Job 37:14

Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God.

God’s wondrous working

The teaching of Scripture, both in the Old Testament and in the New, impresses upon us a recognition of the most intimate connection between God and all the forces and events of nature and providence. The thunder is His voice, the clouds are the dust of His feet.

I. How is it done? By what means is it brought about? Let us take the wind and the clouds to illustrate this question. “The wind bloweth where it listeth: thou hearest the sound thereof; but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” We can exercise no control over it; it seems to be under no control. But closer examination throws doubt upon the opinion that wind and cloud movements are mere chance work. Some winds are found to be very fixed in their season, their direction, and their force. To find out how the clouds are formed, and the winds rise and fall, is the work of science. Law and order must prevail wherever science can work. But suppose that, one by one, natural phenomena have been traced to their proximate causes throughout the whole domain of nature and natural law, and science brings us its final results, we have no reason, with the Scriptures in our hands, and their truths hid in our hearts, to receive those results with any other feeling than rejoicing. We know from Scripture that God is not a God of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33). But we must not allow ourselves to be imposed upon by the use of ambiguous terms. Suppose we could trace up the existing universe to its primeval germ or germs; we are no nearer the discovery of the origin of things. The laws of nature, proximate causes, or whatever other phrase may be preferred, are not forces, much less are they powers; they are merely the modes in which the force or the power operates. Underneath and beyond all these laws, or modes, or sequences, there is a mysterious power which science cannot catch, which it knows to exist, but which has ever evaded its search. Tyndall is right, because strictly scientific, when he says that natural phenomena are, one by one, being associated with their proximate causes; but he may be wrong when he adds that the idea of personal volition mixing itself in the economy of nature is retreating more and more, because here he ventures beyond his sphere, and makes science speak as if it had something to say on a question concerning which he himself allows that it ought not to venture an opinion. For what if this mysterious Power at the back of things should itself be a Person whose volition is the most potent factor of all? Professor Darwin says: “As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and conscious means of selection, what may not Nature effect?” We reply: Infinitely more, provided Nature possesses infinite wisdom and power to adopt the methods and to make the selections, along with the personal volition which originates them all. But this “Nature” is none other than the God of the Bible, who created the heavens and the earth, and who made man in His own image.

II. By whom is it done? By what agent is it brought about? The world by its wisdom has never known God. God reveals Himself. While science searches all His workings, it finds everywhere the “hiding of His power,” but Himself it cannot find. God can be known only by those who hear His own voice making Himself known. By faith we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God. By faith also we know that the worlds are upheld and balanced by the same Power which made them. The laws of nature are the methods by which the God of creation and providence disposes and balances the things which He has made. It is strange that the How should be confounded with the Who, or that the reign of law should be imagined to set aside the necessity, and render doubtful the existence, of a lawgiver. A watch is made, so also is a tree. The method of making does not in either case supersede the necessity of a maker. The laws of painting do not produce a picture of a tree without the hand and skill and volition of a painter tracing every detail. When we listen to the winds, or look upwards to the clouds, or, standing upon the shore, look out upon the stormy ocean, there may be in these no articulate voice to direct us to the character and name of that power which made and moves them. But surely the Maker and the Mover of winds and clouds and storms is not so weak and helpless but that He may speak for Himself, and make Himself understood by intelligent creatures. It is true, and must in the very nature of the case remain ever true, that to the mere scientific explorer God remains unknown, “declining all intellectual manipulation.” When now we search the Scriptures as those who desire to hear God’s own voice, to listen to His own explanation of how the world was fashioned, and how it is upheld, we find, it may be, many things hard to be understood; but we find also the constant declaration of the Divine omnipresence, as superintending, directing, and actively working, according to His own eternal purpose, whatsoever comes to pass. The relation of God’s providential power to His creative power is a matter rather of profitless speculation than of practical importance. Jonathan Edwards suggests, as an illustration, the forming and sustaining of an image in a mirror. The first rays of light from the object falling on the mirror form the image, and there is a constant and unbroken stream of rays which sustain it. The forming and sustaining powers are substantially one. The relation likewise of God’s free and universal agency in providence toward other free agencies and secondary causes, raises many interesting questions, which, however, are also of little profit. Sufficient unto us are the facts that God is not, and cannot be, the author of sin; that no violence is offered to the will of the creatures; that the liberty or contingency of second causes is not taken away, but rather established, inasmuch as the same providence which causeth all things to come to pass, ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes. And again, the relation of God’s general to His particular providence, the adjustment of events to the whole, and at the same time to each and every one of its minutest parts, suggests many problems which it is hard, perhaps impossible, to solve. Sufficient for us is the assurance that, however complicated the task may seem to us, with God all things are possible. And the God to whom all this power and wisdom belong, is revealed to us in the person of Jesus, who is the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance, who says to us: “He that hath seen We hath seen the Father.” In the earthly life of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, the man of science will find problems as hard to solve, and mysteries as difficult of comprehension, as those which meet him on the field of nature. There is the same mysterious power, the same awful presence, and the same failure of an intellectual manipulation to capture and define it.

III. Why is it done? For what purpose is it brought about? This question is obviously two fold, according as it is asked by science or religion, in reference to the modes of action or the motives of the agent. The former may be answered in a single sentence. Every event, regarded scientifically, is first an effect, and then also a cause; whatever flows from it shows the purpose for which it was itself brought about. Physically, the event is intended to produce whatever, according to the laws of nature, flows from it. But the question remains whether, speaking strictly of the material world and its phenomena, the God of nature and of providence has, or can have, any ends in view which are outside the domain of physical science. When He makes the clouds His chariot, or walks upon the wings of the wind, does He confine Himself to purely physical work? According to Elihu, in our text, it is far otherwise; for those clouds and that wind may be carrying heavy loads of mercy or of judgment. The physical, the moral, and the spiritual--the personal, the national, and the universal--are all departments of the same government, and that government is personal and absolute. It is sometimes affirmed that the teaching of Scripture--at least, of the Old Testament--is not to be applied to modern life and the providence of God in relation to it, inasmuch as God was then dealing in a special way with a theocratic nation, which was specially under His authority, in a sense in which no nation now is. But this involves an obvious fallacy: for

1. It can, at most, apply only to the particular methods of the Divine government with that particular nation, and not the principles of the Divine government generally.

2. We find those principles applied in Scripture to other nations besides Israel.

3. We find the same mysteries exercising men’s minds then as now.

4. The same principles are carried into the New Testament, and are there treated as universal in their scope. Even what might seem the most exceptional dealings of the Lord towards His people are adduced for the purpose of impressing upon us the principles involved, and supplying us with examples. Elijah, for instance, was a man like ourselves, says James, and the efficacy of his prayers teaches us that we, too, may pray with expectation. It is true that Scripture reveals to us the presence of God manifesting itself by miracle, as well as by ordinary providence. But we are not now concerned with the methods of the Divine manifestation, only with the fact that the will and power of God are present, and that they are supreme. Grant this, and the question of miracles becomes a purely secondary one. Even the will of the creature man is a potent force among those of the world around him, many of which at least are under its control so far as to be directed towards particular ends which they would not otherwise accomplish. In this respect also man was made in the image of his Maker; and no account of nature and providence can possibly be adequate which does not make allowance for the will of God as the Supreme Power over all. It is not the extraordinary or miraculous merely in the natural world which may be made subservient to moral and spiritual ends. But the ordinary laws of nature are so disposed and balanced that they cooperate for such ends also. It is well, no doubt, in view, for example, of bad trade, agricultural depression, the prevalence of disease or personal, social, or national disaster--it is well to examine carefully the natural causes of these things, and to remove them if we can. But is that all our duty! Mr. Froude says: “The clergy are aware all the time that the evils against which they pray depend on natural causes, and that prayer from a Christian minister will as little bring a change of weather as the incantations of a Caffre rainmaker.” Now, certainly, if the prayers of the Christian minister are to be classed along with the Caffre rainmaker’s incantations, as the same in kind and similar in their motive and design, Mr. Froude is right,. But is this a fair or accurate description of the case? The Christian minister, we submit, is called upon to pray, not because his prayer can change the weather, but because his God can do so. Pestilence comes through uncleanness and the neglect of sanitary measures; therefore in this department let all due precautions be taken to avert it. It comes also from the hand of God, and therefore it is a proper subject for humiliation and prayer. For surely it is both irrational and profane to assert that we ourselves may so overrule and direct the forces of Nature, by sanitary precautions and otherwise, as to alleviate or avert the cholera, and yet to maintain that the God to whom we pray has no power so to do. Depression in trade may be due to economic causes, it is due also to the finger of God. We may, and often do, err, however, in attempting to read God’s providence from the wrong end, by asking what God means by it, instead of inquiring what lesson we ourselves may learn from it. We may err in reading God’s providence for others instead of for ourselves. We may err in directing too exclusive attention to what we call special providences, and thinking too little of ordinary and everyday Divine protection. All events have, at least, a two-fold aspect--one in relation to their proximate causes and effects among the laws of nature, which reads its appropriate lesson as to the use or neglect of means for averting evil, and another in relation to the hand and will of God, which reads its lessons too, no less clearly and impressively than the former. It is a narrow and unworthy view of the Divine government, akin to that spirit which makes God altogether such an one as ourselves, to suppose that when we have found one manifest design and adaptation of any event in one department, there can be no other designs or adaptations in other directions which we do not observe. It is one evidence of the wisdom by which the forces of nature are disposed and balanced that nothing is allowed to run to waste, but that all is economised and made to go as far as possible. In conclusion, let me advert to three practical points on which the subject under consideration has an important bearing.

1. In the sphere of social and national life, the hand of God, by means of natural law, visits iniquity with chastisement, and His voice calls to thankfulness, penitence, and prayer. God is supreme, but also immediate and personal, Governor among the nations. As by means of natural law He visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and makes the show of the sinner’s countenance testify against him, so likewise He assures us by His providence, as well as by His word, that righteousness exalteth a nation, and that sin becomes a nation’s reproach. Nations, as well as individuals, receive Divine calls to gratitude, repentance, and prayer.

2. The duty and the efficacy of prayer are to be considered solely in the light of our second question. The proper use of means for the accomplishment of given purposes belongs to the first department--the How; and this ought not to be neglected. But prayer looks directly to God, and has nothing to do with secondary causes. The range of prayer is as wide as the providence of God. Whatever difficulties may beset the philosophy of the subject, we can pray best, most scripturally, most truly, when we forget all about its philosophy and its difficulties. These all lie in the region of natural law and secondary causes, with which prayer has nothing to do. It is vain to attempt any compromise or division of territory between natural law on the one side and effectual prayer on the other. All prayer must, in the nature of the case, be limited and conditioned by the submission of the petitioner’s will to the will of Him to whom he prays, and should involve thanksgiving and adoration. Some attempt to exclude prayer from the physical world as a force not provided for, and of no avail, and would limit it to things more purely spiritual. But if the reign of law excludes prayer from the physical world, it excludes it equally from every department. For the frames and feelings of the human spirit, the workings of conscience, and all that belongs to the spiritual world, are as much under the reign of law as the motions of the tides or the phases of the moon, and events are as much settled in the one sphere as in the other. And the same line of argument, if consistently carried out, would paralyse all human effort in every direction whatever. If we are to have law and prayer at all, we must have them cooperating as fellow servants in the same sphere, and there is no possibility of an amicable division of the land between them.

3. In all the work of the Church, specially in the work of the pulpit, we have to do, directly and mainly, with the Word of God. Our work lies in another sphere from that of the scientific explorer in the domain of natural law. The world needs the Gospel; we have the authority of God for saying that Christ Jesus can save to the uttermost. Paul said to Timothy, “Preach the Word”; he charged him also to turn away from the oppositions of the knowledge which is falsely so called (1 Timothy 6:20). The surest way to drive all enemies from the field is to preach the Word, to let it speak for itself. (James Smith, MA.)