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When we look around on
God's works and see the laws by which they are regulated, the adaptation
of part to part, the traces of design and exquisite workmanship everywhere
visible, and how a presiding Spirit overrules the endless train of events,
bringing light out of darkness, order out of confusion, good out of evil,
we may well exclaim, Herein is wisdom. When we survey the vast masses that
roll in space, giving light and heat in their appointed places at the
appointed seasons, the mighty influences at work in nature, the thunders
and lightnings, storms and winds, before which human power sinks into
insignificance, and how these are ruled, as easily as the intention guides
the hand, by that voice which says to the roaring sea, "Hitherto shalt
thou come and no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed," we
may well exclaim, Herein is power.* When we see the happy tendencies of
things — how the same heaven bends over all — how all the creatures are
made to minister to man's enjoyment —and how the wants of every living
thing are satisfied by the exuberance of each returning year, and all this
in the face of aggravated and unnumbered sins, we may well exclaim, Herein
is goodness. When we travel in thought to that dark land where hope and
opportunity are for ever at an end, where death reigns in its most
appalling forms, and nought is heard but the cries of tormented out-easts,
and when we think that, throughout ages. innumerable as the drops of rain,
there will be no abatement of their sorrow and no dawn of hope on their
despair, we may well exclaim, Herein is justice. When we contemplate that
heaven where God sits in the midst of a rejoicing family—"a multitude
which none can number, out of all tribes, and kindreds, and peoples, and
tongues, and nations,"—where all is light and love, and into whose pure
transparencies "there shall in no wise enter any thing that defileth, or
that worketh abomination, or that loveth or maketh a lie, but only they
whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life," we may well exclaim,
Herein is holiness. But it is when we turn to-Calvary, and look at the
Sufferer who there poured out His soul unto the death, amid tears, and
agonies, and cries, and think that there the Son-of God, himself the King
eternal, immortal, and invisible, became obedient unto death, even the
death of the cross, so that all the perfections of the Godhead were at
once displayed and gloriously vindicated, that mercy and truth met
together, righteousness and peace kissed each other, it is then we reach
the climax of the song, and say, "Herein is love,—not that we loved God,
but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our
sins." Calvary is one blaze of love. |
