---

I. IN HIS NAME. Is it answered, "That is only a word"? But what are words? People do not forge and utter words as they please. They cannot be made or unmade by votes of assemblies or edicts of kings. They are chronic. They come into existence by a law of nature. They are carved out of unstable air by a supernatural power. To call God's Word or name "priest craft" is itself cant. A set of priests could no more have created it than they could an ocean or a mountain range. Matthew Arnold says, "God means the Brilliant in the sky." But what makes it to shine, and to wear the blue firmament for a robe? There could have been no name if no Lord, — as no names for plant, beast, earth, sea, but that these things were, and to do aught in His name is to do it by His strength and for His honour. Caesar may be a myth, and Eve in the garden a tale, but no appellations can overrate the Eternal.

II. IN HIS WORK: what He does shows what He is. All the phrases which sceptics think so lightly of are but the labels of His wonders. "But all the Bibles," says the denier, are human compositions written in time: show me the sacred books that not affirm a God out of us. What is out of us is not so easy to say. The whole creation is somehow in our thought. I have a feeling that fetches down from Orion. My imagination girdles the Pleiades. God is not less to me because He exists not externally but in the consciousness of my own bosom, and I cannot dismiss my guest. If no characters by Him were ever entered on a paper leaf, stone tablet from Sinai, or Egyptian column, do we not find His engraving in living organisms and on the vast layers of the globe? "Providence" is one of these obstinate, indestructible words in the daily discourse of mankind. A great, forthreaching, unbaffled, and unending plan, a purpose through the ages, one must be worse than colour blind not to see, with a steady accomplishment, — style it fitness, adjustment, design, as you will. Not a nook of nature but is His workshop, not an event without His procedure.

III. IN HIS NATURE OR IMAGE. Had He left no sign manual of His authorship in our frame all else were to us a dumb show. Why do beasts and insects not perceive the drift of the plot on this broad external stage? Because, even in their innocence, they cannot yet come to themselves, and in themselves find their Father. But what features of His face are unveiled to us?

1. First, of sincerity, the open look. Why can we not be free from this candid bond, but that the Divinity reveals within us His essence of truth, as a claim beyond convenience or uses of the hour, so infinite that no liar can be content till he has confessed? After what long and stubborn perjury, from at last being convinced by some co-conspirator that falsehood is kindest and best, a quickened conscience forces the wretched deceiver, man or woman, in mutual crime, to own at last even the forswearing, and throw off the disguise that hinders peace with God!

2. Next, the line of rectitude in this countenance we pray God to lift upon us, and which He never quite withdraws. Truth is right speech, and righteousness is true conduct. If your neighbour will not rest in any wrong you do him, you will be the last to be satisfied with your own unfairness, because Deity is equity in your vital parts.

3. There is one more lineament in that face whose glance we cannot escape: it is goodness. But the goodness must be more than doting on one person, however winsome and dear. I know an earnest love; but God save me from an exclusive one, and keep me from wishing or enduring the monopoly of a human heart! We may be partial to one person, like the sun flattering some mountain top or blazing back from some windowed tower as he rises or sets; but be we also impartial as the sun, making the whole earth his reflection and flinging his radiance through the sky.

IV. IN THE HEALTHFUL EXERCISE OF OUR POWERS. We find God in innocent pleasures as in solemn forms, as parents are as much pleased with their children's gambols as with their deferential requests. The little orthodox boy, repeating his prayers so punctually in his country cot, said one morning, "Good-bye, God: I am going to Boston to stay a fortnight"; he not having been taught how that sublime Presence would smile on him amid all the sights of the city, as when the soul was commended to Him in sleep. The small girl was pious in a more rational way who, going home from her first dance, ere she put off her pretty dress, fell on her knees to thank God for the pleasure He had given her at the children's ball. God is the problem whose last and clearest solution is in the corollary of duty, which, as Kant says, is the practical reason piecing out the ladder to climb to Him, where the speculative ends. In this transparency of conscience all the vexing riddles conclude. With a dogged satisfaction, in dire extremity, it helps us to stand at our post and do our office, as the old Cumberland still fired her guns when sinking to her gunwale. There was something in those sailors, as in all faithful unto death, not going down!

(C. A. Bartol, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the LORD he is God; there is none else beside him.

WEB: It was shown to you so that you might know that Yahweh is God. There is no one else besides him.