First, then, consider those wonderful words of the text, how God covers Himself with light as it were with a garment. Truly there is something most divine in
light; it seems an especial pattern and likeness of God. The Bible uses it so continually. Light is a pattern of God’s wisdom; for light sees into everything, searches through everything, and light is a pattern of God’s revelation, for light shows us everything; without light our eyes would be useless—and so without God our soul’s eyes would be useless. It is God who teaches us all we know. It is God who makes us understand all we understand. He opens the meaning of everything to us, just as the light shews everything to us; and as in the sunlight only we see the brightness and beauty of the earth, so it is written, “In thy light, O God, we shall see light.” Thus light is God’s garment. It shows Him to us, and yet it hides Him from us. Who could dare or bear to look on God if we saw Him as He is face to face? Our souls would be dazzled blind, as our eyes are by the sun at noonday. But now, light is a pattern to us of God’s glory; and therefore it is written, that light is God’s garment, that God dwells in the light which no man can approach unto. As a wise old heathen nobly said, “Light is the shadow of God;” and so, as the text says, He stretches out those glorious blue heavens above us as a curtain and shield, to hide our eyes from His unutterable splendour, and yet to lift our souls up to Him. The vastness and the beauty of those heavens, with all their countless stars, each one a sun or a world in itself, should teach us how small we are, how great is our Father who made all these.
When we see a curtain, and know that it bides something beautiful behind it, our curiosity and wonder is awakened, and we long all the more to see what is behind that curtain. So the glory of those skies ought
to make us wonder and long all the more to see the God who made the skies.
But again, the Psalmist says that God lays the beams of His chambers in the waters, and makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the wind! that He makes His angels the storms, and His ministers a flaming fire. You must not suppose that the psalmist had such a poor notion of the great infinite God, as to fancy that He could be in any one place. God wants no chambers—even though they were built of the clouds, arched with rainbows, as wide as the whole vault of heaven. He wants no wind to carry Him—He carries all things and moves all things. In Him they live, and move, and have their being. Yet Him—the heaven, and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him! He is everywhere and no where—for He is a Spirit; He is in all things, and yet He is no thing—for He was before all things, and in Him all things consist. He is the Absolute, the Uncreated, the Infinite, the One and the All. And the old Psalmist knew that as well as we do, perhaps better. What, then, did he mean by these two last verses? He meant, that in all those things God was present—that the world was not like a machine, a watch, which God had wound up at the creation, and started off to go of itself; but that His Spirit, His providence, were guiding everything, even as at the first. That those mists and rain came from Him, and went where He sent them; that those clouds carried His blessings to mankind; that when the thunder shower bursts on one parish, and leaves the next one dry, it is because God will have it so; that He brings the blessed purifying winds out of His treasures, to sweeten and fatten the earth with the fresh breath of life, which
they have drunk up from the great Atlantic seas, and from the rich forests of America—that they blow whither He thinks best; that clouds and rain, wind and lightning, are His fruitful messengers and His wholesome ministers, fulfilling His word, each according to their own laws, but also each according to His especial providence, who has given the whole earth to the children of men. This is the meaning of the Psalmist, that the weather is not a dead machine, but a living, wonderful work of the Spirit of God, the Lord and giver of life. Therefore we may dare to pray for fair and seasonable weather; we may dare to pray against blight and tempest—humbly, because we know not what is altogether good for us,—but boldly and freely, because we know that there is a living, loving God, governing the weather, who does know what is good for us; who has given us His only begotten Son, and will with Him also give us all things.
And so ends my first sermon on the 104th Psalm.
XXI. WONDERS OF THE SEA; OR DAILY MIRACLES.
“Thou coverest the earth with the deep sea as with a garment.”—Psalm civ. 6.
When we look at a map of the world, one of the first things that strikes us as curious is, how little dry land there is, and how much sea. More than half the world covered with deep, wild, raging, waste salt water! It seems very strange. Of what use to man can all that sea be? And yet the Scripture says that the whole earth has God given to the children of men. And therefore He has given to us the sea which is part of the earth. But of what use is the sea to us?