Romans 1:18-21

CRITICAL NOTES

Romans 1:18. The wrath of God.—ὀργὴ Θεοῦ, God’s displeasure. The phrase is plainly anthropopathic. May express a particular instance of displeasure.

Romans 1:19. That which may be known of God.—That concerning God which is knowable. St. Basil called the natural world a school of the knowledge of God. God is knowable though still unknowable.

Romans 1:20. The invisible things of Him from the creation.—Cyril said that the eternity of God is proved from the corruptible nature of the visible world. God’s divinity, invisible attributes, manifest from creation. Manifested by the first creation and by consequent processes. Eternal power and supremacy written on nature’s works. The word “creation” appears to refer to the act of creation and also to the results of that act.

Romans 1:21. Vain in their imaginations.—διαλογισμοῖς. Thoughts, reasonings, disputations. The heart in this passage plainly refers to the mind. ἀσύνετος, wanting in foresight.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 1:18

God manifest in His works.—In these days we often give undue prominence to the truth that “God is love.” We seem to forget that this is compatible with God’s holy and just indignation against sin. We do not question the love of the wise earthly father when he punishes the child. God is love, and as a wise God His wrath is revealed against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Most surely the wrath is revealed, though we cannot always read the revelation. The prosperity of the wicked in this life may be more in seeming than in reality, and the end will surely come. “The way of transgressors is hard.” God’s love is not a mere vapid sentiment, and cannot be allowed to override the eternal righteousness. Now St. Paul here shows that ungodly men are not excused because God has made Himself known in the frame of human nature and in the frame of the world. He anticipates modern objections, and classes those amongst the ungodly and unrighteous who tell us that by an intellectual necessity they have crossed the boundary of experience and discerned in matter the promise and potency of all terrestrial life. We fail to grasp the meaning of the expression “crossed the boundary of experience.” Is that the ascertained result of a series of trials and experiments? If so, are we to be told that the ascertained result of a series of trials and experiments is nil, and that in matter are found the promise and potency of all terrestrial life? Is it an intellectual necessity? Is it not rather a moral obliquity which forces to the conclusion that matter is self-creating, and that God as creator is to be banished from His own creation? However, we still believe that God exists, and that His attributes are manifest in the frames both of man and of the world.

I. Creative energy is clearly seen in the world.—That there has been and is a Creator our faith is yet sufficiently strong to accept, though we have read books assailing its reasonableness. All that the scientists so far have done is to attempt to shake the authority of the Bible. They have not yet given us anything axiomatic. Their guesses, inferences, and so-called signs of evolutionary processes, of the eternal generation, of matter, do not amount to a demonstration. Certainly they do not formulate a creed. The scientists are not yet sufficiently agreed as to meet in general council, and to formulate a creed as to the world’s origin which should supplant the Apostles’ Creed. And meanwhile “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” Faith first embraces the doctrine, and observation declares that the faith is not unreasoning, is not unreasonable. We cannot lift the creature into the high position of being his or its own creator. A creator always is. A creature must at one period be represented by the words is not, if there be meaning in words, and if we still admit the word “creature” into our vocabulary. So that the creature is, and yet is not. He or it is both negative and positive at one and the same time. That which has been created creates itself. That which was once without life and motion gives life and motion to itself. The beautiful form, the graceful structure, the physical organism, are the products of evolution, and they have evolved themselves. They had power before they had being. They had qualities before there were material substances in which those qualities could inhere. Man is a production, and before his creation he produced himself. The producer and the product are identical, which is ridiculous. And the argument is not invalidated if we push our inquiries further back, and say that the potency of matter generated other potencies. Is there then such latent potency in one piece of matter that it can go on producing other pieces of matter far transcending the original in size, in grace, and in beauty? The primeval pieces of matter would be vastly astonished if they could see their wondrous progeny. Less than the famous dragon’s tooth has brought forth multitudinous life—physical, intellectual, and moral. Can it be that matter has produced mind? Can it be that coarse matter has so mixed and fused and purified and etherealised its creations that there has been produced the intellect of man? Unutterably grand was the potency of the first germ-force which has produced immortal mind, which has sent floating through God’s universe the mystic strains of music, of poetry, of eloquence, and of philosophy. Matter is the mother of mind? Yea, mind is only matter, and the careful mother has done immensely well to her child. Let us reverence matter, for she has in her family group the human intellect, with its powers of memory, perception, acquisition, and retention. Can we believe the strange doctrine? Can we fancy the soul growing out of matter and embracing in its loves and yearning the great unknown? But why should matter be more potent in energy in past ages than in these days, when it has the advantage of being helped by some modern scientists? Why does she not produce other worlds? If this be deemed unnecessary, why does she not renovate our planet so that all defects may be removed, and a sphere given which should meet the scientist’s idea of “the best possible world”? Through unknown æons, let us say, matter has remained in much the same condition, and nature shows no development of creative energy all along her mighty pathway; she does not even give a sign, show a trace, of the glory of once having been a creator. Man is a temple in ruins, but the glory has not all departed, for he is majestic in his ruins, and there are traces of great moral glory. But where are the signs on this world temple that it was once a creator? On the temple of the material universe we find no traces of an inscription to the effect that it once possessed creative energy and built itself. The world is a looking-glass into which we look and see there reflected as the creator neither matter nor human mind, neither evolution nor protoplasm, but God the Father and God the Son, a glorious unity. The evidences of design and order in the universe are sufficient for all practical purposes and adequate to establish the belief in unsophisticated minds that there has been an intelligent creator.

II. Eternal power and wisdom are clearly seen in the world.—The atheist can give no true account of the multitude, elegance, variety, order, and beauty that may be traced in the green earth with its ever-varying charms, and in the widespread heavens adorned with myriads of worlds. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” “No,” says M. Comte; “at the present time, for minds properly familiarised with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, of Kepler, of Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws.” “No persons,” says Dr. M‘Cosh, “were more willing to admit than the parties here named that the laws which they discovered must have existed before they could discover them—that the glory belongs to Him who established these laws, and to them but the reflected glory of having first interpreted them to mankind.” We are told that the undevout astronomer is mad. What strange madness has seized the atheistical astronomer? How can one gaze at the stars without thinking of Him who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea, “which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south”! Who can behold this “brave o’erhanging firmament, this most excellent canopy, the air, the majestical roof fretted with golden fire”—these spangled wonders, these lucid orbs—and not be filled with admiration of the wisdom and power there displayed! We say and feel that a God skilful in design, infinite in resource, and omnipotent in execution must have produced those spangled heavens. Here we have a comprehensive statement—eternal power. The scientist tells us that there is a latent potency in matter. How does he know if it is latent? Did he find it out with his microscope? Did he pursue the potency and discover it in the hiding-place? However that may be, there is a power antecedent to all time powers. The eternal power is beyond our comprehension, and is therefore unknowable. Eternity we know as a word, but we cannot know what it is as a condition. If it be possible for us to know eternity, then it is grasped by a finite nature and loses its infinity. It becomes a bounded eternity, which is a contradiction. Eternity we only know in part. We can simply know it as a mysterious something stretching before and after time. And yet we do not say that there is no such thing as the infinite because the finite cannot contain the infinite, and thus because it transcends our knowledge. We know the infinite in part, and believe in the unknowable. So let us not deny the eternal power because it is to us in all its vastness unknowable. Let us rise from the known to the unknown, from the powers of earth to the vast unknowable eternal power.

III. The true divinity is clearly seen.—The divine nature is made known both by the frame of man and of the world. A superhuman power is revealed as needful to the production of all things. If humanity could not project itself into life before it had life, then we are shut up to the conclusion of an antecedent agency giving to humanity its potencies and its energies. Divinity precedes humanity. We would not exclude the idea of divinity, for humanity is exalted by the connection. Atheists try to exalt themselves by seeking to confute the notion of a God; but in this instance it is strikingly true “he that exalteth himself shall be abased.” How sadly abased is humanity when divinity is banished from its conceptions! A superhuman agent is above the human race, a supernatural force is above and before all natural forces and powers; and that supernatural agent and force is the God, is the divinity, is the creator of the heavens and the earth.

IV. The mental vision is obscured.—The scientist laughs and says, All this may seem right to you, but it is all wrong to me. I have no need of your hypothesis of a divine being; matter is all-powerful, self-generating. Do you question my honesty? Are not my intellectual powers above the average? Does not the literary world accept with eagerness and pay liberally for my contributions? The apostle would reply, The foolish heart is darkened, and thus the mental vision is obscured. Some of our modern scientists of a sceptical turn are praiseworthy in many respects; but there must be in them a fault somewhere, even if they are not open to Cowper’s charge:—

“Faults in the life breed errors in the brain,
And then reciprocally those again.”

Let us, however, not commit the common sin which is involved in the words, “The landscape has its praise, but not its author.”

*** My acknowledgment is due to the Sabbath Observance Society for permission to make use of my sermon on the Divine Unity, to which the adjudicators awarded a prize.

Romans 1:18. God’s truth and man’s treatment of it.—Two interpretations have been given to these words, either of which yields perfectly good sense. One is that the words simply mean that a man may be of unrighteous life, and yet have a knowledge of the truth. He holds the truth he possesses a certain knowledge of, but he holds it in unrighteousness—he is unrighteous in spite of it, and this is his condemnation. But there is another meaning of the word which is here rendered “hold.” It sometimes signifies “to hold back,” “to restrain,” “to hinder.” This sense of the word is adopted by many as that which we ought to attach to it in the passage before us; and then it would read, “Who keep down the truth by their unrighteousness.” Taking this to be the meaning of the text, let us look at it from this point of view. And notice man’s conduct in reference to “the truth.” “Who hold the truth in unrighteousness”—that is, as I have explained, who keep it down by their unrighteousness. It is checked and hindered, held back in its design to bless, by reason of unrighteousness. In what way? Notice:—

I. That sin extinguishes the love of and desire for the truth.—It does not do so in regard to secular truth. The man of science pushes his inquiries into the domain of nature—the astronomer in his observatory, the chemist in his laboratory, the geologist among the rocks, each in his own way seeking the truth and desiring it. Sin does not perceptibly repress their enthusiasm nor lessen their desire for truth in science. And so likewise in other branches of inquiry. But it is very different in regard to the truth as it comes to us in God’s word and sounds in the conscience. Why?

1. Because it does not offer itself as mere abstract truth to excite speculative interest. It comes with great demands; it is truth which claims obedience; and it is not so easy always to obey the truth as to talk about it and admire it. It prescribes, not simply the way in which we should believe, but also the way in which we should walk; and to walk rightly is a little harder than to believe rightly. God’s truth addresses us in the imperative mood, and men shrink from its demands.

2. The truth is a rebuke to a life of sin. Every page of God’s truth goes dead against sin; and he who loves sin, who has no wish to give it up, but is bent upon keeping it, does not care to read his rebuke and to see himself written down “condemned.”

3. The truth again reveals to man the peril to which a life of sin exposes him. It denounces judgment against sin, reveals the wrath of God against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. Sin extinguishes all love and desire for the truth, because the truth claims obedience, rebukes and condemns sin, and declares its certain punishment.

II. Sin destroys the soul’s sensitiveness to the truth.—It weakens the soul’s power of moral perceptions. If we cultivate the habit of obeying the truth and following its lead, we shall proportionately increase our sensitiveness to its teachings. Our visions shall become clearer, and we shall have larger and distincter views of it. Obey divine truth. When you hear it speak to you, follow its indications of conduct and duty, and you will become more and more sensitive to it, you will recognise the truth with growing facility. But disobey what you know to be the truth, let it be a habit with you to disobey, and soon the voice of truth will be quenched and you will cease to hear it. You know how soon conscience may lose its sensitiveness, and gradually that which at one time you looked upon as sin, and were right in looking upon as sin, has come to be regarded as innocent, as something quite allowable even in a Christian man. Beware of trifling with the truth! It is to your interest that it should come into a position of power in your nature, that it may bless you with its freedom. Beware, therefore, of letting some cherished sin hold it back and prevent it from rising within you. That sin is destroying the soul’s sensitiveness. Even in the best of us the truth is kept down. It would bless us far more than it does; but some sin checks it, and the truth is crippled in its power of usefulness to us.—Alex. Bell, B.A.

Romans 1:21. Gratitude.

I. The obligation.—It is the duty of all men to cherish a spirit of gratitude towards God. This is evident when we consider the number, variety, magnitude, and ceaseless flow of the benefits which we enjoy.

1. The works of creation furnish us with ground for thankfulness, in that they afford pleasure to the senses, support to our life, and are an evidence of the goodness of God.
2. The structure of our bodies and the endowments of the mind are a ground for thankfulness: health and reason are inestimable blessings.
3. The position in which God has placed us is a ground for thankfulness,—the pleasures of society; the facilities we enjoy for mental and moral improvement.
4. God’s providential care is a ground for thankfulness: we have been guided, guarded, and sustained.
5. The spiritual blessings that are so freely bestowed are a ground for thankfulness,—the gift of Christ and the offer of pardon and peace to all who believe on Him; the gift of the Spirit, with all the benefits which He confers; the promises of God and the hope that is set before us; the joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. There is no means of measuring or weighing these gifts, and their cordial acceptance is the condition of receiving many more.

II. The consequences of neglecting this obligation.—

1. The loss of much real enjoyment;
2. The loss of man’s respect;
3. The hardening of the heart;
4. The withdrawal of the blessings slighted;
5. The cursing of the blessings, though they remain;
6. The infliction of future punishment. How may gratitude be expressed?
1. By giving to God our heart’s best love;
2. By working for Him among our fellow-men.—Preacher’s Assistant.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 1:18

Man unaided cannot attain righteousness.—By some of those to whom the apostle addressed himself it might be thought that this method of justification was unnecessary, for that if men fulfilled the duties incumbent on them nothing more could be required to render them objects of divine favour. And no doubt, if they fulfilled their duty completely, this would be the fact. On this supposition the revelation of a new species of righteousness as the means of their acceptance with God would be wholly superfluous; for if men’s own perfect obedience and freedom from sin entitle them to be justified, the necessity of any other method of justification would be entirely taken away. But the apostle goes on to show that all claim to justification on this ground is utterly hopeless, since nothing can be further from the actual condition of mankind than such an unsinning obedience as this mode of justification would require. This point he proceeds to establish by describing the moral condition of mankind; and in order to show the conclusiveness of his proof he begins by laying down this maxim, that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.” If this then be the case, as it cannot be denied, and if men be ungodly and unrighteous, as is also unquestionable, it follows that justification cannot be attained by their own obedience, and therefore that it must be sought by the righteousness of faith revealed in the gospel. It cannot be doubted that God has manifested with sufficient clearness to mankind in general His wrath against sin; nor can it be doubted that the knowledge of this displeasure implies that sin deserves punishment, and that it will actually receive the punishment which it deserves. These are truths which may be understood by all who will give due consideration to the subject; and if, notwithstanding this knowledge, they still continue to act impiously and unrighteously, they can have no claim to be justified on the footing of their own works, seeing their works are such as to subject them to inevitable condemnation. It has been maintained, indeed, that unaided reason is wholly incompetent to discover the being and perfections of God—that our minds are so darkened and debased by sin that, had not the knowledge of God been communicated and preserved by a divine revelation, it must have been finally lost in the world. This opinion has been brought forward to support the doctrine of the utter corruption of human nature by sin. But it is an opinion neither warranted by experience—for, without denying all history, we cannot deny that these doctrines were known at least to some of the ancient philosophers—nor authorised by Scripture; for here St. Paul acknowledges that what “may be known of God was manifest” to the philosophers and legislators to whom he alludes. No doubt the effects of sin in debasing the human mind are great and deplorable, but its operation is chiefly on our moral nature; for if we take the apostle as our guide, we shall own that it has not so completely deranged our intellectual powers as to disqualify us for discovering that there is a God whom we are bound to worship and obey. This knowledge the heathen actually possessed, “for God hath showed it unto them.” There is, indeed, no department of nature which we have the means of observing but which may lead the contemplative mind to infer the being and perfections of God; for in all the objects that lie open to our inspection we find such manifest proofs of wise contrivance adapting the means employed to the ends to be accomplished, as cannot be explained on any possible supposition unless on admitting that they proceed from the appointment of an all-wise creator. They “became vain in their imaginations.” To become vain, according to the Scripture use of that phrase, often means to become addicted to idolatry; as in 2 Kings 17:15: “They followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen, … and made to themselves molten images, … and worshipped all the host of heaven.” It seems to be in this sense that the word is employed here; and the meaning of the passage appears to be, that all their notions or reasonings on the subject tended to vanity, that is to idolatry, and led them to the folly of worshipping idols rather than the living and true God.—D. Ritchie, D.D.

The beauty of nature should make us feel God.—Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know Him that is: neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the work-master; but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods, let them know how much the Lord of them is: for the first author of beauty hath created them. But if they were astonished at their power and virtue, let them understand by them, how much mightier He is that made them. For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen. But yet for this they are the less to be blamed: fot they peradventure err, seeking God, and desirous to find Him. For being conversant in His works, they search Him diligently, and believe their sight: because the things are beautiful that are seen.—The Wisdom of Solomon.

A mill without a miller is as absurd as a world without God.—If man thinks it a great thing to have invented telegraphy and the telephone and other modern wonders, and if in connection therewith he talks of the march of intellect and of the advance of science, why should he deem it unneedful or unmanly to believe that infinite wisdom was engaged in and displayed by the invention and formation of the human body? But further, the brain, as the seat of thought, as being now generally regarded as the mysterious sphere of intellectual operations, declares both man’s greatness and man’s divine origin. Yes, man is great—man is God-fashioned because he thinks. And the wonderfulness of man’s nature is still more declared by the fact that his thinking machine cannot explain the process which itself performs. Some of the noblest intellects have spent time and energy in trying to solve this difficult problem, but it still remains one of the quesita. Theories have been broached, only to be nullified by succeeding theories, and the only true theory at present in existence is that it is a baffling mystery. Here a question naturally arises: If man made himself, if man evolved himself out of concomitant and concurrent chaotic atoms, why can he not more easily understand himself? The inventor and maker of a machine can understand and explain all its parts. The painter knows how his effects were produced. The poet can dissolve into their parts and explain his own rhythmical measures. And yet man, too proud to own a God, must be humble enough to confess that he cannot understand himself. Let man perfect that in his physical frame which he considers imperfect, and then we shall have more patience to watch and listen as he struts with lordly airs and contemns in abhorrent language the master-work of infinite wisdom and power. We think, but cannot tell what we do when we are said to think. We cannot explain how we think. We cannot name, by any term less meaningless than the ego or self, that mysterious person which is said to think. Was then this thinking power or faculty self-evolved? Surely it is by no means satisfactory to declare that thought is a mere mixing or moving or shaking up of nervous fluid or phosphorescent particles in the brain. Are ideas merely phosphorescent gleams? In a certain sense it is true, just as we might say, No brain, no thought; no man, no thought. Nerve fibres require a living agent. Phosphorus is not self-acting. Who brings the phosphorus into action, and consents to spread over the universe its sweet intellectual light? Does the match strike fire by a process of spontaneous combustion without the aid of an active agent? Surely his power of thought lifts man above mere materialism, and is the noblest of endowments? It should speak to us of the divine origin of our nature. We come forth from and are sustained by God. The mind stamps the man with unspeakable greatness. Thoughts can penetrate and subdue where implements of husbandry and weapons of war are ineffectual. The grandeur of man’s intellectual nature in its highest forms must strike us with solemn awe. How sublime this power of thought! How gloriously noble to be able beautifully to delineate on canvas either some stirring incident of external life or soul-moving conception from the internal; to trace in marble rare forms of beauty; to make the granite live and speak in our presence; to embody in poetry fancy’s rich visions; to give with pen, ink, and paper living, lasting embodiment to the aerial, unsubstantial results of intellectual processes; to control the fiercest animals and the very elements of nature; to speak, and the winds are hushed, the storm is stilled, the angry waves are calmed, the ancient rocks are rent, and forth there comes the living stream sparkling in heaven’s sunlight; to think, and the material world is touched to its very centre; to remember, and all the past is summed up, and moves before me in stately procession, forming groups, now solemn and now joyful; to love, and I am linked to the whole universe and the whole universe is linked to me—earth and heaven, man and God, are joined in blessed union! Well may we take up the old refrain: What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! In form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! The great Shakespeare would consent as we add: the masterpiece of the Creator’s works! Man is great even in the ruin entailed by the Fall. The very magnificence of the ruins declares at the same time his greatness and the fact that he was made in the image of God—made by the Creator, and made to bear the Creator’s likeness and to be His vicegerent in this lower world.

The provisions of nature speak for God.—It may be assumed for a principle, which common experience suggests to us, that matter of itself does not run into any order, etc. If not now, then not yesterday, nor from eternity; it must therefore by some counsel be digested. There is not indeed any kind of natural effect which, either singly taken or as it stands related to the public, may not reasonably be supposed to contain some argument of this truth. We do not indeed discern the use and tendency of each particular effect, but of many they are so plain and palpable that we have reason to suppose them of the rest: even as of a person whom we do plainly perceive frequently to act very wisely, at other times, when we cannot discern the drift of his proceeding, we cannot but suppose that he hath some latent reason, some reach of policy, that we are not aware of; or as in an engine, consisting of many parts curiously compacted together, whereof we do perceive the general use, and apprehend how some parts conduce thereto, we have reason to think they all are subservient to the artist’s designs. Such an agent is God; such an engine is this visible world. We can often discover marks of God’s wisdom; some general uses of the world are discernible, and how that many parts thereof do contribute to them we may easily observe; and seeing the whole is compacted in a constant order, we have reason to deem the like of the rest. Our incapacity to discover all does not argue defect, but excess of the Maker’s wisdom—not too little in itself, but too great perfection in the work in respect of our capacity. The most to us observable piece of the universe is the earth upon which we dwell; which that it was designed for the accommodation of living creatures that are upon it, and principally of man, we cannot be ignorant or doubtful, if we be not so negligent as to let pass unobserved those many signs that show it. If we look upon the frame of the animals themselves, what a number of contrivances in each of them do appear, suitable to the kind and station of each! If we look about them, what variety and abundance of convenient provisions offer themselves even to a careless view, answerable to all their needs! Wholesome and pleasant food to maintain their life, yea, to gratify all their senses; fit shelter from offence, and safe refuge from dangers: all these things provided in sufficient plenty for such a vast number of creatures; not the least, most silly, weak, or contemptible creature but we may see some care hath been had for its nourishment and comfort. What wonderful instincts are they endued with for procuring their food, for guarding themselves and their young from danger! But for man especially a most liberal provision hath been made to supply all his needs, to please all his appetites, to exercise with profit and satisfaction all his faculties, to content his utmost curiosity. All things about him do minister to his preservation, ease, and delight. The bowels of the earth yield him treasures of metals and minerals, quarries of stone, and coal serviceable to him for various uses. The commonest stones he treadeth upon are not unprofitable. The surface of the earth, what variety of delicate fruits, herbs, and grains doth it afford to nourish our bodies, and cheer our spirits, and please our tastes, and remedy our diseases! How many fragrant flowers for the comfort of our smell and delight of our eyes! Neither can our ears complain, since every wood hath a choir of natural musicians to entertain them with their sprightful melody. Every wood, did I say? Yes, too, the woods adorned with stately trees yield pleasant spectacles to our sight. Even the barren mountains send us down fresh streams of water. Even the wide seas themselves serve us many ways: they are commodious for our commerce; they supply the bottles of heaven with water to refresh the earth; they are inexhaustible cisterns, from whence our springs and rivers are derived; they yield stores of good fish and other convenience of life. The very rude and disorderly winds do us no little service in cleansing the air for our health, in driving forward our ships, in scattering and spreading about the clouds, those clouds which drop fatness upon our grounds. As for our subjects the animals, it is not possible to reckon the manifold utilities we receive from them—how many ways they supply our needs with pleasant food and convenient clothing, how they ease our labour, and how they promote even our sport and recreation. And are we not, not only very stupid, but very ungrateful, if we do not discern abundance of wisdom and goodness in the contrivance and ordering of all these things, so as thus to conspire for our good?—Barrow.

Forasmuch as by all things created is made known the “eternal power and Godhead,” and the dependency of all limited beings infers an infinite and independent essence; whereas all things are for some end, and all their operations directed to it, although they cannot apprehend that end for which they are, and in prosecution of which they work, and therefore must be guided by some universal and overruling wisdom; being this collection is so evident that all the nations of the earth have made it; being God hath not only written Himself in the lively characters of His creatures, but hath also made frequent patefactions of His deity by most infallible predictions and supernatural operations,—therefore I fully assent unto, freely acknowledge, and clearly profess this truth, that there is a God.—Pearson.

Mental vision needful.—These things, Paul says, are seen, though invisible, by their manifestation in the external world. This manifestation is perpetual and universal. It is “from the creation of the world.” These words may indeed be rendered “by the creation,” etc., but not consistently with the latter part of the verse; nor do they, when thus rendered, give so pertinent a sense. These invisible things are seen, “being understood”—that is, it is a mental vision of which Paul speaks. The eye of the sense sees nothing but the external object; the mind sees mind—and mind possessed, not of human power and perfections, but of eternal power and divinity. The word rendered “divinity” means the “divine majesty and excellence,” and therefore includes all the perfections of God. These perfections are manifested “by the things which are made”: so the word here used properly means (see Ephesians 2:10); but it may also mean “works” generally. Being understood by His “works” would then include the dispensations of His providence as well as the products of His hands. The common version, however, is more natural and appropriate.—Hodge.

A wise agent revealed in the world.—Is it not a folly to deny the being of a wise agent who sparkles in the beauty and motions of the heavens, rides upon the wings of the wind, and is writ upon the flowers and fruits of plants? As the cause is known by the effects, so the wisdom of the cause is known by the elegance of the work, the proportion of the parts to one another. Who can imagine the world could be rashly made, and without consultation, which in every part of it is so artificially framed? No work of art springs up of its own accord. The world is framed by an excellent art, and therefore made by some skilful artist. As we hear not a melodious instrument, but we conclude there is a musician that touches it, as well as some skilful hand that framed and disposed it for these lessons; and no man that hears the pleasant sound of a lute but will fix his thoughts, not upon the instrument itself, but upon the skill of the artist that made it, and the art of the musician that strikes it, though he should not see the first when he saw the lute, nor see the other when he hears the harmony,—so a rational creature confines not his thoughts to his sense when he sees the sun in its glory and the moon walking in its brightness, but rises up in a contemplation and admiration of that infinite spirit that composed and filled them with such sweetness.—Charnock.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1

Romans 1:20. God manifest in creation.—Nature forces on our heart a Creator, history a Providence.—Jean Paul.

God’s way of making worlds is to make them make themselves.—Drummond.

Manufacture is intelligible but trivial; creation is great and cannot be understood.—T. Carlyle.

I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ
Accepted by thy reason solves for thee
All questions on our earth and out of it.

Browning.

My own dim life shall teach me this,
That life shall rise for evermore,
Else faith is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.—Tennyson.

I have gone the whole round of creation; I saw and I spoke;
I, a work of God’s hand for that purpose, received in my brain
And pronounced on the rest of His handiwork—returned Him again
His creation’s approval or censure; I spoke as I saw;
I report, as a man may of God’s work—all’s love, yet all’s law.—Browning.

Romans 1:20. The mirror in Arcadia.—I stand before an attractive picture. The design, the colouring, and the general effect declare that it is the production of a master-mind directing skilful fingers. It is not surprising to read at the bottom of the painting the name of a great artist placed before the word “pinxit.” No such thing, I say to the admiring materialist, that painting was its own pinxit. It is a self-evolved picture. It produced itself before it was in existence. He laughs at my folly, and scoffs at my ridiculous scepticism. Has nature no picture galleries? Are there no fine artistic effects? Am I to be told that nature’s own hand painted these pictures before there was such a hand in existence? It is not more ridiculous to say that the picture painted itself than to say that the world created itself. There is a mirror reported to be in the temple of Arcadia which represented to the spectator, not his own face, but the image of that deity which he worshipped. The world is a looking-glass, and yet it does not reflect to us the image of itself as a creator. We look into that glass, and see neither matter nor human mind, neither protoplasm, a fortuitous concourse of atoms, development, nor evolution, but God reflected as the Creator.

Romans 1:20. The harmony and order of creation.—The famous astronomer Athanasius Kircher having an acquaintance who denied the existence of the Supreme Being, took the following method to convince him of his error upon his own principles. Expecting him upon a visit, he procured a very handsome globe of the starry heavens, which being placed in a corner of a room in which it could not escape his friend’s observation, the latter seized the first occasion to ask from whence it came and to whom it belonged. “Not to me,” said Kircher, “nor was it ever made by any person, but came here by mere chance” “That,” replied his sceptical friend, “is absolutely impossible; you surely jest.” Kircher, however, seriously persisted in his assertion, took occasion to reason with his friend upon his own atheistical principles. “You will not,” said he, “believe that this small body originated in mere chance; and yet you will contend that those heavenly bodies of which it is only a faint and diminutive resemblance came into existence without order and design.” Pursuing this chain of reasoning, his friend was at first confounded, in the next place convinced, and ultimately joined in a cordial acknowledgment of the absurdity of denying the existence of God.