THE CREATOR
Isaiah 48:13. Mine hand also hath laid the foundation, &c.
It seems to be an axiom of modern philosophy that all human knowledge has been progressive, from the roughest fanciful guesses to the safely applied science of our days. Assuming this, we can only account for the recognition of the Oneness of the Creator and the Unity of Creation, not only in the age of Isaiah, but in that of Moses and in that of the Patriarchs, by attributing it to God’s own revelation of Himself to man. This verse brings to mind the sublimely simple and authoritative declaration with which that revelation opens, and it claims our attention in the same calm way to the terrestrial and celestial manifestations of the Divine handiwork.
I. THE FOUNDATION OF THE EARTH.
The solid earth has been regarded in all ages as the type of all that is “sure and firm set.” But how does its enormous axis remain unbent? Why does not its crust fall in upon the attracting centre, or why do not the resisting forces shatter it? Because matter and forces have been balanced and adapted by Infinite Wisdom and Power (see Isaiah 40:12; Job 38:4-7). But it is not merely a dead weight and bulk. There is incessant physical and chemical action from the outermost aerial limit to the inmost metallic core. Change, decay, renewal, progress, are incessantly busy upon it. Individuals, races, and types all yield place to more advanced successors. The writer of the Book of Job saw the mountains falling and coming to naught, and the rivers wearing the stones. Close research reveals even land and sea changing positions. “The mountains depart and the hills are removed.” Earthquake, volcano, ice, storm, flood, all contribute to the constant ruin—
“The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands:
They melt like mist, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.”
Yet the earth, the platform of all these changes, continues stedfast and intact: through all seeming change there is real establishment. Day follows night; spring follows winter. Mountain ridges always lift up their crests on the continents; rivers flow down to the seas; varied life peoples the plains, the forests, the air, the waters. New dynasties, civilisations, faiths replace the old. And there is continuous progress; from “chaos and old night” to light and order; thence to beauty and life; thence on to consciousness, sensation, will, thought, soul, worship.
It requires a stronger foundation to keep principles firm, while details change, than if all change were impossible. Strongest, when all changes are dominated into orderly measured advancement, “With ebb and flow conditioning their march.” The conditions are met by the declaration that God’s hand “hath laid the foundation of the earth,” of life, of human society (Psalms 119:90-91).
II. THE OVER-ARCHING HEAVENS.
“My right hand hath spanned the heavens.” The mind is utterly lost in the attempt to realise a personal Being as ordering and dominating only the earth’s changes throughout all time. What, then, of One who not only “sitteth upon the circle of the earth,” of which “the inhabitants are as grasshoppers;” but who “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them abroad as a tent to dwell in;” who extends them from system to system throughout the space depths, and rules them from eternity to eternity? Thought dies in trying to realise only unoccupied immensity, much more in grappling with the interaction of interminable forces on the atoms of numberless worlds ranging in streams and galaxies throughout it, or scattered in solitary grandeur. “End is there none,” exclaim the angels in the poem of Richter, “whereof we ever heard, neither is there beginning.” Philosophy on such grounds declares a personal God unthinkable. But this is only a testimony to the weakness and limitation of thought, and disqualifies it at once as the sole judge of Divine truth and Divine possibility.
The demonstrated unity of material and action throughout space and time establish the existence of one everlasting directive Mind. Otherwise Night and Nothingness have evolved all the living wonder within us and around us, which is more “unthinkable” yet, than that one guiding Being, who
“Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.”
Telescopy reveals this infinity of worlds as to number. God here declares that His right hand grasps them all. The universality of gravitation and the teachings of the spectroscope emphasise the unity of Matter, Force, and Law. The microscope reveals that bountiful Wisdom which extends to creatures beneath our visual ken. Logical and mathematical deductions from observed physical and chemical phenomena are taken to prove that the infinitesimal atoms are the originators of all forces, and that all things thus appear to create themselves. Either, then, every atom is a deity, and these free and powerful agents must at some distant epoch have conferred and agreed upon their future action under all possible conditions, with a view to the successive ends to be produced, and each must ever since have kept infallibly faithful thereto, or there is One God, wise enough and powerful enough to “call unto them,” and to cause them to “stand up together.” This is the view which has stood the test of the ages. “To us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6; H. E. I. 353–359, 1491–1494).
There is no part of nature, not even the whirling nebula, the flying comet, or the solitary wandering meteorite, in which law and force are not. Therefore no point of space is without God. And nothing has leaked out from the hollow of His hand. The infinitely great and the infinitely little have not. In spite of all the apparent contradictions of life and of history, man has not. The believer realises that he has not, and will not. In the midst of darkness and perplexity we may well remember that our restless, pain-fraught circumstances never shall. We may remind the sinner that he has not and cannot. Even “hell is naked before God, and destruction hath no covering.” This truth may be ignored for a while, but rocks and mountains shall be powerless to hide it one day. God’s grasp will soon tighten itself irresistibly. Shall it prove the embrace of the all-loving Father, or of the consuming unquenchable fire?
III. THE DIVINE PURPOSE IN THESE GREAT WORKS.
God has founded the earth and His right hand spans the heavens. He has not done His marvellous work without well-determined purpose. But “who hath known the mind of the Lord?” The soul can gather hints. Upon the laying of earth’s corner-stone, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” Why? Could it be at the forecast of all the sin, the misery, and death of which its surface was to become the theatre, and upon which the heavens continue to look down? Has any human heart ever experienced that high degree of happiness and satisfaction here, which could have inspired by anticipation their rapturous strains? Or can we believe that they arose in response to any such cheerless vision as that final future to which science looks as the most hopeful prospect she dares to cherish from the long interaction of her all-potent all-promising atoms? Sir William Thompson has expressed it for us:—“That the sun, with all his planets fused into his mass, shall roll a black ball through infinite space.” That is, that life having worn itself out in the weary struggle from form to form, shall at last fruitlessly inherit only the blackness of darkness for ever. Their visions were brighter than these, or no joyous shouts would have applauded the work of creation. But whatever were their visions, these are facts:—
1. The heavens have been God’s grand lesson-books for the instruction and elevation of His children (Psalms 8, 19)
2. The earth has been the scene of revelations of His character, which we cannot believe to be surpassed by any vouchsafed to any other portion of His universe: His judgments on sin; His manifestations of mercy; His tabernacling amongst men in the person of His Son; the death on the cross for the redemption of lost humanity; the nobleness, sincerity, patience, unselfishness, and forgiveness of God manifested in the spiritual education of His children.
3. The long process of sin and redemption shall at length have a glorious consummation. “The righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” God works in nature by stern and relentless agents; and sin, pain, and death will be found one day to have borne necessary parts in elaborating the new creation, which shall know them again no more for ever. Whether the same grand laws working in the same matter shall continue to evolve ever-new phases of order, life, and beauty out of “the infinite resource of the divine mind,” or whether matter and laws themselves along with us shall be gloriously changed, we know not. Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.—William Seward.