'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.