God’s Highest Glory

“Thou hast magnified Thy word above all Thy name**

Psalm cxxxviii. 2.

I UNDERSTAND the idea to be “Thou hast magnified Thy still voice in the soul above all Thy majesty in nature,” The “name” of God means His “majesty;” the “word” of God means His “voice in the individual soul.” The Psalmist declares that the latter, unobtrusive as it is, is the most direct testimony to the Divine. I agree with the Psalmist; and none the less because it is not the common opinion. The common opinion is that the sense of God’s majesty in nature should dwarf our estimate of our own personal puny thoughts. I cannot receive this saying. I have heard it said that a study of astronomy must shake my faith in Christ — must reveal my tiny life over against a boundless universe — must make me say “What is man!” But I have always felt that the greatest thing in the world is just an individual soul. I magnify one throb of consciousness above all the united masses of the material creation. There is nothing overpowering to my pride in vast spaces. All the spaces of the universe do not wake in me the wonder that I get from the experience of a single grief or joy. If I were told to a certainty that these starry worlds were uninhabited, I think that, instead of looking up to them reverently, I should look down on them patronisingly. The only thing that keeps them up in my sky is the thought that perhaps individual souls are there — that perhaps within them there dwells the resignation of a patient sufferer, or beats the hopeful heart of a little child.

My soul, art thou trembling beneath the stars? Art thou oppressed by the weight of thine own nothingness? Art thou looking up into the night, with the Israelite of old, and saying ‘’ When I consider Thy heavens, how can there be room for man? Rather shouldst thou say “When I consider man, I find room for the heavens.” It is thou that justiHcst the starry spaces. They have no magnificence to the heart if they be not the habitation of individual souls. In vain we cast the eye over myriad fields of light, in vain we cast the telescope over fields beyond the eye, in vain we cast the imagination over fields beyond the telescope; the heart will still ask the question, “For whom is this glory?” In vain the spaces sparkle if there be no sense of sight; in vain the lustre lingers if there be no sense of beauty; in vain the worlds are woven if there be no sense of home. Not light but love, not space but spirit, is the glory of thy Father. All the outgoings of the morning do not equal thy morning prayer. All the reflection of the evening sun pales before the reflectiveness of thy evening hour. Thou mayst be an infant crying in the infinite night; yet thine infancy is bigger than the night’s infinitude. Magnify thine ofBce, O my soul!