Job 26:14 See, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand? The least understood Being in the universe is God. Blasphemous would be any attempt, by painting or sculpture, to represent Him. Egyptian hieroglyphs tried to suggest Him, by putting the figure of an eye upon a sword, implying that God sees and rules, but how imperfect the suggestion. When we speak of Hint, it is almost always in language figurative. He is "Light," or "Day spring from on high," or He is a "High Tower," or the "Fountain of Living Waters." After everything that language can do when put to the utmost strain, and all we can see of God in the natural world and realise of God. in the providential world, we are forced to cry out with Job in my text, "Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him? but the thunder of His power who can understand?" We try to satisfy ourselves with saying, "It is natural law that controls things, gravitation is at work, centripetal and centrifugal forces respond to each other." But what is natural law? it is only God's ways of doing things. At every point in the universe it is God's direct and continuous power that controls and harmonises and sustains. What power it must be that keeps the internal fires of our world imprisoned — only here and there spurting from a Cotopaxi, or a Stromboli, or from a Vesuvius putting Pompeii and Herculaneum into sepulchre; but for the most part the internal fires chained in their cages of rock, and century after century unable to break the chain or burst open the door. What power to keep the component parts of the air in right proportion, so that all round the world the nations may breath in health, the frosts and the heats hindered from working universal demolition. What is that power to us? asks someone. It is everything to us. With Him on our side, the reconciled God, the sympathetic God, the omnipotent God, we may defy all human and Satanic antagonisms. We get some little idea of the Divine power when we see how it buries the proudest cities and nations. Ancient Memphis it has ground up, until many of its ruins are no larger than your thumbnail, and you can hardly find a souvenir large enough to remind you of your visit. The city of Tyre is under the sea which washes the shore, on which are only a few crumbling pillars left. By such rehearsal we try to arouse our appreciation of what Omnipotence is, and our reverence is excited, and our adoration is intensified, but, after all, we find ourselves at the foot of a mountain we cannot climb, hovering over a depth we cannot fathom. So all those who have put together systems of theology have discoursed also about the wisdom of God. Think of a Wisdom which can know the end from the beginning, that knows the thirtieth century as well as the first century. We can guess what will happen; but it is only a guess. Think of a Mind that can hold all of the past and all the present and all the future. We can contrive and invent on a small scale; but think of a Wisdom that could contrive a universe! Think of a Wisdom that was able to form, without any suggestion or any model to work by, the eye, the ear, the hand, the foot, the vocal organs. What we know is overwhelmed by what we do not know. What the botanist knows about the flower is not more wonderful than the things he does not know about the flower. What the geologist knows about the rocks is not more amazing than the things which he does not know about them. The worlds that have been counted are only a small regiment of the armies of light, the hosts of heaven, which have never passed in review before mortal vision. What a God we have! All that theologians know of God's wisdom is insignificant compared with the wisdom beyond human comprehension. The human race never has had, and never will have enough brain or heart to measure the wisdom of God. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are tits judgments, and His ways past finding out!" So, also, all systems of theology try to tell us what is omnipresence, that is God's capacity to be everywhere at the same time. So every system of theology has attempted to describe and define the Divine attribute of love. Easy enough is it to define fatherly love, motherly love, conjugal love, fraternal love, sisterly love and love of country, but the love of God defies all vocabulary. I think the love of God was demonstrated in mightier worlds, before our little world was fitted up for human residence. Will a man, owning 50,000 acres of land, put all the cultivation on a half acre? Will God make a million worlds, and put His chief affection on one small planet? Are the other worlds, and larger worlds, standing vacant, uninhabited, while this little world is crowded with inhabitants? No, it takes a universe of worlds to express the love of God! Go ahead, O Church of God! Go ahead, O world! and tell as well as you can what the love of God is, but know beforehand that Paul was right when he said, "It passeth knowledge." Only glimpses of God have we in this world, but what an hour it will be when we first see Him, and we will have no more fright than I feel when I now see you. It will not be with mortal eye that we will behold Him, but with the vision of a cleansed, forgiven, and perfected spirit. (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand? |
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