Hebrews 1:1-3 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,… Charles Kingsley is writing to Thomas Cooper, a man sometime Christian, in the stirring time of that agitation Chartist, then captured by the Strauss mythical theory and wandering in the dreary wastes of unbelief, then coming back — and largely through the influence of Charles Kingsley — to the most hearty and joyful acceptance of Jesus as incarnate God and Lord and only Saviour. Charles Kingsley is writing, to this Thomas Cooper, and thus he writes: "But my heart, Cooper, demands the Trinity, as much as my reason. I want to be sure that God cares for us, that God is our Father, that God has interfered, stooped, sacrificed Himself for us. I do not merely want to love Christ — a Christ, some creation or emanation of God's — whose will and character for aught I know may be different from God's. I want to love and honour the absolute, abysmal God Himself, and none other will satisfy me — and in the doctrine of Christ being co-equal and co-eternal, sent by, sacrificed by, His Father, that He might do His Father's will, I find it — and no puzzling texts, like those you quote, shall rob me of that rest for my heart, that Christ is the exact counterpart of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being. I say boldly, if the doctrine be not in the Bible, it ought to be, for the whole spiritual nature of man cries nut for it." There has arisen a new branch of the science of astronomy called sidereal photography. Until lately only collodion plates could be used in photography. But such plates must be used wet. They could suffer only short exposure. They must be immediately developed. And so when exposed heavenward but a momentary flash from the stars could be caught and kept on their sensitive surfaces. But recently gelatine plates have been introduced. These are capable of long exposure. These can lie beneath the stars for hours. And lying thus, the shyest traits of the most distant stars can fasten themselves in pictures accurate, and gazing into them, fresh wonders are disclosing and a new door is opened into heaven's depths. Like the gelatine plates, Charles Kingsley held his soul in such steady and long openness towards the incarnate Christ that in unusual measure the Christ revealed Himself to him, was seen by him to be the pre-eminent and luminous focus of the Divine revealing, became for him the object of the most passionate personal love. (Wayland Hoyt, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, |
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