self-confidence was to be changed into humility and self-abhorrence, how does the Son of God manifest his presence, and begin the solemn pleading of infinite holiness? "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?... Hast thou an arm like God, and canst thou thunder with a voice like him? Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency, and array thyself with glory and beauty. Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath, and behold every one that is proud, and abase him." There is an awful grandeur in the storm and the lightning, which must ever speak loudly to the conscience of man, and no discoveries of science, or abstract reasonings, can entirely remove the instinctive feeling, that God is terrible in his majesty, and His holiness dreadful to the fallen sinner. The gates of Paradise might always whisper of peace, its skies might reveal always a presence of love; but it is not so with the world, where the God of glory thundereth, and where His voice is heard in the tempest and the storm, like the voice of many waters. Here nature speaks plainly a double message, of grace and holy severity; and her perpetual and innumerable indications of the Creator's love are mingled with loud voices, that proclaim His anger against sinners, and the fearful portents of coming judgment. In the animal creation a similar lesson meets our view. The law of Paradise assigned them the green herb for meat. A restraint, it seems, was placed on their carnivorous instincts, that nature might present, on every side, an image of the peace and love which reigned inwardly in the heart of man. But the entrance of sin put an end at once to this original harmony of creation. All the fierce instincts of the beasts of prey. were set loose, and carnage and slaughter defiled that lovely garden, which had heard no sound but the pleasant song of the bird, the rippling of the brooks, or sweet anthems of praise to the Most High. "To graze the herb all leaving, devoured each other." Philosophy may speculate as it will on the law of general consequences; but once let us picture to ourselves a savage lion or tiger, couching in secret, and then springing fiercely on its terrified and feeble prey, feasting on its victim, and greedily draining its life-blood, heedless of its shrieks or moans of anguish, and deeper truths will speak to the heart, and silence all those cold and icy speculations. Yes, here is a type of unchained and triumphant evil, a sad memorial of the fall, a visible emblem of those powers of darkness that lurk in secret for a still nobler prey, and delight to wreak their fiendish malice on the souls of men. No one, surely, could live in a country, where these beasts of the forest range in their fierce independence, and every village has its tales of woe to record, its almost nightly victims mangled by these destroyers, and not feel the awful reality of the power of evil, which seems thus to fill the outward world with tokens of its secret presence, and with perpetual images and memorials of wasting destruction, violence and death. Thus every part of nature around us, through the sin of man, is subject to vanity, and bears frequent and mournful traces of the moral ruin into which he is sunk and fallen. It is a mirror, to reflect before our careless eyes, not only the goodness of the Creator, but also the degradation and guiltiness of man, his creature. The full harmony has two different parts in its choral music; and while one of them celebrates the bounty of the Lord with high songs of praise, the other speaks, in deep under-tones, of sin and wrath, and fear and terror, and coming judgment. How deep and wonderful, then, are the treasures of wisdom in our blessed Lord, when we view Him as upholding this frame of nature, and causing it daily to minister to His designs of mercy in the redemption of fallen sinners! The whole of this lower universe, with its various and complicated laws of physical change, its countless atoms and moving spheres, its winds and meteors, its storms and tempests, and clear and quiet sunshine, its varieties of animal and vegetable life, in their countless forms, is made by Him like a treasury of means of grace, where man may learn his own weakness and the majesty and goodness of the Creator, where he may see his own guiltiness, and learn to tremble in the presence of his Judge. To fulfil the double purpose, what wisdom is required! Who, but the Allwise, can tell, when the plentiful harvest should speak a message of his free bounty, and when the blight and sore famine should utter a warning of vengeance on persevering iniquity! Who else could weigh the opposite results of each variety of Providence; and either, to encourage the faith and quicken the gratitude of His children, cover the skies with calm beauty, and bid the moonlight flood the fields and palaces with the loveliness of a fairy dream; or else, to alarm the consciences of stubborn and obstinate rebels, bring forth the mighty winds from His treasures, and call for the storms and hurricane, the dark tempests, and the fierce lightnings, that they may go, and cry unto Him-Here we are ! To sustain the deep harmony and beauty of creation, in itself, is no easy task, and needs an Omnipotent arm and the eye of Omniscience. But still deeper is that wisdom, which knows how to maintain a secret harmony in the midst of all the ravage and miseries of the fall; how to make creation, by its very derangement, help in the work of its own recovery. Taught by Him, the very dissonance of instincts and passions and growing elements loosed from their primary law of harmonious love, and doomed for a time to the service of vanity, lends a deeper pathos to the dirge of the fall; while it serves to enrich the song of redeeming mercy with a fuller stream of adoring praise. Every seeming and real discord is thus resolved by Divine art, and forms the key to a richer and nobler harmony. Such is the truth which meets us every where, with a simple and impressive grandeur, in the life and miracles of our blessed Lord. There we have a bright specimen before our senses, of that unspeakable wisdom, which makes the miseries of the fall reveal more clearly the riches of Divine goodness and love. Has the earth been cursed with comparative sterility and barrenness by the guilt of mankind? The Redeemer appears, and in the barren wilderness, a few loaves are multiplied into an ample and abundant feast, and water is turned at once into wine, at the bidding of the Lord. Do storms and tempests, and the roar of the angry waves, proclaim the terrors of judgment, and the threatenings of wrath against the guilty sinner? He rises from his pillow, and speaks those words of power, Peace, be still;" and at once all the fury of nature is hushed into silence. 66 The storm is laid, the waves retire Obedient to Thy will; The sea that roared at Thy command, Are sickness, disease, and death, the still deeper signs of our misery, the painful memorials of ruin and moral desolation? He turns them all into so many varied illustrations of His own love, and lessons of those deeper miseries of the soul which He is able and willing to remove. The palsy and the leprosy, the racking fever, and demoniac madness, the blind eye, the deaf ear, the withered hand, the mute and speechless tongue, and all the forms of sickness and sorrow, nay, even death itself are made so many trophies of his Divine power, so many parables to instruct us in the hidden wants of the immortal spirit, and to prepare us to welcome, with thirsty hearts, the refreshing influence of heavenly love, the hope of the gospel, and the blessed promise of life eternal. Thus in Christ our Lord are truly hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Not only the powers and harmonies of Creation, as it stood in its original beauty, but the very changes which have seemed to obscure its loveliness, and fill it with gloom and terror, with fear and darkness, are made by Him to minister to His high designs of mercy. Its very discords are made to produce a deeper harmony. The barren desert, the thorn and thistle of the neglected wilderness, the storm and lightning, the blighted harvest, the wasting desolation of sickness and pestilence, the thousand forms in which the creature proves itself subject to vanity, are overruled by His matchless wisdom, so as to humble the sinner, to arouse his conscience, and awake his dull spirit, and call forth his slumbering affections, till he learns the folly of his long and weary wandering, and turns back, as a repenting prodigal, to find a home once more in his Father's house. T. R. B. |