Acts 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. What a blessed doctrine! How high our dignity! how rich our patrimony! Wherever we are, in whatever portion of His universe, we are still in His house — our home. We can never outstep our heritage. The Father has fitted nature not merely to supply our wants, but also to minister to our delight — the glitter of the star and of the dewdrop, the colour and scent of the flower, freshness and beauty for the eye, and song and melody for the ear. Our Father's house is not barely furnished, but richly ornamented. Rocks are piled into hoary mountains and picturesque heights; the woods are budding forth into life in spring, laden with foliage in summer, or swinging their great boughs to the tempest of winter; the sky folds its curtains and trims its lamps; the waters dance in torrents and leap in cascades, as well as fill the seas; there is gold as well as iron, gems as well as granites, the blush and fragrance of the blossom, as well as the sweetness and abundance of the fruit. The human frame, too, has symmetry as well as strength — possesses far more than is merely essential to life and work; the eye, lip, and brow are rich in expression and power. There is not only the power of thought essential to business and religion, but there is the garniture of imagination, poetry as well as science, music in addition to speech, ode and oracle as well as fact and doctrine in Scripture, the lyre of the bard no less than the pen of the apostle. Above sensation there rises the power of discovery — invention blends with experience. In man and around him there is not mere provision for necessities; there are profuse luxuries. "His offspring" walk in the lustre of His love. It rejoices them to know that the power which governs is no dark phantom veiled in mystery; no majestic and all-controlling force — a mighty and shadowless sceptre; no mere omniscience — an eye that never slumbers; no dim Spirit, having its only consciousness in the consciousness of man — but a Father with a father's heart to love us, and to the yearnings of which we may ever appeal — a father's ear to listen to us, and a father's hand to bless with kind and continued benefactions. And, as we have wandered, shall not each of us say, "I will arise and go to my Father"? Will not He accept the returning child, giving us the adoption of sons, revealing Himself graciously through Christ the Elder Brother, who leads us to cry in true filial devotion, "Our Father which art in heaven"? (Prof. Eadie.) Parallel Verses KJV: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. |
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