EPHESIANS III. i6 133
2. And what are the riches of God's glory ? Who of us can conceive them ? Think of the riches of God's material glory. "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." The gold mines and the forests, the gardens and the prairies, the mountains and the seas are all God's. The stars in the heavens, the Milky Way, the Southern Cross, are a part of His glory, for the material universe reveals the wisdom of His handiwork. But that is only the threshold of God's glory. Think of the glory of God's provi- dence, of God's word, of God's grace, of God's Son! Who can conceive the power, and the majesty, and the love, and the com- passion of God ? And all these are included in " the riches of his glory."
^ I seem to stand beside a great sea, a sunlit sea, with wave upon wave, wave upon wave of glory rolling in upon my soul. The resources of God are infinite, and in Christ they are all open to us. Truly, when we pray we may say :
We are coming to a King, Large petitions let us briug.^
3. We may speak of the riches of God under three aspects — first, the riches of His power ; second, the riches of His wisdom ; and third, the riches of His goodness ; and, as it is the blended and harmonious attributes of God that make up His highest glory, the view of His riches under these three aspects may enable us to see something of the riches of His glory.
(1) His Poiver. — We see the riches of His power in creation. If a man could create in the highest sense of the word, how rich he would soon become ! For his own wants he would have an immediate supply. When he was hungry he could create bread. When he was thirsty he could make the pure fountain spring up by his side. When he wanted money he could turn every- thing he touched into gold. It is in the ability to produce that the source of wealth is found.
The riches of God are seen in the preservation of all things in existence as well as in their creation. The sublime act of creation did not exhaust or weary God. From day to day, from year to year, and from century to century, the whole universe is upheld in its primeval freshness and power. The sky is still the " unworn 1 J. W. Ewing, The Undying Christ, 75.
134 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
sky," and time writes no wrinkles on the azure brow of the sea The seasons revolve, and the earth teems every year with beauty and plenty.
And the riches of the Divine power are seen not only in creation and preservation, but in re-creation. We are taught in Scripture that a wondrous transformation must pass over the present world — that forms of being now around us will be dis- solved in a deluge of fire, and that from this second deluge will emerge a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteous- ness. We are also taught that the bodies of men will be raised from the dust of the ground in a new and higher form. What marvellous exhibitions, then, has the future still in store of the riches of the power of God !
^ I have read Carlyle's " Eeminiscences." They remind me of an apple I have just been trying to eat — very sound on the one side, on the other bruised and black. What a pity Froude persisted in thrusting it in the public face, and that he did not help to let the dead bury its dead ! Carlyle had certainly a morbid nature, partly, I suppose, from dyspepsia, and partly from having set himself to expose wrong as the exclusive business of his life, and weakness and incapacity were in his philosophy forms of wrong. We may be thankful that we have a better standard in the Infinite Strength that stooped to weakness to pity and to raise it. I should be far from saying that Carlyle had not the Christian in him, but he wanted one part of it, and it is proof of an entirely original and Divine Being, that the Eeminiscences of the Fishermen of Galilee give us One who had the most perfect purity, with the most tender pity — an unbending strength that never despised weakness.
One of the false things of the day is to exalt power (including intellect as a form of power) at the expense of the moral and spiritual. It belongs to materialism and in a degree to pantheism, and it is the direct opposite of Christianity, which makes Christ lay power aside, in order to make the centre of the universe self-sacrifice and love; and that then power should gravitate to this centre because it is the only safe one. " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power." When we begin to see this, we feel in our deepest nature that it is Divine — that this must be true if the universe has any meaning, and the soul a worthy end. It gets obscured sometimes, but it will come out again.i
1 Letters of John Ker, 330.