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. Let us apply Paul's doctrine to — I. THE WORLD OF MATTER. We are embosomed by mighty forces which we regard merely as God's instruments. But science comes forward as God's interpreter, and indicates with Sir John Herschel the force of gravitation, e.g., as the energy of an omnipresent will. Again, we speak of "dead matter," but science takes the ultimate atoms which chemistry deals with, so tiny that no microscope can detect them, and gives them free room to move about in — the ten millionth part of the twenty-fifth of an inch apiece, and shows them jostling each other with ceaseless activity, even in the block of stone and the bar of steel; and according to Jevons each one of these airy atoms is probably a vastly more complicated system than that of the planets and their satellites. But according to Faraday and Boscovitch an atom is a mere centre of force. When we have analysed it into its elementary constituents it is alive with energies inconceivably subtle. And all this force is the immediate energy of the omnipresent Creator. "Matter is force and force is mind," says science. So says Scripture. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made." This solid frame is, in its inmost essence, nothing but a form of the thought of God. II. THE HUMAN BODY. 1. Let us see how the same Divine force holds our physical frame together. Five-sixths of it is water, a creature of that form of force called chemical affinity. Each molecule is a compound of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But for the constant action of this Divine force holding the gaseous element in unyielding combination our bodies would become a form of matter as invisible as air. Besides this the processes of growth and repair are carried on unrestingly by this same chemical energy of God ever gluing atom to atom in blood, skin, and bone, etc., under the direction of the master workman we call Life, in whose skill we see the Divine intelligence of Him in whom we live and who renews our substance day by day. 2. And it is wonderful how much God does and how little we do. We breathe because we cannot help it. From a sort of electric battery of cells in the head there streams along the nerves a current of divine force, which works the muscles of respiration, even in spite of the utmost effort of will to hold the breath. We eat and drink, but it is merely as the servant who opens the house door to receive supplies. The nerve current supplies the digestive apparatus with power to convert food into flesh, and works the central force pump which carries to every part of the system its due supply. What if it were dependent on us to keep the heart beating? And again, in every movement and utterance all we do is by our will to set free the quasi-electric force which is in us, but is not ours, by which the appropriate muscles are contracted and our will accomplished. "In Him we move." But a large part of our experience is passive. Hot and cold, bitter and sweet, light and dark, etc. What are we to all these phases of surrounding force but a harp of so many strings responding to the fingers of God in Nature? And then these outward touches of the Divine fingers woke other powers. The pain of fire and the recoil of the flesh are independent of our will, and the operation of a will not our own. So again with our instincts; their automatic power is the immediate energy of the God in whom we live. III. THE MIND. Our thinking is done by means of the brain, as our lifting is done by means of the muscles. In either case we simply press the key. The Divine current of power flows according to the measure of the door we open, whether it be narrow in the case of the peasant or wide in that of the philosopher. IV. THE SOUL. "We are His offspring." His ever-flowing stream it is which fills the tiny pools of our existence. We think; but all the truth we think is His. Our discoveries are His revelations. We desire; but our aspirations are God's inspirations. We pray; but prayer is the circulation of His Spirit through us and to Him again. Ours is the joy of doing good, but it is one with the joy of God in goodness; ours the pain of doing ill, but it is the resistance of God within us to evil. (J. M. Whiton, Ph. D.) 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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