The God of Nature
George H. Morrison
Isaiah 40:28
Attentive readers of the Old Testament have often noticed one very striking feature of it. It is the manner in which the writers of it fall back for comfort upon the God of nature. Never was there a nation in the world more jealous of religious privilege than the Jews. They stood to God in covenant-relationship which no man could share in save through circumcision. And the strange thing is how often their great writers, when they are seeking comfort or direction, fall back, not on the covenant God, but upon the Lord of heaven and earth. They knew, and in hours of trial they had tested, the strengthening efficacy of their own Jehovah. They never forgot that He whom they adored was the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. But it is wonderful to find how often their petition goes right away beyond a covenant God, to Him who laid the foundations of the universe, and kindled the nightly shining of the stars. "I to the hills will lift mine eyes," says David. "Lift up your eyes to the heavens," cries Isaiah. In hill and glen, in sunshine and in star, prophet and psalmist find their ground of hope. And I say it is a thing very significant that in a people whose God was so intensely national, there should have been such frequency of outlook to the God who made the heavens and the earth.
Now if this is true of the Old Testament, it is still more notably evident in the New. There is a place there far larger than we think sometimes for the God who fashioned the valleys and the hills. One might have thought that the fatherhood of God would have swallowed up everything in the New Testament. It was a truth so thrilling and so new that we would not have wondered had it swept the field. And yet these very men whose lives were changed by Christ's deep doctrine of God's fatherhood, never ceased to turn for help and comfort to Him who made the heavens and the earth. Christ Himself had led the way in that. He was never wear ...
George H. Morrison
Isaiah 40:28
Attentive readers of the Old Testament have often noticed one very striking feature of it. It is the manner in which the writers of it fall back for comfort upon the God of nature. Never was there a nation in the world more jealous of religious privilege than the Jews. They stood to God in covenant-relationship which no man could share in save through circumcision. And the strange thing is how often their great writers, when they are seeking comfort or direction, fall back, not on the covenant God, but upon the Lord of heaven and earth. They knew, and in hours of trial they had tested, the strengthening efficacy of their own Jehovah. They never forgot that He whom they adored was the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. But it is wonderful to find how often their petition goes right away beyond a covenant God, to Him who laid the foundations of the universe, and kindled the nightly shining of the stars. "I to the hills will lift mine eyes," says David. "Lift up your eyes to the heavens," cries Isaiah. In hill and glen, in sunshine and in star, prophet and psalmist find their ground of hope. And I say it is a thing very significant that in a people whose God was so intensely national, there should have been such frequency of outlook to the God who made the heavens and the earth.
Now if this is true of the Old Testament, it is still more notably evident in the New. There is a place there far larger than we think sometimes for the God who fashioned the valleys and the hills. One might have thought that the fatherhood of God would have swallowed up everything in the New Testament. It was a truth so thrilling and so new that we would not have wondered had it swept the field. And yet these very men whose lives were changed by Christ's deep doctrine of God's fatherhood, never ceased to turn for help and comfort to Him who made the heavens and the earth. Christ Himself had led the way in that. He was never wear ...
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