This word of John's, 'It is the Lord!'--ought to be the conviction with
the light of which we go out to the examination of all events, and to
the consideration of all the circumstances of our daily life. We
believe that unto Christ is given 'all power in heaven and upon earth.'
We believe that to Him belongs creative power--that 'without Him was
not anything made which was made.' We believe that from Him came all
life at first. In Him life was, as in its deep source. He is the
Fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into existence
without His creative power, so none continues to exist without His
sustaining energy. We believe that He allots to all men their natural
characters and their circumstances. We believe that the history of the
world is but the history of His influence, and that the centre of the
whole universe is the cross of Calvary. In the light of such
convictions, I take it, every man that calls himself a Christian ought
to go out to meet life and to study all events. Let me try, then, to
put before you, very briefly, one or two of the provinces in which we
are to take this conviction as the keynote to all our knowledge.
No man will understand the world aright, to begin with, who cannot say
about all creation, 'It is the Lord!' Nature is but the veil of the
invisible and ascended Lord: and if we would pierce to the deepest
foundations of all being, we cannot stop until we get down to the
living power of Christ our Saviour and the Creator of the world, by
whom all things were made, and whose will pouring out into this great
universe, is the sustaining principle and the true force which keeps it
from nothingness and from quick decay.
Why, what did Christ work all His miracles upon earth for? Not solely
to give us a testimony that the Father had sent Him; not solely to make
us listen to His words as a Teacher sent from God; not solely as proof
of His Messiahship,--but besides all these purposes there was surely
this other, that for once He would unveil to us the true Author of all
things, and the true Foundation of all being. Christ's miracles
interrupted the order of the world, because they made visible to men
for once the true and constant Orderer of the order. They interrupted
the order in so far as they struck out the intervening links by which
the creative and sustaining word of God acts in nature, and suspended
each event directly from the firm staple of His will. They revealed the
eternal Orderer of that order in that they showed the Incarnate Word
wielding the forces of nature, which He has done from of old and still
does. We are then to take all these signs and wonders that He wrought,
as a perennial revelation of the real state of things with regard to
this natural world, and to see in them all, signs and tokens that into
every corner and far-off region of the universe His loving hand
reaches, and His sustaining power goes forth. Into what province of
nature did He not go? He claimed to be the Lord of life by the side of
the boy's bier at the gate of Nain, in the chamber of the daughter of
Jairus, by the grave of Lazarus. He asserted for Himself authority over
all the powers and functions of our bodily life, when He gave eyes to
the blind, hearing to the deaf, feet to the lame. He showed that He was
Lord over the fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, the fish of the
sea. And He asserted His dominion over inanimate nature, when the
fig-tree, cursed by Him, withered away to its roots, and the winds and
waves sunk into silence at His gentle voice. He let us get a glimpse
into the dark regions of His rule over the unseen, when 'with authority
He commanded the unclean spirits, and they came out.' And all these
things He did, in order that we, walking in this fair world,
encompassed by the glories of this wonderful universe, should be
delivered from the temptation of thinking that it is separated from
Him, or independent of His creative and sustaining power; and in order
that we should feel that the continuance of all which surrounds us, the
glories of heaven and the loveliness of earth, are as truly owing to
the constant intervention of His present will, and the interposition
beneath them of His sustaining hand, as when first, by the 'Word of
God' who 'was with God and who was God,' speaking forth His fiat, there
came light and beauty out of darkness and chaos.
O Christian men! we shall never understand the Christian thought about
God's universe, until we are able to say, Preservation is a continual
creation; and beneath all the ordinary workings of Nature, as we
faithlessly call it, and the apparently dead play of secondary causes,
there are welling forth, and energising, the living love and the
blessed power of Christ, the Maker, and Monarch, and Sustainer of all.
'It is the Lord!' is the highest teaching of all science. The mystery
of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded in
hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a
Lawgiver, and that all working involves a divine energy; and that
beneath all which appears there lies for ever rising up through it and
giving it its life and power, the one true living Being, the Father in
heaven, the Son by whom He works, and the Holy Ghost the Spirit.
Darkness lies on Nature, except to those who in
'the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky,'
see that Form which these disciples saw in the morning twilight. Let
'It is the Lord!' be the word on our lips as we gaze on them all, and
nature will then be indeed to us the open secret, the secret of the
Lord which 'He will show to them that fear Him.'
Then again, the same conviction is the only one that is adequate either
to explain or to make tolerable the circumstances of our earthly
condition. To most men--ah! to all of us in our faithless times--the
events that befall ourselves, seem to be one of two things equally
horrible, the play of a blind Chance, or the work of an iron Fate. I
know not which of these two ghastly thoughts about the circumstances of
life is the more depressing, ruining all our energy, depriving us of
all our joy, and dragging us down with its weight. But brethren, and
friends, there are but these three ways for it--either our life is the
subject of a mere chaotic chance; or else it is put into the mill of an
iron destiny, which goes grinding on and crushing with its remorseless
wheels, regardless of what it grinds up; or else, through it all, in it
all, beneath it and above it all, there is the Will which is Love, and
the Love which is Christ! Which of these thoughts is the one that
commends itself to your own hearts and consciences, and which is the
one under which you would fain live if you could? I understand not how
a man can front the awful possibilities of a future on earth, knowing
all the points at which he is vulnerable, and all the ways by which
disaster may come down upon him, and retain his sanity, unless he
believes that all is ruled, not merely by a God far above him, who may
be as unsympathising as He is omnipotent, but by his Elder Brother, the
Son of God, who showed His heart by all His dealings with us here
below, and who loves as tenderly, and sympathises as closely with us as
ever He did when on earth He gathered the weary and the sick around
Him. Is it not a thing, men and women, worth having, to have this for
the settled conviction of your hearts, that Christ is moving all the
pulses of your life, and that nothing falls out without the
intervention of His presence and the power of His will working through
it? Do you not think such a belief would nerve you for difficulty,
would lift you buoyantly over trials and depressions, and would set you
upon a vantage ground high above all the petty annoyances of life? Tell
me, is there any other place where a man can plant his foot and say,
'Now I am on a rock and I care not what comes'? The riddle of
Providence is solved, and the discipline of Providence is being
accomplished when we have grasped this conviction--All events do serve
me, for all circumstances come from His will and pleasure, which is
love; and everywhere I go--be it in the darkness of disaster or in the
sunshine of prosperity--I shall see standing before me that familiar
and beloved Shape, and shall be able to say, 'It is the Lord!' Friends
and brethren, that is the faith to live by, that is the faith to die
by; and without it life is a mockery and a misery.
Once more this same conviction, 'It is the Lord! should guide us in all
our thoughts about the history and destinies of mankind and of Christ's
Church. The Cross is the centre of the world's history, the incarnation
and the crucifixion of our Lord are the pivot round which all the
events of the ages revolve. 'The testimony of Jesus was the spirit of
prophecy,' and the growing power of Jesus is the spirit of history, and
in every book that calls itself the history of a nation, unless there
be written, whether literally or in spirit, this for its motto, 'It is
the Lord!' all will be shallow and incomplete.
'They that went before and they that came after,' when He entered into
the holy city in His brief moment of acceptance and pomp, surrounded
Him with hosannas and jubilant gladness. It is a deep and true symbol
of the whole history of the world. All the generations that went before
Him, though they knew it not, were preparing the way of the Lord, and
heralding the advent of Him who was 'the desire of all nations' and
'the light of men'; and all the generations that come after, though
they know it not, are swelling the pomp of His triumph and hastening
the time of His crowning and dominion. 'It is the Lord!' is the secret
of all national existence. It is the secret of all the events of the
world. The tangled web of human history is only then intelligible when
that is taken as its clue, 'From Him are all things, and to Him are all
things.' The ocean from which the stream of history flows, and that
into which it empties itself, are one. He began it, He sustains it.
'The help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself,' and when all is
finished, it will be found that all things have indeed come from
Christ, been sustained and directed by Christ, and have tended to the
glory and exaltation of that Redeemer, who is King of kings and Lord of
lords, Maker of the worlds, and before whose throne are for ever
gathered for service, whether they know it or not, the forces of the
Gentiles, the riches of the nations, the events of history, the fates
and destinies of every man.
I need not dwell upon the way in which such a conviction as this, my
friends, living and working in our hearts, would change for us the
whole aspect of life, and make everything bright and beautiful, blessed
and calm, strengthening us for all which we might have to do, nerving
us for duty, and sustaining us against every trial, leading us on,
triumphant and glad, through regions all sparkling with tokens of His
presence and signs of His love, unto His throne at last, to lay down
our praises and our crowns before Him. Only let me leave with you this
one word of earnest entreaty, that you will lay to heart the solemn
alternative--either see Christ in everything, and be blessed; or miss
Him, and be miserable. Oh! it is a waste, weary world, unless it is
filled with signs of His presence. It is a dreary seventy years,
brother, of pilgrimage and strife, unless, as you travel along the
road, you see the marks that He who went before you has left by the
wayside for your guidance and your sustenance. If you want your days to
be true, noble, holy, happy, manly, and Godlike, believe us, it is only
when they all have flowing through them this conviction, 'It is the
Lord!' that they all become so.