EPHESIANS III. i6 135
^ A ship was rounding Cape Horn, where, as you may know, on account of the fogs and storms, the sun may not appear in view for many days together. The ship of which I am speaking had encountered violent storms ; the weather was intensely cold, so that icicles were hanging from the mast and yard-arms. A sailor boy was ordered out upon one of the yard-arms to reef a sail ; but as he was out there, hanging over the dark and stormy sea, he raised a cry that his hands were getting benumbed and that he was about to fall. The captain, a relative of his own, shouted to him to hold on, and seizing a piece of rope lying on the deck ran up the rigging, went out on the yard and lashed the boy to it until he could be rescued. When the captain was tying the rope round the body of the lad, he said : " If you ever prayed in your life, pray now." " I cannot pray," said the boy, " but I can sing." And there, over that wild sea, the boy sang this verse of the paraphrase —
His voice commands the tempest forth,
And stills the stormy wave ; And though His arm be strong to smite,
'Tis also strong to save.
That sea captain is a member of this congregation, and that sailor boy was taught in our own Sabbath school.^
^ A close, attentive study of Watts's picture of " The All- pervading" will throw some light upon its meaning. All the immeasurable expanse of space is pervaded by a Divine Element, which Watts depicts as a figure with great encircling wings, seated and holding in its lap a globe, representing the stellar universe. Nothing could be more impressive and awe-inspiring than the sense of the overwhelming vastness and ubiquity of this Divine Element throughout the world which is given in this picture. It penetrates to the essence of everything; it holds everything from the largest to the smallest within its mighty grasp. It is a sublime conception that a Personality is seated on the throne of universal empire. We must postulate Spirit and not a thing as the first formative causation. The universe is not self- created and self-upheld. A thing cannot originate a thing. Law is a necessity of things, but law is an expression of will. It is not eternal, self-enacting, self-executing. The laws of the universe presuppose an agent, since they are only the modes in which the agent operates. They cannot be the cause of their own observance. The All-Pervading is Spirit which includes, but is not limited to Personality. The Creator and Upholder of all things is not a * Robertson of Irvine (by A. Guthrie), 90.
136 POWER IN THE INWARD MAN
mere metaphor for force. And thus we are brought back to the magnificent generalization of the artist in his most original picture.^
(2) His Wisdom. — How manifest are the traces of God's wisdom in the way in which the earth has been fitted to develop and support man, and in the manifold provision made for man's education and comfort! But what we have to notice more particularly here is, not merely the wisdom of God, but the riches of His wisdom; and these are seen not only in the original adaptation of means to ends, but in the way by which God can bring good out of evil. The mechanist would be wise who could invent and construct a machine which by the simplest movements could produce mighty results ; but he would be rich in wisdom, who, out of that same machine, when marred and broken, could produce still mightier results.
God's wisdom is seen in making all things work together for good ; and what a wealth of wisdom is implied in bringing out of the most contradictory and deleterious elements a vast, harmonious and unspeakably valuable result !
We are broken on the wheel ; torn by tribulation ; beaten and shaken and purified by sorrow ; emptied from vessel to vessel ; passed from process to process ; — the design of the whole being to bring us forth at last like the snowy sheet of paper ; and not only so, but to impress upon us also the very thoughts of God, that we may thereafter circulate through the universe, " living epistles of Christ, known and read of all men." " 0 the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out ! "
^ While the adaptations of natural life are comprehended under the term " Sophia," or the wisdom of God, the adjustments of the spiritual life and its laws and development are what is called by the apostles the all-varied wisdom of God, I am sorry that I cannot translate the Greek word better — I know what it means, and what it does not mean. It does not mean that the manifestation of God which we call His wisdom is variegated like a Joseph's coat of many colours, patched up out of many fabrics, both old and new, and often self-discordant, because the new agreeth not with the old. It does mean that there is an ever- changing diversity in the Divine wisdom and work which glows * Hugh Macmillan, G. F. Watts, 191.