Why Sayest Thou?
‘*Go, count the sands that form the earth,
The drops that make the mighty sea;
Go, count the stars of heavenly birth,
And tell me what their numbers be;
And thou shalt know love’s mystery.”
T. C. UPHAM.
ISAIAH xl. 12-31.)
PES Se LHe.
y ae is well in times when feeling is strong to say little, lest K we speak unadvisedly with our lips, murmuring at our
Py we lot, or complaining against God, as though He had
eh Y) forgotten to be gracious, and had shut up his tender
a mercies in anger. Speech often aggravates sorrow.
43 We say more than we mean; we drown in the torrent of our words the still small voice of the Holy Ghost whispering comfort; we speak as though we had not known or heard. It is wise, therefore, not to pass grief into words. Better let the troubled sea within rock itself to rest. ‘‘Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel?”
Was it a true thing these exiles said? They suggested that they had worn out the Divine patience; that their way was no longer open to his view; and that their judgment had ceased to be his care. They were ready to admit that He had been the God of their fathers; but He had now withdrawn from his covenant relationship, and would be favourable no more. That, they said, was the reason why they were allowed to languish year after year on the plains of Babylon. They spoke as though they had never known nor heard some of the most rudimentary facts about the nature and ways of God. “Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?”
In our dark hours we should revert to considerations which have been familiar to us from childhood, but have of late ceased to exert a definite impression. It is remarkable what new meaning sorrow discovers in truths familiar as household words. It looks for the hundredth time into their abyss, and suddenly sees angels sitting. Let us recount some of these familiar facts: and perchance, as thy troubled soul turns from men and things, from what depresses and what threatens, to the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator, thou wilt dare to believe that He has neither forgotten nor forsaken thee; that He delights still in thy way, which is leading through the tangled thicket into the sunlight; that He is weighing thy case with infinite solicitude.
Nature has always been the resort of the suffering. Elijah to Horeb; Christ to Olivet. And in these glowing paragraphs, which touch the high-water mark of sacred eloquence, we are led forth to stand in the curtained tent of Jehovah, to listen to the beat of the surf, and watch the march of the stars.
A passage from the journal of a sad and lonely thinker, with singular beauty of language, tells the effect of Nature upon him. He is speaking of the month of April; and after alluding to the moist freshness of the grass, the fragrance of the flowers, the transparent shadows of the hills, the breath of the spring, he says: “There have been so many weeks and months when I thought myself an old man, but I have given myself up to the influence of my surroundings. I have felt the earth floating like a boat in the blue ocean of ether. On all sides stretched mysteries, marvels, and prodigies, without limit, without number, and without change. I kissed the hem of the garments of God, and gave Him thanks for being Spirit, and being Life. Such moments are glimpses of the Divine, they make one conscious of eternity. They assure one that eternity itself is not too much for the study of the thoughts and works of the Eternal; they awake in us an adoring ecstasy, and the ardent humility of love.”
The devout thought of these paragraphs passes in survey, first the EARTH (12 — 20); then the HEAVENS (21 — 26); and finally, the EXPERIENCE OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD in all
ages (27 — 31).
I. THE TESTIMONY OF THE EARTH. — It seems as though we are conducted to the shores of the Mediterranean, and stationed somewhere near the site of ancient Tyre. Before us spreads the Great Sea, as the Hebrews were wont to call it. Far across the waters, calm and tranquil, or heaving in memory of recent storms, sea and sky blend in the circle of the horizon. Now remember, says the prophet, God’s hands are so strong and great that all that ocean and all other oceans lie in them as a drop on a man’s palm. His fingers are so wide in their reach that their measure when outstretched can compass the breadth of heavén. His arms are so strong that they can hold balances and scales in which the loftiest mountains and the multitudinous isles of the Archipelago lie as small dust might do in the brass scales of a salesman. And this God is our God for ever and ever. He has taken not Israel only, but Jacob, into eternal union with Himself. The Creator of the ends of the earth is our Father. Creation is only one of his thoughts; but thou art his son, his heir, his beloved. See how careful He is of lilies and birds, of the delicate down on an insect’s wing, and of the lichen traceries upon the stones. He cannot then fail thee, nor forsake thee. ‘
Behind us lie the hills, and beyond them the mountains, and above them all Lebanon rears her snow-capped peaks like a bank of cumuli-clouds built up in the sky. But all the wood on Lebanon, its cedars riven with tempest and rugged with age, would not be too much to lay on the altar of Jehovah. And if all its beasts could be collected, and laid on the wood in sacrifice; and if Lebanon itself were the mighty altar of earth,. there would be no extravagance in the vast burnt-offering that would fill the vault of heaven with fire and smoke. So great is God that the greatest gifts of human self-denial, which have cost men most, are not too great. How preposterous, therefore, it is to liken Him to any graven image or carving of wood! How needless to dread what man can do! How certain it is that He who spared not his own Son, but gave Him to a greater altar and fiercer flame, will with Him also freely give us all.things!
All men may be in arms against thee, encircling thee with
The Standpoint of Vision. as
threats, and plotting to swallow thee up. But the nations are to Him as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance. The isles are very little things in his esteem, and their inhabitants as grasshoppers. Thou hast no reason therefore to be afraid. When thine enemies come upon thee, they shall stumble and fall. The Lord is thy Judge, thy Lawgiver, and thy King. He will save thee.
I], THE TESTIMONY OF THE HEAVENS. — The scene shifts to the heavens, and all that is therein. With a marvellous prevision of the earth’s circuit around the sun, Jehovah is depicted as sitting on the circle of its orbit, and looking thence on the populations of the earth. From that distance the teeming multitudes of mighty Babylon would seem insignificant enough, and there would be no appreciable difference between the monarch and the slave grinding at the mill. This is the antidote of fear. Sit in the heavenlies. Do not look from earth towards heaven, but from heaven towards earth. Let God, not man, be the standpoint of vision.
But this is not all. To this inspired thinker, it seemed as though the blue skies were curtains that God had stretched out as a housewife gauze (see R.V., marg.), or the fabric of a tent within which the pilgrim rests. If creation be His tent, which He fills in all its parts, how puny and pigmy are the greatest potentates of earth! ‘He bringeth princes to nothing, and maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.” The child of God need not be abashed before the greatest of earthly rulers. Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and all the people of Israel, may be gathered together; but they do whatsoever His hand and His counsel foreordained to come to pass. They are but stubble withered by the blast.
And even this is not all — day changes to night, and as the twilight deepens, the stars come out in their hosts; and suddenly, to the imagination of this lofty soul, the vault of heaven seems a pasture-land over which a vast flock is following its Shepherd, who calls each by name. What a sublime conception! Jehovah, the Shepherd of the stars, leading them through space; conducting them with such care and might that none falls out of rank, or is lacking. And will Jehovah do so much for stars, and nought for sons? Will He not have a name for each? Will He not guide and guard each? Will He not see to it that none are lacking, when He brings his flock home at the end of the day? He who has kept the stars full of light for millenniums, and sustained them in their mighty rounds, will not do less for thee, his child. If thou wert reconciled to God by the death of his Son, thou wilt be surely saved by his life!
II]. THE TESTIMONY OF THE SAINTS. — Hast thou not heard? Where have been thine ears? This has not been told in secret, nor whispered in the dark places of the earth. It has been a commonplace with every generation of God’s people, that the Lord fainteth not, neither is weary. He never takes up a case to dropit. He never begins to build a character to leave it when it is half complete. He cannot be exhausted by the rebellion, backsliding, or fickleness of his children. Were this not so, heaven would have missed some of its noblest inhabitants. Jacob, David, Peter, and myriads more, are trophies of the unwearied pains which God takes with those whom He adopts into his family.
It is quite true that He may seem to forsake and to plunge the soul into needless trial; this however is no indication that He has tired of his charge, but only that He could not fulfil the highest blessedness of some soul He loved, save by the sternest discipline. “There is no searching of his understanding.”
There is another point on which all the saints are agreed, that neither weariness nor fainting are barriers to the forth-putting of God’s might. On the contrary, they possess an infinite attractiveness to his nature. We have seen a little weakling child draw to its cot some strong and burly man, the champion athlete of the countryside. Such a spell can weakness exert over might, and helplessness over helpfulness. It is the burden of Scripture that the strong should bear the infirmities of the weak, and not please themselves. Such is the law of God’s existence. All that He is and has He holds in trust for us, and most for those who need most.
In point of fact, many of us are too strong, self-reliant, and resourceful to get the best that God can do. Wait a little, till thy strength begins to faint beneath the burdens and the noontide heat, till the energy that was thy boast has slowly ebbed away, and thou art left without might. Then the Mighty One of Jacob will draw nigh thee, and impart both power and strength. Jacob must halt on his thigh ere he can prevail with God and man.
They that wait on God venmew their strength. It is new strength for each new duty and trial. As each fresh demand is made on them, they receive some fresh baptism, some unrealized enduement. Ah, happy art, nearly forgotten in these busy days! Nothing, not even youthful genius and vigour, can be a substitute for this!
The gradation is a remarkable one. At first sight it would appear that it should pass from walking to running, and from this to flying; but the order is reversed, as though it were easier to mount with wings than walk without fainting. And so, indeed, it is. Any racehorse will start at full speed; but how few have staying power! The tyro in cycling will go at full pelt; but only the experienced rider can walk or stand. To pursue the common track of daily duty — not faltering nor growing weary — to do so when novelty has worn off, when the elasticity of youth has vanished, when the applause of the crowd has become dim and faint — this is the greatest achievement of the Christian life. For this earthly and human strength will not avail. But God is all-sufficient. Never faint or weary Himself, He is able to infuse such resistless energy into the soul that waits on Him, that if it mounts, it shall be on eagle-wing; if it runs, it will not weary; if it walks, it will not faint.