The Expositor's Bible: The Book of ProverbsHorton, Robert F. (Robert Forman)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Proverbs
Horton, Robert F. (Robert Forman)
Bible. Proverbs -- Commentaries
intense satisfaction all fair dealing, and with vindictive indignation
every fraud, and trick, and lie. And on the strength of this I am to
ask you very earnestly to review your lives and your practices in the
light of His judgment, and to consider how you may bring all your
doings in business into conformity with His will.
Perhaps you will let me, as a man speaking to his fellow-men, as a
Christian, I hope, speaking to his fellow-Christians, expand these
three points a little.
_First._ We are all of us tempted to think that a considerable
proportion of our life is too insignificant to attract the particular
attention of God. We can understand that He takes notice of our
entrance into, and our exit from, the world, but we think that between
the two limits He leaves us to "devise our own ways." Or possibly we
can recognise His interest in the crises of our life, but are inclined
to question His minute care of the common and monotonous routine. He
marks what business we enter, but, when we are in it, lets us alone.
He is interested in our marriage, but, when we are married, leaves
husband and wife to adjust their own relations. Or He marks a large
business transaction in which there is room for a really gigantic
fraud, but cannot pay any attention to a minute sale over the counter,
the trivial adulteration of a common article, the ingenious subterfuge
for disposing of a damaged or useless stock. Is not this our unspoken
but implicit mode of reasoning? And could anything be more illogical?
The Divine Power which could create this infinitely diversified
universe must be able to mark every tiniest detail of the tiniest
object in it. Great and small are relative terms, and have no
significance to Him. Naturalists tell us that in the scale of living
creatures, arranged according to size, the common beetle occupies the
middle point, the smallest living creature being as much smaller as
the largest is larger than it. And yet the microscope, so far from
showing that God takes less care with the infinitesimal creations of
His hand, rather inclines us to say that the smaller the creature is,
the more delicate adjustment, the more exquisite proportions, the more
brilliant hues, does it display. Our Lord brought home to us this
minuteness of the Divine Mind, this infinite power of embracing the
veriest trifles of the creation in His thought and care, by assuring
us that not a sparrow falls without His notice and that the hairs of
our heads are all numbered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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