That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ.
Heaven and earth united in Christ
Heaven and earth are to be restored to each other as well as to Him. The knowledge of God and the sanctity which have come to us in this world of conflict and sin are to flow into the great stream of pure angelic life; and the joy, the strength, the wisdom, and the security, alike of angels and of men, will be indefinitely augmented. As yet, we and they are like countries so remote or so estranged from each other that there has been no exchange of material or intellectual treasures. What the poverty of England would be if we had been always isolated from the rest of the human race we can hardly tell. It is by the free intercourse of trade, and the still freer intercourse of literature, that nations become rich and wise. Sunnier skies and more luxuriant soils give us more than half our material wealth, and we send in exchange the products of our mines and the works of our industry and skill. From sages who speculated on the universe and human life in the very morning of civilization, from poets whose genius was developed in the ancient commonwealths of Greece, our intellectual energy has received its most vigorous inspiration; and our religious faith is refreshed by streams which had their springs in the life of ancient Jewish saints and prophets, and of Christian apostles who lived eighteen centuries ago. What we hope for in the endless future is a still more complete participation in whatever knowledge and love of God, whatever righteousness, whatever joy, may exist in any province of the created universe. Race is no longer to be isolated from race, or world from world. A power, a wisdom, a holiness, a rapture, of which a solitary, soul, a solitary world, would be incapable, are to be ours through the gathering together of all things in Christ. We, for our part, shall contribute to the fulness of the universal life. To the principalities of heaven we shall be able to speak of God’s infinite mercy to a race which had revolted against His throne; of the kinship between the eternal Son of God and ourselves; of the mystery of His death and the power of His resurrection; of the consolation which came to us in sorrows which the happy angels never knew; of the tenderness of the Divine pity which was shown to us in pain and weariness and disappointment; of the strength of the Divine support which made inconstancy resolute in well doing, and changed weakness and fear into victorious heroism. And they will tell us of the ancient days when no sin had cast its shadow on the universe, and of all that they have learnt in the millenniums of blessedness and purity during which they have seen the face of God. The sanctity which is the fruit of penitence will have its own pathetic loveliness for righteous races that have never sinned; and we shall be thrilled with a new rapture by the vision of a perfect glory which has never suffered even temporary eclipse. Their joy in their own security will be heightened by their generous delight in our rescue from sin and eternal death, and our gratitude for our deliverance will deepen in intensity as we discover that our honour and blessedness are not inferior to theirs who have never broken the eternal law of righteousness. Our final glory will consist, not in the restoration of the solitary soul to solitary communion with God, but in the fellowship of all the blessed with the blessedness of the universe as well as with the blessedness of God. (R. W. Dale, LL. D.)
Timely gathering of all in Christ
I. God has set seasons in which He will accomplish all His will (Ecclesiastes 3:1; Ecclesiastes 3:17). As He brings things natural, spring, summer, autumn, winter, everything in season, so all the works He will do about His children, whether it be the punishing of wickedness for their sake, the delivering of His children from evil, the giving them benefits, He will bring them all forth in the fit appointed seasons.
1. To design times is His prerogative: as a master of a fatally has the right to fix the particular time at which this or that shall be done.
2. He only knows the fittest seasons for the accomplishment of His plans.
(1) Let this reprove our weakness in thinking God sometimes delays too long.
(2) Let us learn to wait on God. We would not in winter have midsummer weather, for it would not be seasonable; so in the winter of any trial with which we are visited we should not wish the sunshine of this or that blessing before God sees it may be seasonably bestowed, remembering that the man who believes does not make undue haste.
II. God, by opening the Gospel, brings us His Christ.
1. By nature we are severed
(1) from God: prodigal sons;
(2) from Christ, like sheep in the valleys of death, running after the wolf, and leaving the Shepherd of our souls;
(3) from one another, a man being by nature a wolf to his brother-man, his feet swift to shed blood.
2. The order in which we are gathered.
(1) The opening of the gospel gathers us into one faith.
(2) By faith, as a spiritual sinew or nerve, it unites us to Christ, making us one person with Him, as in law man and wife are one.
(3) It unites us with God, inasmuch as we are one with His Son.
(4) By being gathered to Christ, we are gathered to the whole Body of Christ, to all who exist under Him. What a wonderful power of union is there in the gospel!
III. All who shall be gathered to Christ are brought to Him by the Gospel. Only one gospel, and that gospel is for all.
II. Observe--who it is in whom we are gathered. In Christ, who--
1. Has abolished the enmity between God and us, and so removed that which divided us; and--
2. He calls us, and effectually draws us home in His time.
(1) Let us then, to preserve our union, walk with Christ, and keep by Him. Even as it is in drawing a circle with compass and lines from the circumference to the centre, so it is with us: the nearer they come to the centre, the more they unite, till they come to the same point; the further they go from the centre in which they are united, the more they run out one from the other. So when we keep to Christ, the nearer we come to Him, the more we unite; but when we run forth into our own lusts and private faction, then we are disjoined from the other.
(2) Since in Christ, our Head, we are joined as members of one and the same body, we mug act as members. The members of one and the same body have no mutual jealousies; they communicate with each other; the mouth takes meat, the stomach digests, the liver makes blood, the eye sees, the hand handles; they wilt not revenge themselves one against another, but mutually bear each others’ burdens, so that their affection each to other is not diminished. God, who is love itself, teaches us these things. (Paul Bayne.)
All things in Christ
Jesus Christ is the fulness of
(1) knowledge;
(2) time;
(3) law;
(4) nature;
(5) grace;
(6) man;
(7) God. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)
The plan of redemption
This is a disclosure of the magnificent and sublime design contemplated by God through means of the gospel. It is the “mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself.” Our own individual salvation constitutes but a fragment of a vast and glorious scheme, which in due course shall be fully achieved. The influence of that atonement to which we owe our redemption is here seen extending itself far and wide in the universe of God, and forming the grand harmonizing and uniting bond among all the objects, however various, of His goodness, mercy, and love. Nay, we are perhaps here taught that its power is to be exerted and displayed in the final subjugation of all things without exception, including the reduction of sin and evil to their own place, as well as the ingathering of all that is good--under the universal sovereignty of God.
I. There is a general plan or scheme, promoted by the Gospel, and here called “the dispensation” or economy “of the fulness of times.” It is, with reference to a plan, or dispensation, or economy, which God has in view, that He has made known to us the mystery of redemption. Every intelligent householder has some plan, according to which he directs all his energies and Jays out all his arrangements. His house, his farm, his estate, are managed and controlled for some definite object, and all his operations are conformed to some view or idea which he has formed for his own guidance. Different seasons of the year and various times come round upon him, but he keeps intelligently and firmly to his ruling purpose, and is not satisfied until the result of his plan has been fully realized. So God Himself, in the government of His whole household--the universal Father and the Lord of all--is represented as having a certain plan or economy, in accordance with which He is pleased to work through successive times, until the result He contemplates be finally attained.
II. What, then, is this grand result contemplated by the dispensation of the fulness of times? It is “to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth even in Him.” But what are we to understand by this? What is the import of “to gather together in one”? And what maybe the full scope of “all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth”? The word rendered “to gather together in one” occurs once again in Romans 13:9, where it is rendered “briefly comprehended.” “If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” There its import is plain; for all the commandments are summed up, “briefly comprehended,” “reduced to a head,” “gathered together in one” in those two great commandments, love to God and love to man, of the last of which the apostle was giving instances. These two commandments are heads on which all the rest depend, from which they hang, in which they are summed up. This idea of summation, representation, headship, seems to belong essentially to the import of the word, and must not be lost sight of in the passage before us, where we read of the gathering up in one of all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. But as it is plain that “all things” do not naturally belong to Christ, but on account of sin the things on earth at least are in a state of alienation, separation, revulsion, we must here necessarily suppose that the word implies the idea of “bringing back” from that state and gathering up into the opposite state of union, harmony, love.
1. The angels may be included in this gathering together in one. Although the unfallen angels do not stand in need of redemption from sin or misery, yet they need to be preserved from the risk of falling, and may well be supposed to owe their security and infallibility in some way to Christ.
2. There is no question concerning the including, or gathering up in one, all the redeemed of mankind. Separated though they may have been in life--according to the times in which they have existed, the countries they have dwelt in, the names and outward distinctions they have borne--their union to Christ, and to each other, has been real. It will, at length, become visible.
3. But it seems intended in this passage, as it is in keeping with the representations of Scripture elsewhere, that the material creation is to share in the glorious ingathering of “all things in Christ.”
III. This gathering up of “all things” is “is Christ,” even “in Him.”
1. Consider the wondrous person of Christ as the God-man, joining mysteriously the Creator and the creation--the Maker and His work in one--by an indissoluble and eternal union.
2. But consider, secondly, that Christ, thus completely fitted to represent the creation of God, by the assumption of the human nature, has been actually constituted head of all things, with all-sufficient power to accomplish the whole plan of God. (W. Alves, M. A.)
All things to be gathered together in Christ
He will yet gather together again, in one, all things in Christ, filling them from His own fulness laid up in Him; gladdening them with His own joy; quickening them with His own life; beautifying them with His own glory; and sustaining them with His own power and resources. Great indeed must be our Lord, in whom and through whom such purposes are to be fulfilled! And divinely inspired must be the record in which they are revealed! Towards the fulfilment and manifestation in us of that purpose, all God’s past dispensations of grace have tended. Note their order.
1. By the Holy Ghost given us and through the gospel, He gathers His people into one faith and one baptism.
2. By faith, as by a spiritual nerve or sinew, He unites us with Christ, making us to become one flesh with Him, as it is written (Ephesians 5:29, “No man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church”).
3. He doth so unite us with Christ as to make us sons-in-law and daughters-in-law; nay, He makes us so much nearer to Himself, by how much God and Christ are more nearly united, than any natural father and son can be. As it is written: “I in them, and Tt of true spiritual enjoyment, no light in which the brightness of truth can be seen, or the warmth of fellowship proved. Without Christ there is no peace, no rest, no safety, no hope.
2. Without Christ, beloved, remember that all the religious acts of men are vanity. What are they but mere air bags, having nothing in them whatever that God can accept? There is the semblance of worship--the altar, the victim, the wood laid in order--and the votaries bow the knee or prostrate their bodies, but Christ alone can send the fire of heaven’s acceptance.
3. Without Christ implies, of course, that you are without the benefit of all those gracious offices of Christ, which are so necessary to the sons of men, you have no true prophet. Without Christ truth itself will prove a terror to you. Like Balaam, your eyes may be open while your life is alienated. Without Christ you have no priest to atone or to intercede on your behalf. Without Christ you are without a Saviour; how will you do? and without a friend in heaven you must needs be if you are without Christ. Without Christ, though you be rich as Croesus, and famous as Alexander, and wise as Socrates, yet are you naked and poor and miserable, for you lack Him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, and who is Himself all in all.
II. The great deliverance which God has wrought for us. We are not without Christ now, but let me ask you, who are believers, where you would have been now without Christ. I think the Indian’s picture is a very fair one of where we should have been without Christ. When asked what Christ had done for him, he picked up a worm, put it on the ground, and made a ring of straw and wood round it, which he set alight. As the wood began to glow the poor worm began to twist and wriggle in agony, whereupon he stooped down, took it gently up with his finger, and said, “That is what Jesus did for me; I was surrounded, without power to help myself, by a ring of dreadful fire that must have been my ruin, but His pierced hand lifted me out of the burning.” Think of that, Christians, and as your hearts melt, come to His table, and praise Him that you are not now without Christ.
1. Then think what His blood has done for you. Take only one thing out of a thousand. It has put away your many, many sins.
2. Bethink you, too, now that you have Christ, of the way in which He came and made you partaker of Himself. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Without Christ
I. When it can be said of a man, that he is “without Christ.
1. When he has no head knowledge of Him. The heathen, of course, who never yet heard the gospel, come first under this description. But unhappily they do not stand alone. There are thousands of people dying in England at this very day, who have hardly any clearer ideas about Christ than the very heathen.
2. When he has no heart faith in Him as his Saviour. Many know every article of the Belief, but make no practical use of their knowledge. They put their trust in something which is not “Christ.”
3. When the Holy Spirit’s work cannot be seen in his life. Who can avoid seeing, if he uses his eyes, that myriads of professing Christians know nothing of inward conversion of heart?
II. The actual condition of a man “without Christ.”
1. To be without Christ is to be without God. St. Paul told the Ephesians as much as this in plain words. He ends the famous sentence which begins, “Ye were without Christ,” by saying, “Ye were without God in the world.” And who that thinks can wonder? That man can have very low ideas of God who does not conceive Him a most pure, and holy, and glorious, and spiritual Being. How then can such a worm as man draw near to God with comfort?
2. To be without Christ is to be without peace. Every man has a conscience within him, which must be satisfied before he can be truly happy. There is only one thing can give peace to the conscience, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ sprinkled on it.
3. To be without Christ is to be without hope. Hope of some sort or other almost every one thinks he possesses. There is but one hope that has roots, life, strength, and solidity, and that is the hope which is built on the great rock of Christ’s work and office as Redeemer.
4. To be without Christ is to be without heaven. In saying this I do not merely mean that there is no entrance into heaven, but that “without Christ” there could be no happiness in being there. A man without a Saviour and Redeemer could never feel at home in heaven. He would feel that he had no lawful fight or title to be there; boldness and confidence and ease of heart would be impossible. (Bishop Ryle.)
Without Christ
It is not long since that a prominent business man, when closely pressed by his pastor, who had lately come to the church, replied with a calm force which was meant to put an end to further pertinacity, “I am interested in all religious matters; I am always glad to see the ministers when they call; but I have in the years past thought the subject over long and carefully, and I have come to the decision deliberately that I have no need of Jesus Christ as a Saviour in the sense you preach.” Only two weeks from this interview the same man was suddenly prostrated with disease; the illness was of such a character as to forbid his conversing with anyone, and the interdict from speaking was continued until he was within an hour of death, A solemn moment was that in which a question was put to him, intimating that he might talk now if he could--nothing would harm him. The last thing, the only thing, he said, was in a melancholy and frightened whisper, “Who will carry me over the fiver?”
Having no hope.--
Hope abandoned
Over the huge hideous iron gates of the Prison de la Roquette, in Paris, which is set apart for criminals that are condemned to death, there is an inscription, which sends a thrill of horror through those who read it--“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!”
Hopes for eternity, what they rest on
When John Wesley lay on an expected death bed (though God spared him some years longer to the world and the Church) his attendants asked him what were his hopes for eternity? And something like this was his reply--“For fifty years, amid scorn and hardship, I have been wandering up and down this world, to preach Jesus Christ; and I have done what in me lay to serve my blessed Master!” What he had done his life and works attest. They are recorded in his Church’s history, and shine in the crown he wears so bright with a blaze of jewels--sinners saved through his agency. Yet thus he spake,
“My hope for eternity--my hopes rest only on Christ--
‘I the chief of sinners am But Jesus died for me.’”
(T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Mournful ignorance
I have seen a child in ignorance of its great loss totter across the floor to its mother’s coffin, and, caught by their glitter, seize the handles, to look round and smile as it rattled them on the hollow sides. I have seen a boy, forgetting his sorrow in his dress, survey himself with evident satisfaction as he followed the bier that bore his father to the grave. And however painful such spectacles, as jarring our feelings, and out of all harmony with such sad and sombre scenes, they excite no surprise nor indignation. We only pity those who, through ignorance of their loss or inability to appreciate it, find pleasure in what should move their grief. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Having no hope
I have read of a tribe of savages that bury their dead in secret, by the hands of unconcerned officials. No grassy mound, no memorial stone guides the poor mother’s steps to the quiet corner where her infant lies. The grave is levelled with the soil; and afterwards a herd of cattle is driven over and over the ground, till every trace of the burial has been obliterated by their hoofs. Anxious to forget death and its inconsolable griefs, these heathen resent any allusion to the dead. You may not speak of them. In a mother’s hearing, name, however tenderly, her lost one, recall a dead father to the memory of his son, and there is no injury which they feel more deeply. From the thought of the dead their hearts recoil. How strange! How unnatural! No, not unnatural. Benighted heathen, their grief has none of the alleviations which are balm to our wounds, none of the hopes that bear us up beneath a weight of sorrows. Their dead are sweet flowers withered, never to revive; joys gone, never to return. To remember them is to keep open a rankling wound, and preserve the memory of a loss which was bitter to feel and still is bitter to think of: a loss which brought only grief to the living, and no gain to the dead. To me, says Paul, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. They know nothing of this; nothing of the hopes that associate our dead in Christ with sinless souls, and sunny skies, and shining angels, and songs seraphic, and crowns of glory, and harps of gold. (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
Hopefulness and steadfastness
A good Methodist in a prayer meeting said that when, many years since, he crossed old ocean he was much in the habit of looking over the ship’s side, particularly near the prow, and watching the vessel as she steadily ploughed her way through the waves. Just under the bowsprit was the image of a human face. This face to him came to be invested with a wondrous interest. Whatever the hour, whether by night or by day; whatever the weather, whether in sunshine or in storm, that face seemed ever steadfastly looking forward to port. Sometimes tempests would prevail. Great surges would rise, and for a time completely submerge the face of his friend. But as soon as the vessel recovered from its lurch, on looking again over the ship’s side, there the placid face of his friend was to be seen, still faithfully, steadfastly looking out for port. “And so,” he exclaimed, his countenance radiant with the light of the Christian’s hope, “I humbly trust it is in my own case. Yea, whatever the trials of the past, notwithstanding all the toils and disappointments of the present, by the grace of God I am still looking out for port, and not long hence I am anticipating a joyful, triumphant, abundant entrance therein.” Without God.
I am told to believe that there is no God; but, before doing so, I want to look on the world in the light of this solemn denial In giving up this idea, several sacrifices are involved. Let us see what they are.
1. I shall have to part with the most inspiring and ennobling books in my library.
2. I shall have to banish the earliest and tenderest memories which have gladdened my days.
3. I shall have to give up the hope that in the long run right will be vindicated and wrong be put to eternal shame.
4. I shall have to sacrifice my reason, my conscience--in a word, myself. My whole life is built upon the holy doctrine of God’s existence. (Joseph Parker, D. D.)
Practical atheism
It is not speculative atheism that I lay to your charge; I am far from asserting or supposing that you are intellectually without God. But of practical atheism, of being virtually without God, I must and do accuse mankind and some of you. By practical atheism I mean the believing that there is a God, and yet thinking and feeling and acting just as if there were none.
1. I adduce forgetfulness of God as a proof, or rather as one form of practical atheism.
2. As an evidence of practical atheism, a neglect to worship Him and to maintain friendly and filial intercourse with Him.
3. I state as another evidence of practical atheism, the general conduct of mankind under the various dispensations of Divine providence. Does not the rich man say in his heart, “My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth”? Or, if he cannot ascribe it altogether to his own industry and prudence, he divides the credit of it with fortune, and speaks of the lucky throw, the fortunate speculation, or the prosperous voyage, to the success of which many things conspired, but He whom the winds and waves obey is not supposed to have contributed anything.
4. As another proof of practical atheism, that men are in the habit of forming their plans and purposes, without respect to their dependence on God for the accomplishment of them, and without consulting Him. They resolve with themselves where they will go, what they will do, how much they will accomplish, just as if they had life in themselves, and were independent in wisdom and power.
5. The conduct of many, in seasons of affliction, evinces that they are without God in the world.
6. Finally, mankind, in their pursuit of happiness, evince their practical atheism. Whither should a creature in quest of joy go to obtain it, but straight to Him, who made, and who sustains both that which enjoys and that which is enjoyed, his Maker and Preserver, and the world’s? Yet men fly from God for happiness. Whence have you your joys and comforts now?--from your family?--it shall be broken up; from your business?--it shall be discontinued, and you shall leave the world, and the world itself shall be consumed, and nothing will be left but the soul and God. You cannot be happy in anything else; and, if you love Him not, you cannot be happy in Him. (W. Nevins, D. D.)
Without God
Three ways a man may be said to be without God.
1. By profane atheism.
2. By false worship.
3. By want of spiritual worship.
Great is the misery of those who are without God. God is a fountain of life; whoso is far from Him must perish. (Paul Bayne.)
The misery of being without God
The misery of such as have not God for their God, in how sad a condition are they, when an hour of distress comes! This was Saul’s case: “I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and the Lord has departed from me.” A wicked man, in time of trouble, is like a vessel tossed on the sea without an anchor, it falls on rocks or sands; a sinner not having God to be his God, though he makes a shift while health and estate last, yet, when these crutches, which he leaned upon, are broken, his heart sinks. It is with a wicked man as with the old world, when the flood came; the waters at first came to the valleys, but then the people would get to the hills and mountains, but when the waters came to the mountains, then there might be some trees on the high hills, and they would climb up to them; ay, but then the waters did rise up to the tops of the trees; now all hopes of being saved were gone, their hearts failed them. So it is with a man that hath not God to be his God; if one comfort be taken away, he hath another; if he lose a child, he hath an estate; ay, but when the waters rise higher, death comes and takes away all; now he hath nothing to help himself with, no God to go to, he must needs die despairing. (T. Watson.)
Without God in the world
“Without God in the world.” Think!--what a description!--and applicable to individuals without number! If it had been without friends, shelter, or food, that would have been a gloomy sound. But without God! without Him (that is, in no happy relation to Him), who is the very origin, support, and life of all things; without Him who can make good flow to His creatures from an infinity of sources; without Him whose favour possessed is the best, the sublimest, of all delights, all triumphs, all glories. What do those under so sad a destitution value and seek instead of Him? What will anything, or all things, be worth in His absence? It may be instructive to consider a little to what states of mind this description is applicable; and what a wrong and, calamitous thing the condition is in all of them. We need not dwell on that condition of humanity in which there is no notion of Deity at all--some outcast, savage tribes--souls destitute of the very ideal Not one idea exalted anti resplendent above the rest casting a glory sometimes across the little intellectual field! It is as if, in the outward world of nature, they had no visible heaven--the spirit nothing to go out to, beyond its clay tenement, but the immediately surrounding elements and other creatures of the same order. The adorers of false gods may just be named as coming under the description. There is, almost throughout the race, a feeling in men’s minds that belongs to the Divinity; but think how all manner of objects, real and imaginary, have been supplicated to accept and absorb this feeling, that the true God might not take it! It is too obvious almost to be worth noting, how plainly the description applies itself to those who persuade themselves that there is no God. The Divine Spirit and all spirit abolished, he is left amidst masses and systems of matter without a first cause--ruled by chance, or by a blind mechanical impulse of what he calls fate; and, as a little composition of atoms, he is himself to take his chance for a few moments of conscious being, and then be no more forever! And yet, in this infinite prostration of all things, he feels an elation of intellectual pride! But we have to consider the text in an application much more important to us, and to men in general; for, with a most settled belief of the Divine existence, they may be “without God in the world.” This is too truly and sadly the applicable description when this belief and its object do not maintain habitually the ascendant influence over us--over the whole system of our thoughts, feelings, purposes, and actions. Can we glance over the earth, and into the wilderness of worlds in infinite space, without the solemn thought that all this is but the sign and proof of something infinitely more glorious than itself? Are we not reminded--“This is a production of His almighty power--that is an adjustment of His all-comprehending intelligence and foresight--there is a glimmer, a ray of His beauty, His glory--there an emanation of His benignity--but for Him all this would never have been; and if, for a moment, His pervading energy were by His will restrained or suspended, what would it all be then?” Not to have some such perceptions and thoughts, accompanied by devout sentiments, is, so far, to “be without God in the world.” Again, the text is applicable to those who have no solemn recognition of God’s all-disposing government and providence--who have no thought of the course of things but as just “going on”--going on some way or other, just as it canto whom it appears abandoned to a strife and competition of various mortal powers; or surrendered to something they call general laws, and then blended with chance; who have, perhaps, a crude Epicurean notion of exempting the Divine Being from the infinite toil and care of such a charge. The text is a description of those who have but a slight sense of universal accountableness to God as the supreme authority who have not a conscience constantly looking and listening to Him, and testifying for Him; who proceed as if this world were a, province absolved from the strictness of His dominion and His laws; who will not apprehend that there is “His” will and warning affixed to everything; who will not submissively ask, “What dost Thou pronounce on this? To be insensible to the Divine character as Lawgiver, rightful Authority, and Judge, is truly to be “without God in the world,” for thus every emotion of the soul and action of the life assumes that He is absent or does not exist. This insensibility of accountableness exists almost entire (a stupefaction of conscience) in very many minds. But in many others there is a disturbed yet inefficacious feeling; and might not some of these be disposed to say, “We are not ‘without God in the world,’ as an awful Authority and Judge; for we are followed, and harassed, and persecuted, sometimes quite to misery, by the thought of Him in this character. We cannot go on peacefully in the way our inclinations lead; a portentous sound alarms us, a formidable spectre encounters us, though we still persist.” The cause here is that men wish to be “without God in the world”--would, in preference to any other prayer, implore Him to “Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of His ways.” They would be willing to resume the enterprise of the rebellious angels, if there were any hope. “Oh, that He, with His judgment and laws, were far away!” To be thus with God is in the most emphatical sense to be without Him--without Him as a friend, approver, and patron; each thought of Him tells the soul who it is that it is without, and who it is that in a very fearful sense it never can be without. The description belongs to that state of mind in which there is no communion with God maintained or even sought with cordial aspiration--no devout, ennobling converse held with Him--no conscious reception of delightful impressions, sacred influences, suggested sentiments--no pouring out of the soul in fervent desires for His illuminations, His compassion, His forgiveness, His transforming operations--no earnest, penitential, hopeful pleading in the name of the gracious Intercessor--no solemn, affectionate dedication of the whole being--no animation and vigour obtained for the labours and warfare of a Christian life. But how lamentable to be without God! Consider it in one single view only--that of the loneliness of a human soul in this destitution. All other beings are necessarily (shall we express it so?) extraneous to the soul; they may communicate with it, but they are still separate and without it; an intermediate vacancy keeps them forever asunder, so that the soul must be, in a sense, in an inseparable and eternal solitude--that is, as to all creatures. But God, on the contrary, has an all-pervading power--can interfuse, as it were, His very essence through the being of His creatures--can cause Himself to be apprehended and felt as absolutely in the soul--such an inter-communion as is, by the nature of things, impossible between created beings; and thus the interior central loneliness--the solitude of the soul--is banished by a perfectly intimate presence, which imparts the most affecting sense of society--a society, a communion, which imparts life and joy, and may continue in perpetuity. To men completely immersed in the world this might appear a very abstracted and enthusiastic notion of felicity; but to those who have in any measure attained it, the idea of its loss would give the most emphatic sense of the expression, “Without God in the world.” The terms are a true description also of the state of mind in which there is no habitual anticipation of the great event of going at length into the presence of God--absence of the thought of being with Him in another world--of being with Him in judgment, and whither to be with Him forever; not considering that He awaits us somewhere, that the whole movement of life is absolutely towards Him, that the course of life is deciding in what manner we shall appear in His presence; not thinking what manner of fact that will be, what experience, what consciousness, what emotion; not regarding it as the grand purpose of our present state of existence that we may attain a final dwelling in His presence. One more, and the last application we would make of the description is to those who, while professing to retain God in their thoughts with a religious regard, frame the religion in which they are to acknowledge Him according to their own speculation and fancy. Thus many rejecters of Divine revelation have professed, nevertheless, a reverential homage to the Deity; but the God of their faith was to be such as their sovereign reason chose to feign, and therefore the mode of their religion entirely arbitrary. But, if revelation be true, the simple question is, Will the Almighty acknowledge your feigned God for Himself?--and admit your religion to be equivalent to that which He has declared and defined? If He should not, you are “without God in the world.” (John Foster.)