated instances -- to overpass their ordinary limits, so that men again become afraid that this force or that might work its way to uncontrollable power, and sweep away all the rest. Often still the fires of the abyss, released from their bonds, burst forth into the air, and cover the ground with flaming death; the waters still often pour down in torrents from above, and far over flow their accustomed shores, destroying the works of men, and laying waste great tracts of the laboriously cultivated land; but the Lord, in His own time, extinguishes the fire, and causes the waters to go down, and man gathers again the spoil they have left; and everywhere it is God who determines, and gradually develops more and more clearly and exactly, the right proportions; and everywhere we see arise out of the seeming destruction a new and better order of things. But where one natural force seems to rise uncontrollable after having been confined, and in its unmeasured power threatens the ruin of all that is calm and peaceful, the presence of the Eternal is more hidden from us; just as the prophet did not find Him in the whirlwind and in the fire. Our predominant impression at such times is that of a force of Nature which has, as it were, broken loose; and we are overpowered by a sense of our own helplessness, and of the insignificance of man in presence of those universal powers. But when the floodgates of heaven or the doors of the lower world are closed, when the destroying tempests are stilled, and that which had poured forth without control returns to the limits within which it can subsist alongside of all other forces, then we perceive the Lord; then He makes Himself known to us, where order arises and is exercised, where a kindly and benignant rule prevails. And when we have thus grasped the idea that it was the Lord who spoke, saying, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed," then we begin also to reflect that the two aspects of Nature are closely connected, and we no longer see in that apparent destruction a revolted power of mere Nature, but the governing will of Him who commanded that the waves should so far overflow, in order that the just proportions should be obtained for each new step in the order of things.
But all natural things are really for us either a feeble shadow of spiritual things or a specially significant emblem of them. Let us therefore consider in particular that part of His creation into which the Lord breathed the breath of life; let us consider man, whom He formed into a living soul. Oh! here it is above all, my friends, that we have so often to exclaim that the ways of the Lord are unsearchable and His thoughts past finding out. Those who, by natural relationship, are meant to be bound together in love, are severed by pride and selfish passion; those who should be of one heart, often scorn even the most superficial connection; those who should be serving each other as equals having mutual interests, aim only at lording it over others. Wild passions break out and distract men's minds, so that there is an end to all rule and unity, not only for each individual but even for society as a whole. Thus in this department also we see Nature, after being brought into some degree of order, ready to destroy itself and to perish in confusion. And it is not always self-interest alone that kindles this fire, nor is the fire itself always a strife only over the possession of earthly things. This state of things occurs very specially when opposite views are taken in consulting and arranging about ordinary affairs; or as to the deepest sources of the public and common weal and woe; or the most efficient means, in difficult given circumstances, for promoting one object and discouraging another. And when such views are no longer confined to discussion, but each party, believing himself obliged to take precautions against the damage that might result from the other view, sets him self to oppose his antagonist by force, then what rumpus disorders take place in human affairs! How eagerly do men toil in their fury, believing that they are only destroying in order to build up what is fairer, but only building what must in its turn be overthrown. What a horrible game is then carried on with this as its watchword, that it is better for a few to perish, and so the mass be preserved, than that all should be corrupted through weakly sparing some infected members! and into what an abyss of ruin do great portions of our race sometimes plunge in this manner! But be it arrogant self-seeking and criminal ambition, or wild passions and burning rage; be it sensual lusts and ignoble pleasures, or only the man's better will, aiming at what is really good, but misguided, and so inflamed into the resemblance of those evil motives; sooner or later a point is reached at which the Lord says, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed." If men are no longer willing to derive their knowledge of sin from the law, God allows all the horrors of lawlessness to break loose, that they may see what is hidden in their hearts. But yet the Lord does not permit the reign of reason and morality to be utterly subverted. He has laid their foundations in human nature with a power that can never be entirely overcome. So if the wild flood has overflowed those shores, God brings man back to his senses, matured by sorrowful experiences; if there have been fierce outbreaks of hatred, the counsel of the Lord brings about a heartfelt love, made stronger by sufferings endured in common.
But let us turn our eyes from this chequered and tumultuous scene of outward acts and circumstances, and look into the more silent depths of the human soul. Think of a reflecting man who studies the mysteries of man's mind, and seeks to understand the internal nature of the world in which he lives, and to search out the laws according to which everything in it goes on. In thus penetrating ever more deeply into his own nature and into the essential nature of all things, he may soon become aware how much nobler a pursuit such investigations are than those in which the greater number of our brethren, constrained by the cares of daily life, are obliged to toil. But if he then begins to imagine that they are too noble to be mixed up in any degree with common life, and therefore more and more withdraws from it, then the balance of the soul and of life is in danger. Actual life appears to him petty, or even contemptible, in comparison with the ideals with which his mind is occupied; then, in a very different spirit from the humility of those in this book of Job, who, in their debates and interchange of thought, sought to vindicate God's hiding of Himself, he imagines that he has fathomed the mystery of the world and its laws; nay, that even the Highest Himself is not hidden from him, but that he stands within that light which is inaccessible to all others. Thus he builds for himself a temple of pride and sets himself up in it as the object of worship. And from this temple flows forth an icy stream of loveless and unbelieving sophistry, chilling to death the tender life of the spirit, and often even making the wonderful life-giving fountains of the Divine word for long periods unavailable to many because of its sweeping flood. But this flood also can only rage for its appointed time; then, to those spiritual elements that have burst their bonds, the voice of the Lord calls, "Hitherto, and no further: here shall thy proud waves be stayed." New problems arise in the mysteries of Nature as well as in the human mind, and bring to nought the premature self-complacency of the wise of this world, who thought they had grasped and fathomed everything: they seek in vain the key to the riddle, and are obliged to acknowledge that they have unwisely spoken about what they did not understand, that which concerns them most nearly becoming indeed a witness to their ignorance. And when this spell of self-conceit is dissolved, then the killing frost also begins to yield, and a more genial atmosphere is spread over the spiritual life. That life absorbs only the more eagerly all the renewing and refreshment of childlike confidence; and the spirits that had grown afraid to trust accept all the more cordially the wholesome mysteries of faith, the longer they have been deprived of these comforts. And so these proud waves of the human mind not only subside, but leave a permanent blessing be hind them, and thus God appoints measure and limits to everything that seems to rise against His rule, and even to that which appeared to intend to take heaven by violence.
But however comforting are the prospects for the future which the knowledge of these truths opens to us, we have one point more to consider in this respect; that is, the new creation of God which has only taken shape since the Word was made flesh, and appeared to us in the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. In this new creation which the Spirit of God establishes in the hearts of men, and from which we more and more expect, as time goes on, a new heaven and a new earth to result, it might be supposed that all would go on within right limits, and that the new earth would be distinguished mainly by this, that it should never again be the scene of ruin and devastation, though only in appearance; but that everything should progress in regular and successful order. But unhappily we nowhere see this. The praise of never swerving from the fairest and most perfect rule, and of maintaining the most perfect harmony of character, belongs exclusively to One, after whose measure we, indeed, are to become a perfect man, but only taken as a whole; and from whom, according to the measure that pleases Him, each of us, as a portion of the whole, receives manifold but variously diversified gifts of the Spirit, which manifest themselves in different ways according to differences of time and situation as well as of Nature. And already in the earliest times, when it was a still easier thing for all Christendom to agree, did there not arise under the very eyes of the apostles, as we see from Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, an emulous contention as to those separate gifts, which presents to us an idea of confusion, in the single member separating itself from the body and wishing to be something by itself, as if it could do with out the rest. That was not the effect of the Spirit's guidance, it was the impulse of human nature that did not yet understand itself in these higher circumstances, and which in newly receiving the gifts of the Spirit, wished to break away from obedience to His control. God allowed this to occur that it might be seen how much this mysterious bond still needed to be strengthened, and then the authoritative voice of the apostle interposed, reconciling and laying down rules. And when the Spirit of God was no longer confined to the limits of the Jewish nation, but brought heathen also to the knowledge of the truth in Christ, and the Church rejoiced that out of every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him, to be brought to the knowledge of the Gospel; how soon was that first joy disturbed by hot contentions that threatened to rend the Church of God even in its earliest infancy! But through the wisdom of the apostles and the earnestness and love of the primitive Church, God spoke a calming word of peace, and the waves stopped short at threatening, and were not permitted to overflow. And when the Divine word in its rapid course laid hold of widely different peoples, and the diversity of tongues refused to be brought into harmony; when the variety of dispositions in the Church of God was always becoming greater, and each one had something different to fear as being injurious to the new life in him, as well as some point in the doctrines of salvation that he felt peculiarly bound to maintain; when, as the result of this, doctrine was presented in various lights and the Christian life assumed various forms, according to the riches of the Divine wisdom, which provided that the Gospel should be all things to all men so that by any means some might be gained; how very far were the minds of men from recognising and entering into the purpose of this rich wisdom! What strife and misunderstandings arose! and how quickly in this sacred territory of the Christian Church and of the Divine Word sprang up all the overbearing arrogance of a fancied exclusive knowledge, all passionate desire to persecute and destroy, by which means it is falsely imagined that social relations are best protected, and the fruits of human wisdom most securely preserved and extended! It was difficult to believe that there yet lay in the inmost hearts of the excited disputants, as the cause of all this, a true zeal for the kingdom of God. These sad scenes of devastation with in the Lord's vineyard have indeed always been the most dreadful of all the manifestations of human nature broken loose from restraint. The Most High, in permitting them, wished to appoint a sign by which Christians might discern in how small a degree that word of Christ, "My kingdom is not of this world," had yet become spirit and life in their hearts. Often has the bloody sign been repeated, but ever again came the command of the Lord, "No further! "to those waves also; and so strife was again turned into peace, estranged hearts were again bound together, and always new light and life were gained. But now? Has not a permanent separation taken place since the time when a part of Christendom came to the conclusion in regard to all the teaching that still inculcates the legal spirit of the Old Testament, making much of outward ceremonial and never allowing men to feel secure; in regard to all the worship that is borrowed from the glittering pomp of sensuous paganism, and everything that compromises the equality of all believers under the one Master -- that these are nothing but a defiling of our holy temple? And what a distracted condition was that of the Christian world so long as the warfare on this matter went on! -- a warfare that was only ended by a schism which still continues, and makes itself from time to time more sharply felt; and the end of which we cannot forecast! Yet even in this case the Lord has spoken the same word of power, "One Lord, one Spirit, one baptism, one God and Father of us all." At this watchword of the apostle, for unity in the Spirit by the bond of peace, a halt was bound to be made; this barrier could not be forced; before it even those waves of strife were compelled to subside.
Oh, what comfort for the future is warranted to us by such a retrospect! what comfort both in view of that which lies directly before us, and for the more distant future! All the forces that have ever been roused to strife and contention against each other, not only still exist among men, but are still far from being bound in an indissoluble union. On the contrary, as the summit of perfection has in no respect been reached, the same occasions still present themselves from time to time, now for one force, now for another, to break out, and with destructive power to overpass their boundaries, so that the Lord must again draw them within their lines, and prescribe bounds and limits. And even in the Church of Christ -- nay, within the borders of our own Church -- the thing that has been still is. Vanity still stirs up rivalry in connection with men's different gifts; and the great diversity of views and opinions, instead of throwing increasing light on each, and helping men towards the truth in mutual love, still stimulates them to passionate contention, through their narrow and partial reliance on their own investigations on the one side, or the traditions of the elders on the other. Be it so! Even with these things in prospect we will look forward cheerfully to the future. The Lord has hitherto appointed limits in the natural world; and in the time to come that world will not deviate from His rule, according to which temporary disturbances are ever becoming of less significance. He has hitherto set limits to every outbreak of human passions; to all the complications that have arisen from men's conflicting dispositions and wishes, up to the present time; He has thrown over the kingdom of grace the defence that He promised to Him whom He set on His right hand; and He will do so still in the future. And this is not all. Out of every apparent convulsion Nature has come forth into more fixed order, and more receptive to the formative influences of man. All the often-recurring ruptures and wars have brought the relations of the nations to each other, as well as the internal relations of each people, into such a form, that their brotherly connection comes out more distinctly, and peace and concord are gaining a firmer footing and more enduring power. After every display of the overweening extravagances of the human mind, the chasm between what is evolved out of its own depths, and what is produced in devoutly exercised spirits by the power of the divine Word, is gradually becoming less. Through all the sufferings of the Christian Church, she has fought her way to a blessed liberation from the bondage of human authority, and to a clearer light of truth. And so it will be with all the troubles that may be before us in the future. God the Lord will set bounds and limits to them with the same result as before, and not without an equal blessing; and we may indulge the special hope that the Church of God, although passing through many forms of strife and division, will, as the salt of the earth, be ever attaining a closer likeness to the perfection of Him in whom, as the express image of God, there can be nothing discordant, but all is holy unity and blessed peace.
II. But we are to find in the consideration of this truth, not only our comfort for the future, but our direction and the law of our life, for this and for every year which the Lord is still pleased in His grace to grant us on earth.
But we need to be on our guard in this matter against two forms of error. Men are often inclined, with an only too easy indifference, to accept it as a settled thing that the ways of the Most High are unsearchable. Out of this easy acquiescence the Lord thundered Job by the power of His sublime discourse. When men's views on this point are in some degree corrected, and they allow themselves to be persuaded that though they cannot understand God's doings in detail, or all at once -- in which sense we may say everything is unsearchable to us -- yet that at least in the great, general course of human affairs, they do see, though but as in a glass darkly, something of the beneficent rule and glorious wisdom of the Most High, in connection with all the struggles and commotions in this world; when this point is reached, most men are apt to fall into error, which takes with some the form of a culpable carelessness in regard to their own conduct; with others, that of an entirely passive expectation of coining events.
The latter class, when they see excess and overbearing pride bearing sway in the circle in which they move, and outbreaks of hostile and excited passions -- though they are not without anxiety and concern as to how far the evil may have power to go, and all that may be ruined or retarded by it -- yet console themselves with the thought that the Lord holds the reins over all, and directs in such a way that they may hold themselves entirely aloof, and regard themselves as not at all called on to co-operate in those divine plans. But for this comforting thought they would probably have taken some action, but now they wish to be mere spectators of what the Lord may bring about, as if in regard to human things, He carried out His purposes otherwise than by means of human instruments. The former class are persons who, if they believed that human instrumentality alone came into play, would perhaps often be alarmed at the manner in which they yield to their depraved inclinations; but they cherish the thought that the Lord Himself appoints bounds and limits, and restores order after confusion; and therefore they hold themselves no longer bound to feel any anxiety about the consequences of their acts, but think that, for their part, they can all the more readily follow, without measure or rule, the desires of their own mind. For, according to their theory, even though they could do no otherwise than obey the impulse of inward inclination and external necessity, the Most High will no doubt see to it that the consequences are neither more nor less than what He has determined. But what can we call this but a criminal indifference as to whether the will of God is to be done through us with our own will, or against it? And yet this is just what makes the essential difference between those who are God's servants and friends, and those who are only His slaves -- involuntary and unconscious instruments. What can we call it but criminal indifference as to whether the things we desire belong to what God will establish and maintain, or to what He can only suppress and destroy? And yet in the one case we belong, by our will, to the kingdom of God; in the other case, to the world.
And to return to that class of persons who -- while recognising God as the upholder and mover of all, who out of everything can bring good -- are yet pleased to wait in slothful inaction for what may happen, without caring to take a share in His work -- have they not cause to charge themselves with knowing God and seeing Him, only apart from themselves?
So let it never be with us! -- us who claim to be not far from God, but in Him to live and move and have our being; not so with us, who have not merely a God working apart from us, but to whom Christ has promised to come, and with the Father take up His abode in our hearts! And if it is this very Father in heaven who appoints to everything its just limits and appropriate law, and if He has given us of His Spirit, manifestly this cannot but have the effect of leading us also to endeavour to maintain and restore limits and law everywhere. First, in the kingdom of Nature; for when, in the beginning, the Most High made over the earth, with all that breathes and moves on it, to the first parents of our race, it was His design that man should subdue it, and have dominion over it. Thus we ourselves are to be the standard of all earthly things; their relation to us is to be brought out in all circumstances, and is to be the true law of their being, and to this we are to direct our efforts. And if the Lord should again, for the moment, set free the forces of Nature from this law which is ordinarily in operation, so that they overpass the bounds appointed to them, and lay in ruins, more or less of the works of men, then what is the only wise and fitting course? Not, surely, to sit calmly waiting to see what the issue may be; still less to allow ourselves foolishly to be seduced into irregularity and strife, throwing it over on the Lord to restore, as He may please, the old state of things out of the new disorders. No; all such events should be a new call to us to bring our measure and rule to bear more powerfully on external Nature, to establish more and more the dominion of mind over it, and to impress on it ever more deeply the stamp of that dominion; in short, to subdue it more and more, by every means, under the spiritual power of man, whom the Most High Himself has appointed as its ruler. The more we unite our powers on every such occasion, in this new year; the more faithfully we support each other in this work, each one with the gift that he has received, whether it be clear insight into affairs, or power over minds, or abundance of outward means; so much the more shall we glorify the Name of the Most High, by making progress in fulfilling the great vocation to which He has called us.
But this is no doubt only the outside view of the subject, that to which the better educated part of the community, who decide the action of the rest, are naturally prompted by the well-understood motive of personal advantage, or the most careful calculation as to the best means of securing what is required by their social life, which is constantly becoming more artificial and complex, as well as mutually dependent. Much more should we be concerned to keep rule and order in the spiritual world, and generally where man has to do with man. Nowhere should we be able to look on idly at men wandering away into error. Wherever the restless excitement and inflamed passions of the human soul have broken out in fury; where selfishness and lust of power have engaged in conflict with the right and good, and are reaching the point of tyranny; there we are to interpose: wherever arrogance and violence work hand in hand with cowardice and servility, in the most mischievous alliance that can be formed against right and truth, we must, as a matter of course, come openly and boldly for ward. Only we are to do this, not at all in the way of bringing to bear a force equally lawless and out of bounds, though of an opposite kind; but in this way, that by our whole life, by our opinions and modes of action, we really and truly represent law and order. And not only so: the spirit of order, that is a vital principle in us, should make us quick to detect the very first indications of the approach of a condition of things that in its consummation annihilates safe boundaries, and threatens to endanger and destroy all that promotes and preserves social life. But even without such premonitions, and without a definite purpose on our part, every one of us ought, in the circle of his work and of his social relations, so to contribute to the maintaining and strengthening of rule and order, that efforts in the opposite direction are restrained beforehand. Well for that community -- and for such a community alone -- in every rank of which there is a goodly number of those who, by their manner of life and the whole tone of their daily conduct, serve as a mighty voice of God, sounding out on every side the cry, "Hitherto and no further: here shall the proud waves be broken!"
But, my friends, if we are in earnest in this matter -- and what could more nearly concern us on such a day as this? -- if we really long that in each new year of our lives these principles should come more powerfully into action, we must guard with special care against what happens only too easily, allowing ourselves to be carried away either by the violent or the more insidious evil ways of men; and so, perhaps with the best inte
Sunday, February 9, 2020
On Humbling Ourselves Before God
C. H. Spurgeon.
1 Peter 5:5-7
Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves to the elder. Yes, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility…
I. First, our text is evidently intended to bear upon us IN OUR CHURCH LIFE. Each one of us should think little of himself and highly of his brethren.
1. True humility in our Church relationship will show itself in our being willing to undertake the very lowest offices for Christ.
2. The next point of humility is that we are conscious of our own incompetence to do anything aright. Self-sufficiency is inefficiency. He that has no sense of his weakness has a weakness in his sense.
3. This humility will show itself next in this — that we shall be willing to be ignored of men.
4. We want humility in our Church life, in the sense of never being rough, haughty, arrogant, hard, domineering, lordly; or, on the other hand, factious, unruly, quarrelsome, and unreasonable.
II. Now I will use the text in reference to OUR BEHAVIOUR IN OUR AFFLICTIONS. Frequently our heavenly Father's design in sending trial to His children is to make and keep them humble; let us remember this, and learn a lesson of wisdom. The most hopeful way of avoiding the humbling affliction is to humble yourself. Be humble that you may not be humbled.
1. And do this, first, by noticing whether you have been guilty of any special sin of pride. Usually our sins lie at the roots of our sorrows. If we will repent of the sin, the Lord will remove the sorrow.
2. In your affliction humble yourself by confessing that you deserve all that you are suffering.
3. But, more than that, humble yourself so as to submit entirely to God's will. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in this act of self-humiliation while you meekly kiss the rod.
III. IN OUR DAILY DEALINGS WITH GOD, whether in affliction or not, let us humble ourselves under His hand, for so only can we hope to be exalted. It is a blessed thing whenever you come to God to come wondering that you are allowed to come, wondering that you have been led to come; marvelling at Divine redemption, astonished that such a price should have been paid that you might be brought nigh to God. Let grace be magnified by your grateful heart.
1. When you are doing this be very humble before God, because you have not made more improvement of the grace that He has given you.
2. Next, humble yourself under the hand of God by feeling your own want of knowledge whenever you come to God. Do not think that you understand all divinity. There is only one body of divinity, and that is Christ Himself; and who knoweth Him to the full?
3. One point concerning which I should like every one of us to humble ourselves under the hand of God is about our little enjoyment of Divine things.
IV. I finish by using my text with all earnestness in reference to the unconverted IN OUR SEEKING FORGIVENESS AS SINNERS. Do you want to be saved? The way of salvation is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." "But," you say, "I cannot understand it." Yet it is very simple; no hidden meaning lies in the words; you are simply bidden to trust Jesus. If, however, you feel as if you could not do that, let me urge you to go to God ill secret and own the sin of this unbelief; for a great sin it is. Humble yourself. Sit down and think over the many ways in which you have done wrong, or failed to do right. Pray God to break you down with deep penitence. When your sin is confessed, then acknowledge that if justice were carried out towards you, apart from undeserved grace, you would be sent to hell. You have almost obtained mercy when you have fully submitted to justice. Then, next, accept God's mercy in His own way. Do not be so vain as to dictate to God how you ought to be saved. Be a little child, and come and believe in the salvation which is revealed in Jesus Christ. "Ah," say you, "I have done this, but I cannot get peace." Then sink lower down. Did I hear you say, "Alas, sir, I want to get comfort"? Do not ask for comfort; ask for forgiveness, and that blessing may come through your greater discomfort. Sink lower down. There is a point at which God will surely accept you, and that point is lower down. "Oh," you say, "I think I have a due sense of sin." That will not do. I want you to feel that you have not a due sense of sin, and come to Jesus just so. "Oh, but I do think that I have been brokenhearted." I should like to see you lower than that, till you cry, "I am afraid I never knew what it is to be brokenhearted." I want you to sink so low that you cannot say anything good of yourself; nay, nor see an atom of goodness in yourself. Come before God a criminal, in the prison dress, with the rope about your neck. You will be saved then.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
C. H. Spurgeon.
1 Peter 5:5-7
Likewise, you younger, submit yourselves to the elder. Yes, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility…
I. First, our text is evidently intended to bear upon us IN OUR CHURCH LIFE. Each one of us should think little of himself and highly of his brethren.
1. True humility in our Church relationship will show itself in our being willing to undertake the very lowest offices for Christ.
2. The next point of humility is that we are conscious of our own incompetence to do anything aright. Self-sufficiency is inefficiency. He that has no sense of his weakness has a weakness in his sense.
3. This humility will show itself next in this — that we shall be willing to be ignored of men.
4. We want humility in our Church life, in the sense of never being rough, haughty, arrogant, hard, domineering, lordly; or, on the other hand, factious, unruly, quarrelsome, and unreasonable.
II. Now I will use the text in reference to OUR BEHAVIOUR IN OUR AFFLICTIONS. Frequently our heavenly Father's design in sending trial to His children is to make and keep them humble; let us remember this, and learn a lesson of wisdom. The most hopeful way of avoiding the humbling affliction is to humble yourself. Be humble that you may not be humbled.
1. And do this, first, by noticing whether you have been guilty of any special sin of pride. Usually our sins lie at the roots of our sorrows. If we will repent of the sin, the Lord will remove the sorrow.
2. In your affliction humble yourself by confessing that you deserve all that you are suffering.
3. But, more than that, humble yourself so as to submit entirely to God's will. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you in this act of self-humiliation while you meekly kiss the rod.
III. IN OUR DAILY DEALINGS WITH GOD, whether in affliction or not, let us humble ourselves under His hand, for so only can we hope to be exalted. It is a blessed thing whenever you come to God to come wondering that you are allowed to come, wondering that you have been led to come; marvelling at Divine redemption, astonished that such a price should have been paid that you might be brought nigh to God. Let grace be magnified by your grateful heart.
1. When you are doing this be very humble before God, because you have not made more improvement of the grace that He has given you.
2. Next, humble yourself under the hand of God by feeling your own want of knowledge whenever you come to God. Do not think that you understand all divinity. There is only one body of divinity, and that is Christ Himself; and who knoweth Him to the full?
3. One point concerning which I should like every one of us to humble ourselves under the hand of God is about our little enjoyment of Divine things.
IV. I finish by using my text with all earnestness in reference to the unconverted IN OUR SEEKING FORGIVENESS AS SINNERS. Do you want to be saved? The way of salvation is, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ." "But," you say, "I cannot understand it." Yet it is very simple; no hidden meaning lies in the words; you are simply bidden to trust Jesus. If, however, you feel as if you could not do that, let me urge you to go to God ill secret and own the sin of this unbelief; for a great sin it is. Humble yourself. Sit down and think over the many ways in which you have done wrong, or failed to do right. Pray God to break you down with deep penitence. When your sin is confessed, then acknowledge that if justice were carried out towards you, apart from undeserved grace, you would be sent to hell. You have almost obtained mercy when you have fully submitted to justice. Then, next, accept God's mercy in His own way. Do not be so vain as to dictate to God how you ought to be saved. Be a little child, and come and believe in the salvation which is revealed in Jesus Christ. "Ah," say you, "I have done this, but I cannot get peace." Then sink lower down. Did I hear you say, "Alas, sir, I want to get comfort"? Do not ask for comfort; ask for forgiveness, and that blessing may come through your greater discomfort. Sink lower down. There is a point at which God will surely accept you, and that point is lower down. "Oh," you say, "I think I have a due sense of sin." That will not do. I want you to feel that you have not a due sense of sin, and come to Jesus just so. "Oh, but I do think that I have been brokenhearted." I should like to see you lower than that, till you cry, "I am afraid I never knew what it is to be brokenhearted." I want you to sink so low that you cannot say anything good of yourself; nay, nor see an atom of goodness in yourself. Come before God a criminal, in the prison dress, with the rope about your neck. You will be saved then.
(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Monday, February 3, 2020
Love Is the Greatest
13 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[b] and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[c] All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
13 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[b] and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[c] All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.
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