In nature God has fitted the parts of each tree in beautiful proportion. Each part—the root, the stem, the branch, the leaf,—does its work in perfect harmony. And many a beautiful tree bears nothing, simply because an ignorant gardener, by what he calls pruning, has disturbed the proportions of its parts.
In music it is the same, and Shakespeare knew it when he wrote,
“How sour sweet music is
When time is broke, and no proportion kept.”
But there is no illustration more perfect than that of light. In pure white light there are many parts, but all in perfect harmony. Let any one colour be left out, or its strength be diminished, and the pure white is seen no more. If we wish for purity in light we must have the whole spectrum, and have it just as God has given it. Let man disturb it in any way whatever, let him keep back any colour, because it does not suit his taste, or isolate any other colour, because for it he feels a special preference, and the result will be that he will no longer look on the pure bright light of heaven. He need not introduce any new element; all that he has to do is to keep back a part and to disturb the proportion, and by that simple and easy process he can substitute a colour of his own devising for the pure brightness of the sunbeam.
I believe it to be just the same with the truth of God. It is clearly so with the Lord Himself. As He is perfect in every detail, so is He perfect in the proportions of His attributes. Every attribute is in its place, and every attribute perfect; and all are so beautifully fitted together, that the highest desire of the heart thirsting for God is to come “to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”
So it is with the faith, or God’s great plan of life, continued and carried out in His own boundless love, for the salvation of His people. Of course in this plan there are many parts,—incarnation, life, atonement, resurrection, mediation, etc. There is the work of the Father, the work of the Son, and the work of the Holy Ghost; and, besides that, there is the act of the believer,—seeking Christ, receiving Christ, and living to His glory. And of the whole it may be most truly said, “As for God. His work is perfect.” The whole plan, and every part of it, is Divine. Each part is complete, and each of these complete parts being fitted together in complete proportion, form, when thus fitted, a grand, a perfect, an harmonious whole.
Just so it is with Sacred Scripture. Some people speak of that sacred Book as if it consisted of several detached fragments, accidently preserved and indiscriminately grouped; whereas those who know it best and study it most, see in it a perfect and harmonious revelation of a perfect and harmonious salvation. No one denies for one moment that it was written by many authors, and that the fragments, as they are called, were written at intervals, extending on the whole over more than 1500 years. No one denies that in the several writings you discern the several minds and characters of the several writers. No one denies that the historical accuracy of one man, the poetic genius of another, the affectionate pastoral earnestness of a third, and the argumentative faculty of a fourth, are all employed, and all appear with undisguised individuality. But our point is that there is no appearance of accident or confusion, but that all these various authors have been employed to bring out one perfect whole; that the historian, the poet, the biographer, the letter writer, and the logician, have all their exact place, and have all, by God’s inspiration, exactly filled it. What some men regard as a difficulty we regard as the wonder of the Book. We see many rays in the spectrum, but all are blended so as to give one perfect light, and when we think on the beautiful and perfect proportions of the whole, we are prepared to exclaim, with Dryden,
“Whence, but from heaven, could man unskilled in arts,
In several ages born, in several parts
Weave such agreeing truths?”
Now if all this be true it must follow that our great object must be not merely to preach a selection, however well made, of detached truths, but to declare the whole counsel of God, and so to declare it that the proportions of God’s revelation may be preserved. It is not enough that we exhibit certain of God’s attributes,—His righteousness, e.g., without His mercy, or His mercy without His love; or one side of our Lord’s nature and character,—His Godhead, e.g., without His manhood, or His manhood without His Godhead. Nor is it enough that we teach certain portions of the plan of life,—as atonement without repentance, or repentance without atonement. Our great desire must be, as faithful stewards, to declare the whole: not to select any favourite colours in the spectrum, but to exhibit without partiality the perfect light of the truth of God.
But in the application of this principle one caution has been suggested to me by a very thoughtful friend: viz. this,—that in an endeavour to attain to the proportionate place of any particular truths, we must take into consideration not merely the frequency with which they are repeated, but the urgency with which they are pressed upon our attention. There are some subjects in which our opinions are formed from historical reference to the practice of the early Church, such as Episcopal Government and infant baptism, and however important they may appear, they must clearly be put in a different category from those where we have the clear command of God, or the clear declaration that they concern the essentials of life eternal. Again some subjects may cover a greater space in Scripture, and still be of less importance than other short passages which have been solemnly uttered as containing the very essentials of salvation. The broadest band in the prism is not the brightest, and the brightness of the one is quite as important as the breadth of the other. The historical books of the Old Testament, e.g., must none be neglected; but, though they occupy nearly one-third of the whole Book, they do not outweigh in importance that single sentence of our blessed Redeemer: “Truly, truly, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Some portions again are only preparatory to the final development of the perfect plan of life, and they clearly occupy a position of different proportionate importance to the plan itself. Each portion of God’s truth has its own place in the complete plan, and the importance attached by the inspiring Spirit to each part, and to the place of each part, is that which we really want to ascertain. We want to take a comprehensive view of the great salvation as complete in the finished work of our blessed Redeemer, and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost. We want not merely to look at the completed system, but at all that God appointed to prepare the way for it, and then without reserve, and without preference, yield ourselves to the Divine teaching, and make it our earnest prayer that in all His proportions, and in all His perfections, we may be taught of God to exhibit Christ.