Psalm 8:3-4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained;… "What is man?" The child of circumstance, yet endowed with freedom of moral choice, and weighted with the responsibility which that freedom brings. All creation waited for the coming of man, who was to be to all things, animate and inanimate, master and lord. This dominion, whence was it? It lies not in superior strength, powers of endurance, or length of days, but in that mysterious relation to the Maker of all, His likeness, His image, in which man alone of all God's works was made. He is the being whom God made for this one beneficent purpose, to be the recipient of His visitation, the object of His Divine regard. This visitation is no accidental feature introduced to repair the catastrophe of the fall, but an integral part of God's original design. Man was made — each man is made — to be the companion, the friend, of God! 1. Trace God's visitations to His intelligent creatures upon earth, as Bible history unfolds them to us. Holy Scripture is one continuous record of God's effort to catch the attention of human ears, and to win the affection of human hearts. If we had ever any doubt of man's destiny, and the purpose of his creation, surely the incarnation of God has removed it. 2. God visits us all and each. There are those general visitations in which God has drawn near to us collectively. When the history of this century is written no fact will stand out store conspicuously than this, that it has witnessed an extraordinary visitation of God in the revival of Christian faith, Christian worship, and Christian practice. There is another and very different form of visitation that is quite as truly of God. That large knowledge of the natural world, its forces and their application, to which modern science has advanced with such splendid strides. "Never before have the aspects of this natural world been so curiously, sensitively, and lovingly watched as now." How do we receive this visitation? Has the issue of it been, "that the invisible things of God are more clearly seen." or has it been this, — "We have swept the heavens with our telescope, and have found no God"? Or are we afraid of science altogether, with a foolish, faithless fear, refusing to believe that by its means God is drawing nearer to our souls? But there are also individual visitations in which God makes Himself felt in every human life; some of these are so striking and significant that even the most careless soul can only put them away by an effort; some of them so quiet and commonplace that only the spiritually minded will see God's hand in them at all. Shall we not, then, make it our prayer and our endeavour to keep alive and awake within our souls that heavenly faculty whereby we can recognise our God when He draws near in whatever way He please to visit us? (E. J. Gough, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; |
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