Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

found himself placed upon the king's horse? This may serve as a figure of that which will happen to us; we shall be glorified with the glory of God. The best robe, the best of Heaven's array, shall be appointed unto us, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.--SPURGEON.

The Great Problem.

No one need turn away from the idea of a God because the thought seems hopeless in its vastness and many-sided mystery, for there is no other thought which promises any smoother way for logic or any more peace for the heart. We can not escape the problem contained in man and the world. Man and the world are both here. -SWING.

God Great by What He Gives.

God is great not only in what He has, but in what He gives away. He owns all the colors, but they are poured out upon the world for us. The clouds catch some, the rainbow some, the flowers some, the human cheek some tint; but they are all for us as well as the Creator. God owns the sun, but what does He do with the extra sunbeams? Ask our world on this day of Spring. Ask all the human beings who live on this planet. Ask the birds and the dumb animals, and they will say that the sunbeams are for God and us. The sea is His and ours. The midnight sky is for Him and us. We need not the old times to come back and create more love of gold, but we pray for the days to come when human goodness and beauty will be, like God's colors and light, poured out for all in great profusion.-SWING.

God Not Dead.

60

[ocr errors]

At one time I was sorely vexed and tried by my own sinfulness, by the wickedness of the world, and by the dangers which besct the Church. One morning I saw my wife dressed in mourning. Surprised, I asked her who had died. She replied: "Do you not know? God in Heaven is dead." I said to her: How can you talk such nonsense, Katie? How can God die? He is immortal, and will live through all eternity. "Is that really true?" she asked. "Of course," I said, still not perceiving what she was aiming at; "how can you doubt it? As surely as there is a God in Heaven, so sure is it that He can never die." "And yet," she said, "though you do not doubt that, you are still so hopeless and discouraged." Then I observed what a wise woman my wife was, and mastered my sadness. --MARTIN LUTHER.

God Dismissed from Human Thought.

It would be an alarming experiment if the King of Kings were to be dismissed from the minds of the people of this country, for the notion of such an infinite Being is the ideal by which society measures not only its duties, but also its greatness and its hopes. The Deity is the storehouse in which humanity treasures up all its best thoughts. The storehouse can never become full; for, however wise and kind society may become, the name of God opens to receive all the human conceptions of good. This God has always beckoned man on and on. Whether Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, Plato or Paul lifted the eye to

Heaven, each saw a Being far beyond the knowledge or gcodness of self. Wonderful treasurer of our world! He casts away our dross and retains all our gold! His angels bear man up, lest he dash his foot against a stone. Cities have fallen. Their ruins adorn and solemnize the old East. The temples have fallen where the Jewish and Greek statesmen began their speeches with prayer, but the God whom they worshiped gathered up all their moral beauties and bore them onward toward the Christian period without loss.-SWING.

Why Not Accept God?

Why not most cordially espouse the assumption of a Deity? The greatness of such a Being is no hindrance to faith, for the universe does not teach anything else than greatness. Having seen the ocean in peace and in storm, having seen the sun and moon encompass our earth as marvelous lamps, having learned that the sun has been flinging out light and heat for millions of years, having learned that there are millions of such suns, perceiving that man is a mind that can study such a universe and can trace, measure and weigh these distant orbs, the heart need not expect the God of such a scene to pass alone in the likeness of a man or a bird, or even an angel with wings. How can the mind turn from a half-hour of thought in astronomy, in whose heavens are seen gigantic worlds whirling in space like insects in a sunbeam; orbs a million miles in diameter and lighting up systems as an electric lamp lights up a little library or bedchamber; orbs in the light of which a moral and thinking

form of life can read a book at the distance of 95,000,000 miles from the lamp? How turn from globes which run 50,000 or 100,000 miles an hour, and yet carry gently the trembling dewdrop and the waking or sleeping forms of life; orbs which perhaps support a human race on their bosom, and never change their speed a second in a thousand years? How turn from these things and expect God to be anything like the ruler of a city or a sacred cow of the East or the sacred reptiles of old Egypt? It is necessary that the Creator of such a stupendous scene should transcend all thought and move before man a perpetual depth and height wholly immeasurable.-SWING.

God Beyond Philosophy.

In its sublimest research, philosophy

May measure out the ocean-deep-may count
The sands or the sun's rays-but God! for Thee
There is no weight nor measure. None can mount
Up to Thy mysteries. Reason's brightest spark,
Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try
To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark;

And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high,
Even like past moments in eternity.

G. R. DERZHAVIN.

God Unchanging.

When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of Nature, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of Art, and seen that they would not

star.d; on our friends, and they have fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were fleeting as they-we can look to the throne of God. Change and decay have never reached that. The waves of an eternity have been rushing past it, but it has ever remained unshaken. The waves of another eternity are rushing toward it; but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed.— F. W. P. GREENWOOD.

A Scientist's Idea of God.

When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through Nature-when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation-I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.— FARADAY.

66

The Nature of God.

A little child has never gone out of its native village. Its father has been a sailor. The child says to him: Father, what is the ocean ?" “Oh, my child," says the father, "the ocean-why, suppose that little brook there were to widen, and widen, and widen, till it reached away beyond that hill; and then suppose it were to widen, and widen, and widen, till it reached away beyond the mountain; and then suppose it were to reach farther and

« ZurückWeiter »