Psalm 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. I. NEVER WAS IT MORE NECESSARY THAN NOW TO INSIST UPON THIS BLESSED REVELATION OF GOD. 1. For one main characteristic of the days in which we live is meg's sensitiveness to human suffering. From one cause and another they have become open-eyed and tender-hearted in regard to the terrible distresses which afflict such vast portions of the human race. And this sensitiveness and compassion are unquestionably from God, and are the product of that good and blessed Spirit of God, who "like as a father pitieth his children." He has been, so we believe, moving upon the minds of men, and has caused the bitter cry of human sorrow to pierce and penetrate, and rouse to practical help, many who before were but little conscious of, and less concerned about, the dark and deplorable facts that lay all around them. Here and there we find those who regard these sad conditions of society as inevitable, and therefore hopeless, and who look on with cynic doubt and disparaging suggestions; whilst others are bestirring themselves to find some sort of remedy. 2. But this very sensitiveness needs to be soothed and sustained, strengthened and guided, by the faith of the love of God. For else it will rush into wild schemes, which can do no good to those in distress, and will only recoil in many sad and terrible ways on those who devised them. Or else it will settle down into a hopeless despair, and to vain, frantic protests against what it deems the cruel laws under which men are condemned to live. 3. Nothing but confident trust in the love of God will avail. For all efforts to ameliorate the lot of our fellow-men demand patience and energy, and a hopefulness that nothing can quench. To face the gigantic evils of human life is no child's play, no holiday sport, but real, serious, earnest work, from which all but the true-hearted will turn away. Apart from this, men cannot and will not persevere in the often apparently hopeless task of lightening the burdens which oppress so terribly so many of their fellow-men. II. FOR THE FOES OF THIS FAITH ARE FOUND, FOR THE MOST PART, IN THE FALSE OPINIONS OF MEN. Opinions which they seldom express openly, but which, nevertheless, paralyze their power for good, and hinder all the efforts which they make to mend or end the evils around them. These false opinions confront the truth of our text, and fight against it, and too often seem to get the better of it. 1. Now, one of these false opinions is this - that chance rules all. Life, according to this opinion, is as a mere chip on a stream, caught now by this eddy, now whirled about by that, driven by this current in one direction, and then by another in a different one; borne hither and thither, from side to side, the sport of every breeze and of every stray force that may bear upon it. Life, they say again, is a labyrinthine puzzle, the clue of which no man has found; and so men go groping on, hoping always to find the right turning, but quite as likely to take the wrong. The poor and the distressed are simply unlucky, the prosperous are but the favorites of Fortune, the fickle goddess who, they say, governs all our lives. Now, no doubt, there is much in human life that looks as if it were the result of mere chance. For it could not be foreseen, nor influenced by anything within our power; as, for example, of what parents we should be born, the kind of home which we should have, the circumstances amid which we should be trained, what constitution we should inherit, by what teachers we should be instructed. And many more and all-important elements in determining what our lives shall be, are, without doubt, beyond both our knowledge and control. Any hour of any day, in a moment, something may happen utterly unexpected by us, and which we could in no wise have helped or hindered, but which may have the effect of entirely altering, for the better or the worse, our whole future. Just as by one pull of a lever the pointsman shunts the entire train on to a different line, the effect of which will be to take it the whole breadth or length of the land apart from where it would have gone had that lever not been pulled. And so often is it with the effect of some seemingly insignificant and unforeseen event upon our lives. When, some years ago, the huge reef of rocks which barred one of the entrances to the harbor of New York was removed, who that did not know of the arrangements that had been made, would have imagined that there was any connection between the tremendous upheaving and shattering of those massive rocks, and the mere moving of a handle by a little girl on shore some miles away? But we know they must have been connected, and that, without the insignificant antecedent, the great result could never have followed. And similarly slight are many of the causes which make or mar a man's life. Observing such facts, the old Greeks came to believe in the doctrine of chance. The universe, according to them, was but the fortuitous coming together of the atoms which compose it. And still there are those who, if not professedly, yet really, do believe that chance, good luck, fortune, and mere accident govern all things. But the doctrine is horribly and utterly false. It is only our ignorance of the connection between events that makes us judge as we do. In any manufactory, our ignorance of the relation of one process to another never leads us to deny that there is such relation. We are sure there is, though we do not know what it is. Why cannot we reason in the same way in reference to the various processes which go to make up our lives? We are not the sport of mere haphazard or blind chance, but we are under the wise, firm, loving rule of our Father in heaven; he is ordering, directing, and controlling all our affairs, and causing all things to work together for good to them that love him. 2. Another foe to the faith that "God is love is the doctrine of destiny. It teaches that our lives are all governed by irresistible Divine decrees, and that we are happy or miserable, good or bad, saved or lost, according to Divine determinations made concerning us from the beginning, and entirely irrespective of our merit or demerit, or any choice or will of our own whatsoever. A vast theological system has been formed upon this basis, and is still upheld by many. It was first sketched out by St. Augustine, in the fifth century; but it was elaborated and developed into a rigid system by the great Protestant leader Calvin. According to this system, the human soul is helpless. From the foundation of the world it has been elected either to eternal glory or to eternal damnation; and to this latter awful doom the great mass are predestined, whilst only the few elect souls are ordained to eternal life. The author of this frightful. system himself says of it, that it is decretum horribile fatem attamen verum." Such is Calvinism, this doctrine of destiny. It is marvelous how men with human hearts in them, men who had ever known a mother's love or a father's care, could have come to entertain and maintain dogmas so horrible and so heart-crushing as these. The stern and awful days in which both Augustine and Calvin lived may partly account for it; for they were such as stirred the darker and fiercer moods of men's minds into terrible activity. And men, forgetting the whole spirit of the Bible, and oblivious of the great love of God in Christ, and failing amid their terrible days to see the innumerable proofs of God's grace and goodness, set up their poor logic and their interpretations of particular texts, and they heeded not the gentler teachings of their own hearts, and so they forged and fashioned that dark creed which has saddened and bewildered and injured in many ways all those on whom its grim shadow has fallen. But it is a false creed, and to be scouted and abhorred of every truth-loving soul. It must be false; for it has the whole of the deepest instincts of the human heart against it, as well as the spirit of the whole Bible and the revelation of God in Christ. Furthermore, it is suicidal to the very aim and intent of God's dealings with us, which is that we should love him with all cur heart, etc. But no man who really believes what this dreadful creed teaches can love God. If it were true, God would be a Moloch, and not our heavenly Father; a monster to be dreaded, and not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. A creed that has such result is thereby proved to be false, and it is therefore to be condemned by all good men. 3. The belief that we are the creatures of circumstances. III. "MAN'S INHUMANITY TO MAN." Here is another fruitful cause of men's doubt of the love of God. Also - IV. OUR SORROWS, AND YET MORE, OUR SINFULNESS. These stand - must do so - in the way of our faith. The sinful heart is ever an unbelieving heart. It is only when "our hearts condemn us not," that we have confidence towards God. But let Christ lake away our sin, and then we shall readily believe. - S.C. Parallel Verses KJV: The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.WEB: Yahweh is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works. |
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