[1] If, instead of showing them his treasures, he had related to these idolatrous Chaldeans, who were worshippers of the sun, the account of his marvellous cure, and especially the miracle by which the shadow was made to go ten degrees backward on the dial, he might have been the means of bringing them to the knowledge of the true God who made the heavens, and of convincing them that He was master even of that glorious luminary, which they ignorantly adored instead of its Creator.—Bather.
ADDITIONAL OUTLINES.
Instinct Followed—Reason Disregarded.
i. 3. The ox knoweth his owner, &c.
“We are wise.” So spake the Greek of old in the pride of his intellectual powers, and so speak many in our own day who have imbibed the spirit of the Greek. Reason is a wonderful faculty, and there have not been wanting, in any age of the world, those who have felt elated by their successful exercise of it. It can look before and after, deriving experience from the past and suggestions provision against the future. It can explore the hidden secrets of Nature and render the world of matter subservient to man; it can turn in upon itself and speculate upon its own processes; nay, it can teach us something of the existence and attributes of the Most High. Such being the triumphs of reason, it can hardly be matter of wonder that the wise men of this world plume themselves on the attainment of those triumphs.
The vainglorying of men, however, whatever form it may assume, is abomination in the sight of God. In the scheme of salvation which God has devised there is no room for boasting either of our moral or intellectual endowments: “It is excluded.” That scheme is essentially humbling in its character; it is so constructed as to shut out pride at every cranny where it could possibly insinuate itself; it is such as to stop every mouth and bring in all the world guilty before God. And not only guilty, but blind also. He will have all the world convicted in the court of Conscience of folly, no less than of sin. In order to bring His people to this conviction, he expostulates with them in many passages of His Word on the vainglorious boasts they were in the habit of uttering, shows them their utter emptiness, and exhibits the inconsistency of man’s moral conduct with his pretensions to wisdom and enlightenment (cf. Jer. viii. 7, 8).
Our text implies two things—1. That the religion subsisting between the brute creation and man is in some measure similar to that which subsists between man and God; and, 2. That the acknowledgement made by dumb animals of their relation to mankind strangely contrasts with the natural man’s refusal of acknowledgement to God.
I. We are to compare the relations subsisting between an inferior and a superior creature with those subsisting between a superior and the Creator. Note, though these relations may be susceptible of comparison, and may be used to lift up our minds to apprehension of the truth, there is an insufficiency in the lower relation to type out the higher. The distance between man and the inferior creatures, if great, is measurable; whereas the distance between finite man and the Infinite God is incalculable.
The dumb creature recognises the master whose property it is: “The ox knoweth his owner.” What constitutes man’s right of ownership in the ox? Simply the fact that he bought it. He did not create it. If he supports its life, it is only by providing it with a due supply of food, not by ministering to it momentarily the breath which it draws, nor by regulating the springs of its animal economy. That is the sum of his ownership. But what constitutes God’s right of ownership in us, His intelligent and rational creatures?