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love with which He has lead each one of us? He leads "gently," not foolishly; not with such tenderness as one sometimes sees in earthly parents, leading their children to their harm, and thinking it to be love,-the worst of all unkindness. It is the kindness of One that wisely loves. Could I suppose a father taking a knife to amputate the limb of his child, there might be an appearance of severity in

the sharpness of the knife, but who can tell what would be the tenderness of that yearning father's heart? He "gently leads," and never more tenderly than in some providences. that appeared the severest at the time. As Cowper has said, it is but the graver aspect of His love. -J. H. Evans, M.A.: Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. iv. pp. 337-348.

GOD INCOMPARABLE.
(For Trinity Sunday.)

xl. 18. To whom then will ye liken God? &c.

The extreme point which has ever been reached by objectors to the doctrine of the Trinity is the point of incomprehensibleness, not the point of impossibility. The doctrine, though incomprehensible as to the manner, can never be proved impossible as to the fact (H. E. I. 4811-4814). The same may be said of the Deity, or any of His attributes, e.g., Eternity, Omnipresence. Reason is required to submit to Revelation when she cannot comprehend. We might almost say that until truth is beyond (not opposed to) Reason, it does not strictly belong to Revelation (H. E. I. 537, 1087, 2022-2024).

The text is a simple but energetic assertion, couched in the form of a question, of the impossibility of finding any likeness or resemblance to God.

I. The Creator is distinguished from every creature by being selfexistent. 1. No way of accounting for the origin of anything except by supposing something which never had an origin. It was an ancient inscription in a heathen temple, "I am whatsoever was, is, or shall be; and who is he that shall draw aside my veil?" 2. The existence of a Creator is a necessary existence. This should prepare us to find God inscrutable. To depict an Archangel, one has but to remodel himself; but how begin to depict God, the Uncreated?

II. Hence the vanity of all attempts to explain or illustrate the

Trinity in Unity. 1. If we could produce an exact instance of three in one, we should have no right to point to it as at all parallel with the union in the Godhead (H. E. I. 4816-4821). Man was made in the moral image of his Maker. It is the image of the nature which the text says it is impossible to find. Still some use may be made of illustration.

III. Is it possible that there may be three persons in the Godhead, consistently with that unity which Scripture unreservedly ascribes to the Divine Being? 1. Observe man's constitution. All confess he is made up of a body and a soul. Apart from seeing this union effected, we might have thought it impossible. It is a union of quite different natures. Why should he not unite two things of the same nature, e.g., two spirits? If with two, then with three; the possibility does not depend upon the number. Thus we admit the incomprehensible, but we disprove the impossible. 2. The foregoing illustration shows no unmindfulness of the truth that we cannot find a likeness to the everlasting God. It shows from what is possible in created being the unreasonableness of pronouncing a certain constitution impossible in the uncreated Being. "Wonderful Being! who has only to tell what He is to make Himself more inscrutable."

IV. Note the practical character of the doctrine of the Trinity. 1. The

whole of Christianity falls to pieces, if you destroy this doctrine. If this doctrine be false, Christ Jesus is nothing more than a man, and the Holy Ghost a creature of quality. That truth cannot be a barren speculation which may not be believed or disbelieved without affecting the Christian character. 2. Reflect upon prayer. Prayer must be prescribed and regulated by the doctrine of the Trinity. It is a false god whom man worships, if he adores Unity in which there is no Trinity. The heathen bows down before a stock or a stone, the Socinian before a Godhead in which there is no Son and no Holy Spirit. Without a Trinity, man must save himself; with a Trinity, he is to be saved through Christ. 3. Our duty. Whilst no likeness can be found to the invisible uncreated God, we are to study conformity to the image of His Son. Resemblance to Christ is the nearest approach to resemblance to God (Col. iii. 4). See Outline: THE TRINITY IN UNITY, vol. i. pp. 133, 134.-Henry Melvill, B.D.: Sermons, vol. ii. pp. 284-308.

The passage suggests:-I. That the greatest things in the material world are nothing to God. The ocean, the heaven, the earth (ver. 12; Ps. xxxiii. 8, 9).

II. That the greatest minds in the spiritual universe are nothing to Him (vers. 13, 14). He is uninstructible: the

only Being in the universe who is so. He is absolutely original: the only such Being. We talk of original thinkers; such creatures are mere fictions. He being so independent of all minds:-1. His universe must be regarded as the expression of Himself. No other being had a hand in it (H. E. I. 14911497; P. D. 631). 2. His laws are the revelation of Himself. No one counselled Him in His legislation. 3. His conduct is absolutely irresponsible. He is answerable to no one. He alone is irresponsible, and He alone can be trusted with irresponsibility.

III. That the greatest institutions in human society are nothing to Him. Nations are the greatest things in human institutions. Nations, with their monarchs, courts, armies — Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome-these are great things in history (ver. 15). Islands (vers. 15-17).

IV. That the greatest productions of human labour are nothing to Him. Perhaps in all ages the highest productions of human genius have been in connec tion with religion. Religion has had the finest architecture, carvings, sculp ture, paintings, &c. But what are they to Him? (vers. 18-20).

CONCLUSION.-How great is God! Well might the Moslems cry in their prayers, Allah huakbar "God is great." "There is," said an eloquent French preacher, "nothing great but God" (P. D. 1493, 1502, 1508).David Thomas, D.D.: The Homilist, Editor's Series, vol. xi. p. 167.

THE UNIVERSE AND MAN.

xl. 26. Lift up your eyes on high, &c.

We find in the text-not obscurely, not ambiguously, but with the clearness and positiveness of knowledge

I. That God should not be confounded with His works, but apprehended as the personal and living Author of all. This faith is conspicuous throughout the whole Bible. The first verse of the Book is an explicit declaration of it. On this foun

dation the Book rests, and from it it is never moved. In this the Bible writers stood alone in the world. The wisdom of Egypt and Assyria gave them no countenance; they lacked the sympathy, to a large extent, of their own nation. This old Hebrew faith stands as firmly in the light of modern science. Sir Isaac Newton declared that the cause of the universe could

not be mechanical; Galileo saw God as clearly as Newton in the heavens, whose scientific prophet he was.

That we moderns know more of the material universe scientifically than did the ancients is not to be questioned; but while the Hebrew writers used popular language, they were preserved from mixing the false or inaccurate science of their times with their religious teachings. But while they knew less of the vastness of the universe than we do now, they did not feel it less. The modern scientist's awe in the contemplation of it may not be in proportion to his knowledge; the Hebrews knew enough and saw enough to produce the profoundest feeling, and more scientific knowledge would scarcely have added to the depth or intensity of their feeling.

II. That which God created He sustains. "For that He is strong in power, not one faileth." But are not the laws of Nature self-working and constant? Constant, certainly; selfworking, in the sense of being independent of their Author, as a well-made clock is of its maker, is not, to say the least, so evident. The Hebrew Scriptures affirm the constancy of Nature more consistently than some modern scientists. God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass," &c., and the fruittree yielding fruit "after its kind." "God created every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind. And God saw that it was good." "And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after its kind." And man, we may add, has produced "after his kind." Nature has been constant; all history proves it. The Bible traces it to its source in an ordinance of the Creator. God saw that it was good. Good it was, -a most beneficent decree (H. E. I. 3157). Anything else would have turned human forethought and activity into folly, and would have furnished a new illustration of the old Greek notion of a fortuitous

concourse of atoms. It is not by the Bible, nor by believers in it, that the constancy of Nature is now doubted; it is by a very bold and boastful section of scientific men, who do not believe that things have always produced after their kind. But the Bible asserts with equal explicitness a continued Divine agency in Nature. It tells us that God still causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, &c. (Ps. civ. 14). "My Father worketh hitherto," said Christ. The Sabbath-rest was not a cessation from Divine activity. The best of our living astronomers, as well as the greatest of the past, believe that "the heavens declare the glory of God," that they are sustained in their im mensely complicated but most orderly structure and relations by the power of their Maker; they accept the words of the prophet as containing the conclusion to which science shuts us up. Nor are they offended by the metaphoric or poetic form in which the sublime conception is here expressed; poetic in form, it is true in fact. How consoling is this thought! When we think of the physical possibilities of the universe or of our own globe, we may tremble. Our fear is allayed, not so much by the idea of the regularity and stability of Nature, as by the assurance that God reigneth (2 Pet. iii. 7.)

The

III. These truths are made the foundation of comfort, primarily to the ancient Israel of God, and equally to all the spiritual Israel (vers. 2729). The vastness of the universe in nowise detracts from nor diminishes God's care over the human race. prophet's argument seems almost an inversion of our Lord's (Matt. vi. 26). Suns and stars are glorious things; we are as atoms and worms in comparison (Ps. viii. 3, 4). But if this feeling is turned into an argument to place us at a distance from God, there is a reply to it from His own mouth (ch. lxvi. 1, 2). More than this, the Bible story of creation gives us the keynote of the Bible idea of man. The earth was made for him, and he was made in the image of God. The material uni

verse, which "
was made glorious, has
no glory in this respect, by reason of
the glory that excelleth." This idea
lies at the foundation of the whole
Christian scheme, which assumes both
the "majesty and the misery of man."
If man is not a glorious being, he is
not worth the expenditure by which
he has been redeemed; if he is not
fallen, he does not need the redemption
of Christ. If we be "human atoms,"
as a modern Pantheist calls us, with-
out personal relations to God, "dots
of animated jelly," to be absorbed by
and by into the mass from which we

have been taken, assuredly the Christian redemption is uncalled for and incredible. The African traveller was cheered, when almost dying, by discovering a tuft of living moss. But if we understand things as the prophet did, not only every blade of grass that grows, but every star that shines, justifies faith in the providential love and care of our Heavenly Father. Happy if, in addition to this, we can enter into full sympathy with the apostolic argument! (Rom. viii. 32).John Kennedy, D.D. Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi. pp. 225–227.

CHEER FOR THE DESPONDING.
xl. 26-31. Lift up your eyes on high, &c.

These encouraging assurances must have been of the highest value to the captive and disconsolate Jews in Babylon. Banished for so long a period from the land of their fathers, they were ready to fear that they were outcasts from God. And they are of the utmost value now, for even now the people of God are in times of trouble often tempted to take a dark and depressing view of God's dealings and dispensation. Then let them consider the facts here brought before

us.

I. In His providential government, God exerts on behalf of His children the same almighty power which at first created and still sustains all worlds (vers. 26, 27). When by the aid of astronomy we attempt to conceive of the vastness of the universe, we are not only astonished, but confounded. Two thousand stars are said to be visible to the naked eye; but astronomers declare that there are 250,000,000 of them. What an evidence of the affluence of God's creative energy! The same power that at first called them into being must be perpetually put forth in regulating their movements, sustaining their harmony, and controlling their mutual influences (H. E. I. 362-365). Surely, He Surely, He whose eye can discern, whose arm upholds millions of worlds, can dis

tinctly survey and effectually preserve and bless every individual of His redeemed family, without overlooking or disregarding the minutest of their concerns (cf. vers. 10, 11; Luke xii. 6, 7; Phil. iv. 6, 7; Rom. viii. 28. H. E. I. 4015-4022).

II. In ordering the concerns of His people, God exercises the same wisdom which He displays in regulating the constitution and course of Nature (vers. 27, 28). His wisdom is equal to His power. To Him causes and effects, tendencies and results, are alike known. The events both of the past and the future lie distinctly before Him (H. E. I. 2264, 2268). How great, then, is the encouragement to refer all our interests to Him with whom an error in judgment is a thing unknown, and a mistake impossible! (H. E. I. 4049-4057.)

III. God is pleased to impart ample and diversified communications of grace to those who wait upon Him. Of those who receive from Him renewal of strength it is said, "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." These words seem to imply that there are those of whom all this elevation of spirit, buoyancy of heart, and untiring alertness in their prescribed course may be asserted. But there are many

Such

more to whom some one of these capabilities is imparted without the others. 1. The first part of the description presents to us a favoured class of devout worshippers, distinguished by fervour of spirit in their approaches to the throne of grace, so that they are enabled to soar far above this lower region of cares, fears, and turmoils into a higher and serener atmosphere, where they attain to more. realising views of God in Christ, and more intimate, joy-inspiring, and transforming communion with Him. were Baxter, John Howe, Leighton, Watts, Doddridge, and other poets of the sanctuary who have aided the upward flight of redeemed spirits. There are such men still among those who here wait upon God. 2. There are other Christians, whose minds are less buoyant, whose affections are less fervid, and whose imagination is less vivid; but, by the grace of God, they run with persevering energy the race set before them, and are not weary. 3. There are others of whom it can only be said-yet, blessed be God, it can be said "They walk and do not faint." Their movement is less rapid than that of the former classes, but still they are making constant progress in the path of duty and safety. Some of them are aged, infirm, afflicted, or tried, harassed, and tempted; but still they look unto Jesus, and "He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no power He increaseth strength" (Ps. lxix. 33; H. E. I. 952-961, P. D. 474).

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IV. Divine aid is necessary to support even the strongest. Without it, even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall" There may be an allusion here to young men selected for military service, singled out as the most vigorous, active, and athletic. As even these cannot secure for themselves the continuance of their health and strength for a single day, so for vigour of faith, fervour in love, energy in obedience, we depend on the grace which renders us "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might" (H. E I. 2351-2358).

VOL. II.

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The Christian's life is a continual warfare. Nor has he any strength but in God. He is prone to reflect more on his own weakness than on God's power.

I. THE DISCOURAGEMENTS OF GOD'S PEOPLE.

1. Temporal afflictions. (1.) Pain and sickness. (2.) Losses and poverty,

sometimes rendered heavier by the unkindness of friends and calumny. Job sank for a time under their weight (Job iii. 1, xxvii. 2).

2. Spiritual troubles. (1.) Corruptions of the heart. (2.) Unsuccessful conflicts. (3.) Temptations of Satan. (4.) Desolations of Zion (H. E. I. 1059– 1062, 2457, 3398, 3949-3951).

II. THE SUPPORTS WHICH GOD WILL BESTOW.

God is never at a loss for means to succour His people (ver. 28). 1. He is not lacking in tenderness and compassion. (1.) He has given them a sympathising High Priest (Heb. iv. 15). (2.) Accepts their weak endeavours (ver. 31). (3.) Infirmities are no bar to His favours (Matt. xii. 20; H. E. I. 2313-2315). 2. He expects, however, that they "wait upon" Him. (1.) Prayer is necessary (Ezek. xxxvi. 37). (2.) Effectual aid obtained by waiting (Deut. xxxiii. 25). The drooping shall "mount up," &c.; they that had utterly fallen shall

run;" they shall march onward in spite of all opposition; they shall never faint through want of strength or courage. (3.) None shall be disappointed in his hope (Ps. xl. 1, 2).

III. PRACTICAL APPLICATION.

1. To those who bless themselves that they have never felt such dis 33

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