The Wisdom and Holiness of God Illustrated in Salvation

And I will sanctify my great name which ye have profaned —

EZEKIEL xxx vi. 23.

effect of the wind is visible — not the element itself. The clouds scud across the sky, the trees swing their arms wildly in the air, aerial waves chase each other across the corn, and the boat, catching the gale in her flowing sheet, goes dancing over the billows. So — although in a sense infinitely higher — the invisible is visible; and in his works we see One, who, seeing all, remains himself unseen. He is lost — not in darkness — but in light; a sun that blinds the eye which is turned on its burning disc. Angels themselves, unable to sustain his glory, cover their faces with their wings, and use them — as a man his hand — to screen their eyes from the ineffable effulgence.

Suppose that we ascend the steps of creation, from matter in its crudest form to nature’s highest and most beautiful arrangements; from the lichen that clothes a rock to the oak that stands rooted in its crevices; from the dull coal to the same mineral crystallized in a flashing diamond; from a dewdrop, cradled in the cup of a flower, to the great ocean that lies in the hollow of its Maker’s hand; from a spark that expires in the moment of its birth, to the sun which has risen and set with unabated splendour on the graves of a hundred generations; from the instinct of the moth that flutters round a taper, to the intellect of an angel, who hovers before the throne; from- a grain of sand to this vast globe; from this world to a creation in its amplitude perhaps as much greater than our planet as it is greater than the grain of sand: As we climb upwards, step by step, our views of God’s glory enlarge. They rise with our elevation, and expand with the widening prospect. At length we reach a pinnacle where the whole heavens and earth lie spread out beneath our feet; — we reach it to fall on our knees, and cry, as we catch the strain of adoring seraphim, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory!”

It is not given to man to discover all the works and ways of God. No; with our boasted discoveries and pride of science, perhaps these lie as unknown to us as the wide forest to the microscopic insect, whose life is measured by a day, whose world is a leaf — that narrow territory the scene of its most distant journeys, its country, its cradle, and its grave. With what modesty, then, should the highest intellect bow down and bear itself in presence of the Creator! Let the patriarch, in language worthy of so high a theme, describe his majesty.” He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing. He holdeth back the face of his throne, and spread eth his cloud upon it.

He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end. The pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof; he divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud; by his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent; 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?” Unbeliever although he was, the great Laplace echoed these sentiments in this, one of his last and not least memorable utterances — “It is the little that we know; it is the great that remains unknown.” And in the confession of his ignorance, has not a Christian, and still greater philosopher, left us perhaps the finest illustration of his wisdom? Newton’s most brilliant discoveries reflect no brighter lustre on Newton’s name than his well-known comparison of himself to a little child — a child who had gathered some few pebbles on the shore of a vast and unexplored ocean.

Although comprehending but little of the ways of God, man, however, is privileged to contemplate, and is in his own person honoured to illustrate, the noblest of them all. He may be a houseless beggar, but, if grace has made him a new creature, there is more of God seen beneath his rags than in the sun itself; nor does that brilliant sky studded thick with stars reveal the fulness of Divinity that shines in the cross of Calvary and the face of Jesus. Bethlehem Ephratah was “little among the cities of Judah.” And our world seems little also among the suns and systems of creation — a dark dim, insignificant spot; yet the eyes of an astonished and admiring universe have been turned on our planet. It has all the importance spiritually, which physically was attributed to it, when men supposed our earth to be the centre of creation.

Here is the place in the great universe from which God and his attributes are beheld in the clearest light, and may be studied to the greatest advantage. It corresponds to that one spot lying right beneath the dome of a noble cathedral — where the spectator, commanding all the grandest features of the edifice, is instructed to look around him, if he would see the monument of its architect. For where is God to be seen as we behold him on the cross and in the Gospel? I scale bartizan or tower to embrace at one view the map of a mighty city. Or I climb the sides of some lofty hill to survey the land that lies in beauty at its feet. And had I the range of the universe, where should I go to obtain the fullest exhibition of the Godhead? Rising on angel-wings, shall I soar to the heights of heaven to look on its happiness, and listen to angel’s hymns? Or shall I cleave the darkness, and — sailing round the edge of the fiery gulf — listen to the wail, and weep over the misery of the lost? No; turning alike from these sunny heights and doleful regions, here I would remain; and, travelling on a pilgrimage to Palestine, would stand beneath the dome of heaven with my feet on Calvary. On that conse crated spot, where the cross of salvation rose, and the blood of a Redeemer fell, I find the centre of a spiritual universe. Here the hosts of heaven descended to acquaint themselves with God in Christ; here in a completed arch, if I may so speak, locked fast by the key, all the properties of divinity meet; here, concentrated as in a burning focus, its varied attributes blend and shine.

We had begun to shew how these attributes were exhibited in the work of redemption; and having illustrated this in the power of God, we now remark that —

II. The wisdom of God is glorified in redemption.

The British Museum possesses in the Portland Vase one of the finest remains of ancient art; and it may be remembered how — some years ago — the world of taste was shocked to hear that this precious relic had been shattered by a maniac hand. Without disparaging classic taste or that exquisite example of it, I will venture to say, that there is not a poor worm which we tread upon, not a sere leaf, that, like a ruined but reckless man, dances merrily in its fallen state to the autumn winds, but has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect, destroys a work which the highest art could not invent, nor man’s best skilled hand construct. Nor was there a leaf that quivered on those trees which stood under the domes of the Crystal Palace, but eclipsed the brightest glories of loom or chisel; it found no rival among the triumphs of invention, which a world went there to see. Yes; in his humblest works, God infinitely surpasses our highest efforts. “Wisdom is justified of her children;” nor shall our God be left without a witness so long as thunders peal and lightnings flash, and breakers beat upon the shore; so long as a flower blooms in the field, a fin cleaves the deep, or a wing cuts the air; so long as glowing suns blaze above, or dying glow-worms shine below. That controversialist gave the Atheist a crushing answer who told him that the very feather with which he penned the words, “There is no God,” refuted the audacious lie.

In redemption this wisdom is pre-eminent. That work associates such transcendent wisdom with love, power, and mercy, that the Saviour of man is called “the wisdom of God.” The apostle selects the definite article, and pronounces Christ to be “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Nor can the propriety of the language be doubted by any, who reflect but for a moment on what a hard task wisdom was set — -what a difficult problem she was called to solve — when man was to be saved? She had to forge a key that could unlock the grave; she had to build a lifeboat that would swim in a sea of fire; she had to construct a ladder long enough to scale the skies; she was required to invent a plan whereby justice might be fully satisfied, and yet the guilty saved. The highest intelligences had been at fault here. They might well have asked, who is sufficient for these things? “He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.” In such an emergency — for such a task

—sufficient wisdom dwelt only with the Godhead — in him in whom “are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” “How shall man be just with God,” is a mystery insolvable to all but Him in whom the most extraordinary and apparently conflicting elements have met; who has a double nature in a single person — pwho has a divine father and human mother, who is the only begotten of God and first born of a virgin womb — who, being in one sense dust, and in another sense divinity, has a nature to satisfy and also a nature to suffer.

Now, this wisdom of God in redemption is in no aspect brought out more strikingly than in the harmony which it has established among what appear conflicting attributes. Here is nothing like the prophet’s graphic picture of a city, where chariots jostle each other on the streets; nor like what happens even on the spacious ocean, when in the gloom of night bark dashes into bark, and foundering crews find in their ship a coffin, and in the deep sea their grave. Harmony, indeed, sits enthroned amid the beautiful order of the starry heavens. Flaming sun, and wandering comet, and rolling planets, move in their orbits without accident or collision; yet in the harmony established among the attributes of God, redemption illustrates a higher wisdom. We appeal to one fact, which brings that out most palpably. It is this, that with the deepest interests at stake — in circumstances eminently fitted to sharpen his ingenuity — man never approached, so much as guessed at, the only method of salvation. We can shew how near preceding philosophers have reached to the later discoveries of science. For many centuries before their practical application, China was familiar with the properties both of gunpowder and the magnet; and in our own day have not we seen one astronomer get upon the track of a star, and start a thought, by which another — who pursued it to its ultimate conclusions — has been conducted to the brilliant discovery? Every one acquainted with the history of science, knows that some of the greatest inventions of the nineteenth century were all but anticipated at former periods; another stepbut another step — and the world had possessed them ages before; and, centuries ago, man would have steered his way across the sea by the compass needle, yoked the spirits of fire and water to his triumphant wheels, and flashed his messages over oceans and continents on the wings of lightning.

The mystery of godliness, however — God manifest in the flesh — a “Daysman” such as the patriarch desired — with the right hand of Divinity to lay on God, and the left hand of humanity to lay on man, and thus the “fellow” and friend of both, to reconcile the estranged — in short, a man to suffer and a God to satisfy, this was a thought which it never entered the boldest mind to conceive. We find nothing corresponding to this in the creeds and religions of a heathen world. There is neither glimpse nor glimmering of it in these. Every way but the right one was thought of. Here, the sinner seeks by his own works to work out redemption; here, by costly sacrifices he attempts to appease offended justice; here, in children — whom he offers on the bloody

M altar, or passes through the fire to Moloch — he gives the “fruit of his body for the sin of his soul;” here again — doing less violence to nature — guilty of a crime less contrary to reason and revolting to humanity, he courts death beneath the ponderous wheels of Juggernaut, and sheds the blood of his own body to expiate the guilt of his soul. These were the sands on which man built his house. These were the straws the drowning caught at. There never entered into other mind than God’s a plan, or shadow of a plan, by which gentle Mercy might be espoused to stern Justice, and God — in the lustre of untarnished holiness, and the majesty of a vindicated law — might appear, as he is seen in Jesus, the “just and yet the justifier of the ungodly.”

III. The holiness of God is glorified in redemption.

The eyes are moved by the heart, as the hands of a time-piece are turned by its internal machinery. We turn them to what the heart loves, and from what the heart loathes. The most emphatic expression of dislike is a silent one — the closed eyes and averted head. Such an attitude as I can fancy Zedekiah’s was, when they brought out his sons to slay them in their father’s presence; and “to wound him that God had smitten,” to add bitterness to his captivity and a crushing weight to his chains, to imprint a spectacle on his memory, that should haunt him like a horrid spectre, when sight was quenched and hope for ever gone, his barbarous enemies put the children to death before they put out the father’s eyes. When you have in fancy put yourself in that father’s place, imagining, when you had implored them to begin with you, and save you this horrid sight, and they had refused the favour of these burning irons, how you would have closed your eyes, and turned shuddering from the scene, you may be able in some measure to appreciate the abhorrence with which a holy God regards iniquity. Hear the prophet — “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.”

Nothing might appear more strongly to express the holiness of God than this language, “Thou canst not look on iniquity;” and yet his hatred of sin is still more fully and much more strongly expressed by the very way in which he saves the sinner; more fully expressed in redemption, than if, executing relentless vengeance, with an eye that knew no pity, and with a hand that would not spare, he had made an utter end of sinners — such an end that, to borrow the language of the prophet, “there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped.” What man, what father, has not felt so on reading even the story of the Roman judge? Had that sternest of patriots condemned common criminals enough to make the scaffolds of justice and the gutters of Rome run red with blood, such wholesale slaughter had been a weak expression of his abhorrence of crime, compared with the death of this solitary youth. When the culprit — his own child, the infant he had carried in his arms, his once sweet and beautiful boy, the child of his tenderest affections, who had wound himself round a father’s heart — rose and received the immolating sentence at a father’s lips, oh! that iron man offered the costliest sacrifice man ever made at the shrine of justice, and earned for Roman virtue a proverbial fame.

That is nothing to the spectacle which redemption offers. Over what are these angels hovering? On what scene do they bend a gaze so fixed, intent, so full of awe and wonder? Sons of the morning! they had sung

/ in their joy over a new-born world. Attendants at the birth of earth! they now hail with intenser wonder, and

& praise in loftier strains, the birth in a stable, the appearance of a babe in Bethlehem. They had seen suns blazing into light; they had seen worlds start into being, and watched them as, receiving their first impulse from the Creator’s hand, they rolled away into the far realm of space; but never had they followed world or sun with such interest as they follow the steps of this weary Traveller from his lowly cradle to the cross of Calvary. What draws all eyes to that sacred spot? what holds them gazing on it with looks of such solemn interest? The Son of God dies beneath his Father’s hand. Innocence bleeds for guilt; divine innocence for human guilt; a spectacle at which, perhaps, in the mysterious language of the Apocalypse, “There was silence in heaven.” On the night which Daniel passed in the lions’ den the Persian would hear no music; — nor flute, nor harp, nor psaltery, nor dulcimer, woke the echoes of his palace; the daughters of music were all brought low. And I could be bold enough to fancy that during these dread hours, when God’s Son hung dying on the tree, there was no music in heaven — there was a solemn pause; still every harp, silent and hushed the voice of song; then, when all is over, and the cry, “It is finished,” and the last dying quiver have passed from Jesus’ lips, I can fancy how these angels broke the awful silence, and, turning round to the throne, exclaimed, with new, with deeper, with holier reverence, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.”

This holiness, so glorified in redemption, appears still more plainly, when we consider how the eyes of Love both multiply and magnify beauties; and, over looking all defects, reconcile us even to deformity. How beautifully, tenderly, touchingly, affection clings to an idiot child! with what ingenuity does Love palliate in our children faults which are tolerable and tolerated in no one else. She flings a broad and kindly mantle over the shame of child and parent, brother, sister, and friend. See how Eli — a too indulgent parent — tolerates crimes in his sons, which it is only doing this holy man justice to believe, he would have died rather than have himself committed. Now, in our judgment, the holiness of God shines conspicuously in this, that, even when sin was mysteriously associated with his beloved Son, it appeared none the less vile in his eyes; perhaps viler, fouler, still more loathsome, — just as the churchyard mould, flung by the sexton from a grave upon winter’s fresh fallen snow, looks the blacker for the contrast. Love would have spared the pains of a beloved Son, but see how it is met and mastered by God’s hatred of sin. He looks on our sins as laid on Christ, and still he hates them with a perfect hatred, turning on our generous substitute an unmitigated vengeance. To slay sin, he passes his sword through the bosom of a well-beloved Son. If he spared not even his own Son, when he took our sins upon him, how holy is God! Whom will he spare? What will he spare? How loud the alarum that Calvary rings in the ears of a drowsy world! With your eye turned to the cross, within sight of its agonies, within sound of its groans, I ask the question, and wait for an answer, If he did not spare his own Son, how shall he spare the impenitent and unbelieving? “If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?”

IV. The justice of God is glorified in redemption.

The prophet is perplexed. He strains his eye to penetrate a mystery. He says to God, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil;” but then, as one unable to reconcile the attributes of his character with the dealings of his providence, he asks, “Wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and boldest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?” Now, although — as that question implies — clouds and darkness are round about Jehovah’s throne, whatever shadow present events may appear to cast upon his justice, and to whatever trial, as in the wrongs of a Joseph or David, faith may be put, in believing that there is a just God upon earth, his justice is as conspicuous in redemption as was the cross which illustrated it to the crowd on Calvary. Sinners, indeed, are pardoned, but then, their sins are punished; the guilty are acquitted, but then, their guilt is condemned; the sinner lives, but then, the surety dies; the debtor is discharged, but not till the debt is paid. Dying “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,” Jesus satisfies for us; and as we have seen a paid and discharged account pierced by a nail, and hung to gather cobwebs on the dusty wall, the surety who paid our debt, nor left us one farthing to pay, has taken the handwriting that was against us and nailed it to his cross.

And now, I aver, that justice is not only satisfied, but more than satisfied. She is better pleased to have her debtors free in heaven than incarcerated in hell. It must be so. It is better for the creditor to hold the money in his purse than him who owed it in a prison, and there is no man of common humanity or even of common sense, but esteems himself happier to have the debt paid than the debtor rotting in a jail. Observe, I pray you, that in regard to the lost, and her claims on them, justice, in a sense, is never satisfied. The pains of hell do not, and cannot exhaust the penalty. Dreadful sentence! banishment for life, for life eternal, from the blissful presence of God. Mysterious debt! which ever paying is never paid. No wonder, in one sense, that Jesus died to save. The calamity is so tremendous, so incalculably tremendous, that the occasion was as worthy of the interposition of God, as the salvation it offers is of your grateful and instant acceptance. Embrace it; for no length of suffering discharges this debt — an awful truth clearly established by the awful fact that the debtor is never discharged. Justice, in the way of punishment, is never satisfied; and it is plain therefore — to say nothing of his mercy — that God’s justice is more illustriously glorified, and far more fully satisfied through the satisfaction rendered by our substitute, than it could have been by our everlasting sufferings.

Nor is that all. It is a vulgar error to suppose that the only office of justice is to punish. Justice has higher and more pleasing functions. Sternly, indeed, she stands by the gallows tree; and when her hand has drawn the bolt and launched her victim into eternity, she leaves the scene, sorrowing, it may be, yet satisfied. It is a melancholy satisfaction. From that revolting spectacle turn to this hall of assembled nobles, where amid the brilliant, flashing, gorgeous, magnificence of the scene, all eyes are fixed upon one man. He comes red with the blood of a hundred battles, and crowned with the trophies of a hundred victories; he comes at the summons of a sovereign whose crown he has saved; he comes to receive the thanks of a country, grateful for his defence of its shores. Justice presides in that assembly. She was satisfied on the scaffold, here she is more than satisfied. Pleasure and triumph light up her eye, as, with lavish hand, she dispenses titles and rewards, and upon a head so often covered by the God of battles, she places a laurel crown.

In fact, it is her noblest function to reward merit, to wreath with honours the brow of virtue or of valour, and send suspected innocence back to the world cheered by the plaudits and flushed with the triumph of a public acquittal. Justice did a stern but righteous act, when she hung up Haman in the face of the sun, and before the eyes of the city — a warning to all tyrants, and a terror to all sycophants; yet it was a loftier and a happier exercise of her functions to call the Jew from obscurity, to conduct him along the crowded streets with a crest-fallen enemy walking at his stirrup, and royal heralds going before to blow his fame, and ever and anon to cry, “Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.” Even so, shall the justice of God be glorified when heads, now lying in the grave, are crowned with honour. Believer! lift up thy drooping head. Thou shalt lift it up in glory from the dust. “He is faithful .and just to forgive us our sins.” In consideration of a Redeemer’s righteousness, God shall crown thy brows; in the righteousness that is on thee, he will reward the work of his Son; and in the righteousness that is in thee, approve the work of his Spirit. The august assembly of the skies shall present a spectacle of justice glorified. In the Head with all the members exalted, the Captain and every soldier of his army crowned, Jesus shall receive the full payment of His wages, and justice shall reward a Saviour in the saved. “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.”

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