And why? Because every thing that is, heaven and earth, men and angels,
are all the work of God—of one God, infinite, almighty, all-wise,
all-loving, unutterably glorious. My friends, we do not think enough of
this,—not that all the thinking in the world can ever make us comprehend
the majesty of our Heavenly Father; but we do not remember enough what we
_do_ know of God. We think of God, watching the world and all things in
it, and keeping them in order as a shepherd does his sheep, and so far so
good; but we forget that God does more than this,—we forget that this
earth, sun, and moon, and all the thousand thousand stars which cover the
midnight sky,—many of them suns larger than the sun we see, and worlds
larger than the world on which we stand, that all these, stretching away
millions of millions of miles into boundless space,—all are lying, like
one little grain of dust, in the hollow of God’s hand, and that if He
were to shut His hand upon them, He could crush them into nothing, and
God would be alone in the universe again, as He was before heaven and
earth were made. Think of that!—that if God was but to will it, we, and
this earth on which we stand, and the heaven above us, and the sun that
shines on us, should vanish away, and be no-where and no-thing. Think of
the infinite power of God, and then think how is it possible to _live_,
except by faith in Him, by trusting to Him utterly.
If you accustom yourselves to think in the same way of the infinite
wisdom of God, and the infinite love of God, they will both teach you the
same lesson; they will shew you that if you were the greatest, the
wisest, the holiest man that ever lived, you would still be such a speck
by the side of the Almighty and Everlasting God that it would be madness
to depend upon yourselves for any thing while you lived in God’s world.
For, after all, what _can_ we do without God? _In_ Him we live, and
move, and have our being. He made us, He gave us our bodies, gave us our
life; what we do _He_ lets us do, what we say He lets us say; we all live
on sufferance. What is it but God’s infinite mercy that ever brought us
here or keeps us here an instant? We may pretend to act without God’s
leave or help, but it is impossible for us to do so; the strength we put
forth, the wit we use, are all His gifts. We cannot draw a breath of air
without His leave. And yet men fancy they can do without God in the
world! My friends, these are but few words, and poor words, about the
glorious majesty of God and our littleness when compared with Him; but I
have said quite enough, at least, to shew you all how absurd it is to
depend upon ourselves for any thing. If we are mere creatures of God, if
God alone has every blessing both of this world and the next, and the
will to give them away, whom _are_ we to go to but to Him for all we
want? It is so in the life of our bodies, and it is so in the life of
our spirits. If we wish for God’s blessings, from God we must ask them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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