The Uniformity of Nature.
I. The uniformity of nature rebukes man's faint-heartedness. When we are crushed with many a bereavement, ought it to be a matter of complaint to us that nature, which has, perhaps, caused our transient anguish, should appear to treat us with total disregard? It is a salutary reminder that we make too much of our individual sorrows; that we are but parts of a vast whole; that our days on earth are but a setting forth and a beginning, not a finishing.
II. Uniformity rewards man's efforts. If we could not absolutely rely on the steady unvarying laws of nature, no knowledge could be attained, no triumphs won. The world would have been not a cosmos, but a chaos. It would have been to mankind an intolerable source of terror to live under the reign of the exceptional. But as it is, nature seems to welcome those triumphs over her which are won by obedience to her laws. If man, to his own comfort and advantage, has gained from the universe an almost illimitable power, is not that power due simply and solely to the uniformity of law?
III. This steady uniformity is our pledge of the impartial fidelity of God. So far as the management of the material universe is concerned, God has declared unmistakably that He has no favourites. He has given to material forces a law which cannot be broken. We trust Him more because there is no devilish element in nature, no wild impulse rushing with eruptions of curse and blessing into space. We begin to see that nature is but a word, is but a figure of speech, is but a fiction of imagination, is nothing in the world but a reverent synonym for the sum total of the laws which God has impressed upon His universe.
F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 337.
Collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity.
God is pronounced in the collect to be the Author and Giver of all good things. Whether this was intended or not, the phrase is a most exact echo of the words of St. James in the text. There is a splendid movement in the preamble of the collect, where God is described not only as the Author and Giver of all good things, but the "Lord of all power and might." It is impossible not to feel how much we owe to Cranmer and his associates for this preamble. It is true that for this magnificent language there is a small Latin basis, but the change which has been made in it amounts to transformation.
I. What distinction can we properly draw between power and might? The terms are not really identical in meaning, and the distinction to be drawn between them is properly this, that power is the more abstract term, might or strength the more concrete. There may be power that is not excited. A man may have the power to speak, and yet may be silent. In the collect we attribute to God the perfection of power, in that He is almighty, and the perfection of might, because that omnipotence is ready to be used on our behalf without the risk of failure.
II. The name of God is His character as revealed to us. His name describes to us what He is. We have reason to pray that our nature may be so corrected that the revelation of the Deity above us may be welcome and dear. But implanting is not enough, whether it be of a seed or a graft. There must be growth. The word "increase" is familiar to us elsewhere in Scripture, as denoting an essential feature in the Christian life. Fostering care also is required, and provision for safety. We ask that we may be nourished with all goodness, and kept in the same. In reflecting on this part of the collect, the devout mind inevitably reverts to familiar passages of the Old Testament, and finds there abundant material for wholesome thought. When the Lord planted His vineyard with the choicest vine, He likewise fenced it. No one who has travelled in Palestine can have failed to observe the vast importance of the fenceto the vineyard.
J. S. Howson, The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels,p. 98.
References: James 1:17. H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 235; Homilist,vol. vii., p. 179; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 356; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 532; Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 215; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. vi., p. 273.