our felicity. The blessedness of the triune Jehovah shall be our blessedness for ever and ever. Did you notice that our text says: "He hath called us unto His glory"? This outshines everything. The glory which the saints will have is the same glory which God possesses, and such as He alone can bestow. -Spurgeon. GOD. God a Person. In our highest moments we instinctively speak of a Someone not merely of a Somewhat. Richter says that when a child first witnesses a thunder-storm, or when the greatest objects of Nature-such as the Alps, the Himalayas or the ocean-come before the mind for the first time, then is the moment in which to speak of God; for the sublime everywhere awakens the thought, not merely of a Somewhat, but of a Someone behind it. Not a Somewhat merely, but a Someone walks on Niagara's watery rim. The farther up you ascend the Alps, if your thoughts are awake, the nearer you come to anticipated communion, not only with Somewhat but with Someone higher than the Alps or than the visible heavens that are to be rolled away. There are in the midnights on the ocean voices that the waves do not utter. I have paced to and fro on the deck of a steamer midway between England and America, and remembered that Greenland was on the north and Africa and the Tropic Islands on the south, in the resounding, seething dark, and my home behind me, and the mother isle before me. Lying on the deck and looking into the topgallants and watching them sway to and fro among the constellations, and listening to the roll of the great deep, I have given myself, I hope, some opportunity to study the voices of Nature there; but I assure you that my experience has been like that. of every other traveler in the moments when the sublimities of the sea and the stars have spoken loudest. A Somewhat and a Someone greater than they spoke louder yet. The most audible word uttered in that midnight in the center of the Atlantic was not concerning Africa, America, England or the tumbling icebergs of the North, but of the Someone who holds all the immensities and the eternities in His palm as the small dust of the balance. JOSEPH COOK. God's Highest Glory. Salvation is God's highest glory. He is glorified in every dewdrop that twinkles to the morning sun. He is magnified in every wood flower that blossoms in the copse, although it live to blush unseen and waste its sweetness in the forest air. God is glorified in every bird that warbles on the spray; in every lamb that skips the mead. Do not the fishes in the sea praise Him? From the tiny minnow to the huge leviathan, do not all creatures that swim the water bless and praise His name? Do not all created things extol Him? Is there aught beneath the sky, save man, that does not glorify God? Do not the stars exalt Him, when they write His name upon the azure of Heaven in their golden letters? Do not the lightnings adore Him when they flash His brightness in arrows of light, piercing the midnight darkness? Do not thunders extol Him when they roll like drums in the march of the God of armies? Do not all things exalt Him, from the least even to the greatest? But singsing, O Universe! Till thou hast exhausted thyself, thou canst not afford a song so sweet as the "Song of Incarnation." Though Creation may be a majestic organ of praise, it can not reach the compass of the golden canticle-Incarnation! There is more in that than in creation, more melody in Jesus in the manger than there is in worlds on worlds rolling their grandeur round the throne of the Most High.-Spurgeon. The Glory of God. The Glory of God! How shall I describe it? I must set before you a strange Scriptural picture. Mordecai must be made glorious for his fidelity to his king, and singular is the honor which his monarch ordains for him. This was the royal order: "Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head; and let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honor, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him: 'Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor." Can you not imagine the surprise of the Jew when robe and ring were put upon him, and when he 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. -SPUR GEON. 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 The clouds catch some, the out upon the world for us. 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. |