[Preached on the Fast Day, February 21, 1781.]
“Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations
he hath made in the earth.” Psalm xlvi. 8.
Whatever the heart of the fool in ignorance and infidelity may suggest, or the tongue of the bold blasphemer dare to utter, the voice of unerring wisdom declares, there is a God;
“And that there is, all nature cries aloud.”
To this great primary truth, every object in creation bears its testimony; from the first-born seraph down to the meanest reptile; and from the great ruler of the day, down to the minutest part of that stupendous system, of which he is, at once, the ornament and the centre. The celestial, the terrestrial, and aquatic worlds, with all their respective inhabitants, are pregnant with demonstration in favor of God’s eternal power and Godhead. Beings rational and irrational, animate and inanimate, possessing either spiritual, sensitive, or vegetative life; whether they walk the earth, swim the ocean, or fly through the ærial expanse; are so many vouchers to the existence of a supreme Being. Through the various orders of the great scale of beings, from the lowest to the highest, we behold visible traces of divinity; from the flower of the field up to the cedar in Lebanon, from the minutest insect to the lion that roars in the desert, or from the smallest fish that swims in the briny flood, to the huge leviathan that taketh his pastime therein. In the origin of their existence, the formation and contexture of their frame, and the provision adapted to their support, we behold equally the infinite wisdom and profuse beneficence of JEHOVAH. Yea, the very minutiæ of creation proclaim his inimitable perfections. Insomuch, that only a blade of grass, or the wing of a moth, exhibits marks of infinite contrivance, which mock the skill and baffle the comprehension of the most sagacious philosopher; while they read him a loud lecture upon that great truth, “Canst thou, by searching, find out God? canst thou know the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth and broader than the sea.” Job, xi. 7, 9; and chap. xii. 7, 8.
If, from the parts, we ascend to the great whole; or, from contemplating some of the lower stories, we pass to a comprehensive view of the vast fabric of the universe, what a system of wonders rises to declare the glory and handy-work of the supreme Architect! Who can behold an immense multitude of lucid orbs, each of them a world, suspended in the vast expanse, without any visible support; some of them fixed to their stations, though of prodigious magnitude; while others, with a velocity hardly credible, perform their revolutions, and move in their orbits, with the nicest observance of the space and time allotted to them;—who, I say, can observe this wonderful machinery, without acknowledging a present Deity? What is the firmament of heaven, but a golden alphabet, that in capital letters, which all the world may read, deciphers the name, and displays the perfections, of the all-wise God? Who can view the sun, in his azure “tabernacle,” that fairest and brightest image of his Creator, “coming forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run his race,” without confessing in him, the most glorious witness to the existence of that God who gave him to be the cheerer of this nether world, and appointed his “circuit,” Psal. xix. 6, which he has punctually performed for thousands of years? Or who can contemplate the moon, the silver lamp of night, and all the stars that glitter in her train, and not hear the silent yet emphatic eloquence with which they publish the praises of their great Original?—
“For ever singing as they shine,
The hand that made us, is divine!”
But man is to himself a voucher for the truth; since he is in himself a microcosm, a little world, or an epitome of a larger system. “I am fearfully and wonderfully made,” Psal. cxxxix. 14, was the acknowledgment of an inspired philosopher, when he contemplated himself; when he looked back to his embryo-state, and traced the footsteps of that divine art, by which his “substance, yet imperfect, was curiously wrought,” or, as he considered its perfect formation by the plastic hand of Jehovah, “in whose book all his members were written, which, in continuance, were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.” Psal. cxxxix. 15, 16. And, if the sight of even a shapeless skeleton, bereft of that beauty which adorns the human frame in its perfect state, could strike conviction into the breast of a philosopher, [194] and save him from Atheism; how forcible, how irresistible the evidence, when the same frame is viewed in all the wise arrangement, symmetry, coherence, usefulness, and elegant proportion of its parts! If human nature, even in ruins, can thus speak loudly for the divinity of its Maker; what an emphasis of demonstration must it give, to view the fabric complete, and forming, by the inhabitation of the soul, a rational and immortal being! So that it is as great a reflection upon the head, as upon the heart of that man, who, amidst all the evidence that surrounds and dwells in him, continues an unbelieving sceptic: and it would be difficult, perhaps, to determine, whether there be more folly or blasphemy in genuine Atheism.
But, while all creation echoes the voice, and implicitly demonstrates the existence of God, so as to “leave without excuse those, who worshipped and served the creature more than (μαλλον ’η rather than, or and not) the Creator;” Rom. i. 25; yet it is to Revelation we are indebted for that information respecting the nature, works, and dispensations of Jehovah, which the most refined systems of human wisdom have never been able to give us. In the sacred volume, we receive more instruction from a single page, and often from one short sentence, than from whole volumes of antiquity; and more truth too, than all the elaborate systems of philosophers and speculatists have been able to investigate for thousands of years. What they groped after by the dim light of reason, is here revealed to the full satisfaction of the most illiterate inquirer. And what their schemes attempted to elucidate, and, in elucidating, only made more obscure and absurd, is here unfolded in a manner, that exhibits indubitable marks of divine authenticity, and affords an opportunity to “the wayfaring man, though a fool,” to surpass in genuine knowledge the most renowned philosopher, who either had not, or would not have, the “oracles of God,” for his counsellor and guide. Here we are informed not only that God is, but also, “that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him;” Heb. xi. 6;—that “the worlds were framed by the word of God;” verse 3;—that they did not exist from eternity, as some of the philosophers whimsically maintained, but that “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth;” Gen. i. 1;—that the frame of the universe was not formed from pre-existing materials, for that “the things which are seen, were not made of things which do appear;” Heb. xi. 3;—that, contrary, to the atheistical and stupid hypothesis of the Epicureans, who ascribed the creation of all things to chance, or a fortuitous concourse of atoms; the world and all its inhabitants were the production of an eternal, infinitely intelligent, spiritual, wise, and powerful Being, whom the scriptures call God;—that he, whose almighty fiat from darkness educed light, and from the confusion of chaos brought harmony and order, was the very person, who afterwards disrobed himself of his divine splendor, and “was manifest in the flesh, took upon him the form of a servant, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Phil. ii. 7, 8. For, by him, “in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and who is the” express “image of the invisible God, were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by him,” as the Agent, “and for him,” as the End. Col. ii. 14, 15;—that all the calamities which prevail in the natural and moral world originate in that act of disobedience recorded in Gen. iii. 6,—and that the great remedy provided by infinite Mercy and Wisdom for sin and its bitter effects, is Jesus, the adorable Prince of Peace, who “gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God, for a sweet-smelling savor.” Ephes. v. 2.
While the sacred writings open to guilty mortals a prospect of life and immortality, through the revelation of a system of truth, peculiar to themselves; they throw light upon the dispensations of Providence, by assuring us, that all things great and minute, are under the control and superintendence of an omniscient Being, who numbers the very hairs of our head, and suffers not even “a sparrow to fall to the ground” without his sovereign permission; that, although the grounds of the divine dispensations are often inscrutable to human penetration, and form a great deep, which finite intelligences cannot fathom; yet that infinite wisdom presides in them all, and will render them subservient to his own glory, and his people’s good; and that, whatever happens, respecting the fate of empires and states, and all other grand revolutions upon the globe, that display either the goodness or the severity of God, fall out according to the positive design of Him, who “doeth what seemeth him meet among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of the earth; of whom, and through whom, and to whom, are all things.” Rom. xi. 36.