◄ Isaiah 40:26 ►














Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
The Distinguishing Love Of God
Isaiah 40:20
W. Clarkson
He calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might for that he is strong in power." The infinitude of God is no argument at all against his observance of the individual and the minute; rightly regarded, it is a strong inference in favour of it. Because he is infinite in wisdom he compasses all that is most vast and extensive; and for the same reason, "by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power" - he has a perfect mastery over all the particulars of his creation. He not only summons the mighty armies of the skies and marshals the whole host of heaven, but he is familiar with each separate star: "He calleth them all by names." This individual attention applies to:

1. The inanimate creation (text).

2. The sentient, unintelligent creation: "Not a sparrow falls to the ground" etc.; and this fact constitutes a strong reason for forbearing from cruelty towards every living creature, and for treating all the members of the animal world with constant kindness.

3. The whole human world. Even if this doctrine were not true in other realms, it certainly must be in this. As we could not think and feel as we wish to do of the human father who failed to distinguish his children from each other, so also could we not reverence and love the heavenly Father if he failed to distinguish us. But he does not fail; "he mils us all by names;" he is the true and good Shepherd, who "calls his own sheep by name." Each one of us is:

(1) The object of his Divine thought and care. Every child of man can say, "The Lord thinketh on me.

(2) The object of his parental yearning. Away in the far country, each prodigal may be sure that there is a wronged, waiting, expectant Father, who is grieved concerning him, and who earnestly remembers him still.

(3) The object of his redeeming and self-sacrificing love. He loved me, and gave himself for me," we can all say, after the apostle.

(4) The object of his disciplinary dealing. "Whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son," etc.

(5) The object of his desire that we should share his work and his glory. To each of his disciples he says, "Follow thou me; Go [thou], and work in my vineyard.' - C.

Biblical Illustrator
lift up your eyes on high.
Isaiah 40:26
Looking up and pressing on
C. A. Berry, D. D.
A man's vision broadens as it lengthens. Look straight down at your feet; what do you see? A few inches will measure the diameter of the circle within which your sight has play. Look up at the blue which spans the heavens, and what see you then? Your circle of vision takes a sweep which demands astronomic computation. The circumference widens with the distance. But that is not all. Within the near and narrow circle there is room only for small details and severed parts — mere fractions and fragments, whose drift is not clear. The distant and wide outlook shows great and harmonious aggregates, shows their movement and drift, shows their obedience to the time-beat of a sovereign purpose. Herein lies the explanation of our text. It was a call to men to look at the stars, and to get therefrom a larger and more inspiriting conception of God's providence. The downward look throws an exaggerated emphasis on local details and passing experiences. It shows a complexity of events and movements whose design is not clear. The outlook is too confined to reveal the great issues which give meaning and value to details. Life sinks to a series of disjointed commonplaces. Man is robbed of the vision which inspires creative thought and heroic endeavour. Hope, faith, courage are the fruit of a loftier and far-reaching vision. The present finds its interpretation in the eternal, the local in the infinite. The soul of the seer expands with his vision. Narrow thought and hasty judgment become impossible to him. Essentially, then, our text calls us to a broader outlook, bids us to form our judgments and to feed our impulses on larger views of life and providence. This is far enough from bidding us to become visionaries and star-gazers in the sense usually associated with those terms. It is vision in order to labour, not vision in place of labour, to which we are called. By rising in vision above the present, we shall more adequately fill the present with wise thought and toil.

I. THIS THOUGHT GUIDES US TO THE PROPER UNDERSTANDING OF PROVIDENCE. God works on a large scale. His purposes, like Himself, inhabit eternity. In His government there is nothing small, arbitrary, merely local. Every passing movement is part of a big design. And the man who would read even the plainer words of that purpose must get his light from a wide study of God's ways. Providence cannot be interpreted by details. We get a glimpse of this truth when we engage in retrospect. Looking back over a long stretch of years, we are enabled to perceive merciful meanings in crises which at the time perplexed and burdened us. The same truth impresses us when we take a panoramic view of nations and movements in history. To the man of downward look and narrow view, few things are more perplexing than the oftentimes apparent breach between moral worth and material progress. He sometimes becomes cynical over it. He has been heard to say that righteousness has nothing to do with prosperity. He looks down at the few facts lying near his feet, and this is what he makes of them. Think you that the resources of civilisation have banished for ever the dispensations of righteous, all-controlling providence? Read history. You will find that virtue, truth, honour, are more than mere sentiments — are vital elements of victorious power. God works on a grand scale. We must look far if we would adequately see. To this grandeur of purpose, which is the glory of providence, must be traced our many perplexities. Higher intelligence and larger aims must ever work in a manner ill understood and misunderstood by lower capacity. There will ever be need for trust and patience, but there may be moments of insight and realisation. But these can only come to the man who attains the broad outlook. In this matter we multiply our inevitable perplexities by the persistence of our downward look. Our thoughts and interests are so centred in the passing day and the current event as to narrow both our views and our sympathies. The things of to-day are what we are eager for; and on God's relation to us through them do we often misjudge His character and purpose. Give scope to your eyes. The tree will then sink to small proportions. It will become a pleasing detail on the broad expanse which stretches away to the horizon. The men to whom the text was first spoken needed this exhortation. They had been trying to see the landscape while placing their eyes upon the tree.

II. THIS THOUGHT GUIDES US TO THE PROPER STANDPOINT FROM WHICH TO LOOK AT MAN. The downward look tends to the denial of God. It tends equally, and as a consequence, to the degradation of our thought of man. It is by enlarging our vision, by taking in a wider view of facts, that we shall rightly see God, and through Him, ourselves. In a word, as we must look at life's facts in the light of God's great purposes, so must we look at man, not as he merely is, but as he is ideally in the redeeming thought and design of the Father. Man, looked at only from below, does not inspire great expectations or reverential regard. Before us looms a being of measurable height, of weight and bulk definable, acting under the impulse of appetites and desires which he holds in common with the brutes, showing now and again the possession of genius and virtues clearly not brutish, but for the most part failing to rise above sheer commonplace alike of power or sympathy. The natural man of ordinary proportions is not impressive. And the observer who looks downwards at him will soon lose all heroic conceptions of life, all sense of man's high origin and destiny. We become the victims of a delusion. The eye tricks us into the belief that we see, and under that belief we begin to cherish low views of man's worth. Man, like providence, to be seen aright must be looked at on high. Here we come under the tyranny of his too obtrusive parts. It is "in Christ" that we must look at our life, judge its possibilities and its worth, its character and destiny. Looking at man in Him, we behold a being God-like in the proportions of power and quality. If God, looking upon the very imperfect disciples of His Son, calls them "saints," while yet they are a long way from sanctity, I will be guided by the example.

III. THIS THOUGHT GUIDES US TO THE PROPER INSPIRATION OF WORK. Never yet was great work done by the man of mere downward look. The eye, to be sure, must look steadily at the object and instrument of its toil, must look down and around at the place and conditions of the work to be done; but nothing much will come of it till the eye kindles the soul, and the soul rekindles the eye to wider vision. The artist who painted for eternity had mastered the secret of most patient and potent work for time and man. In the same spirit of lofty consecration did the men work who planned and reared our great cathedrals. Not for pay, not for fame, not by regulating rule of trade society did the chisels chip, and the hammers ring, and the trowelsiply their busy task. The workmen consciously worked for God. And nothing less than a renewal of this vision can redeem the work of to-day from insignificance or degradation, or lift men into the confidence and joy of patient well-doing. The busy housewife, engaged in an endless round of detailed tasks, would surely fail through very weariness, did not the large vision and love of home and family give great value to small activities and lifelong significance to patient fidelity. It is when the preacher or the Sunday-school teacher looks at his work from on high, and sees before him not so many recognisable people about whom he knows everything, but a company of immortal spirits whose life passes measurement or comprehension, that he is strengthened for the drudgery attaching to his vocation, and rises to the height of passionate enthusiasm. The commerce and industry of the day are to some extent smitten with debility through the narrowing of their outlook, consequent upon hot competition and vigorous clashing of rights and claims. The downward look has resulted in the blight of worldliness. Only the broader vision can raise the tone and quality of life. It is the business of the poet, the preacher, the leader, to bring and keep these loftier inspirations within the practical spheres of life. The tendency of work is always towards absorption in its own immediate occupation.

IV. THE PROPER EFFECT OF THIS UPWARD LOOK IS THE RENEWAL OF OUR FAITH AND RESOLVE. It is to grace we must look for the secret of all that is beneficent in providence and bright in the prospects of man. And as we recall these blessings, we do but emphasise the work of Jesus, through whom man is crowned with favour and immortality. We lift up our eyes on high, and there we behold Jesus crowned with glory and honour, all dominion granted to Him, holding the reins of power while bearing the marks of conflict. In Him we see the Father.

(C. A. Berry, D. D.)

The universe and man
J. Kennedy, D. D.
These words remind us of an incident in the life of the first Napoleon. On board the ship which carried him across the Mediterranean to him campaign in Egypt, there were French savants who had convinced themselves, and thought they could convince others, that there is no God. The great commander found them discoursing boastfully on their favourite theme, and, calling them upon deck, while the heavens above were bright with innumerable stars, he said to them, "Tell me who made these." Napoleon was no philosopher, no metaphysician, no theologian. But he was a man of great common sense. We are not content to be told conjecturally of any processes through which things have passed into their present forms of existence. Nebular hypotheses and atomic theories explain nothing. If assumed as true, we demand to know whence the nebulae and whence the atoms came. Nor are we content to be cheated out of an answer to the question, "Who made these?" by a metaphysics which ends by leaving us in doubt as to whether these stars have any existence except in our own thoughts and thought-processes. There was a time when the children of men, lifting up their eyes on high, saw in the hosts of heaven not creatures of God, but gods. And we scarcely wonder. The living God once forsaken and forgotten, who or what so worthy of adoration as sun, moon, and stars?

I. IT IS THIS OLDER FAITH WE FIND IN OUR TEXT — not obscurely, but with the positiveness of knowledge. And it is not in this text alone, but horn the beginning to the end of our Bible. Its writers, in succession to one another, explicitly maintain the faith of a living God, Maker and Ruler of all And in doing so, they stood alone in the world. The wisdom of Egypt and the wisdom of Assyria gave them no countenance. The teaching of these Hebrew writers, through all the ages, from Moses to Christ, is like a pure crystal stream flowing through a vast desert, unabsorbed by sand or sun, and undefiled by the ten thousand impurities on its banks. The old Hebrew faith stands as firmly in the light of modern science as it did when science in its modern sense was a thing almost unknown. Sir Isaac Newton, in closing his exposition of the system of the universe, worshipped and declared that its cause could not be mechanical; it must be intelligent, it must be found in a voluntary agent infinitely wise and mighty. But while these men of the old Hebrew race knew less of the vastness of the universe than we do now, they did not feel it less. The man of science, with his telescope and mathematical reckonings, must feel himself utterly bewildered when he attempts to imagine the distances which his demonstrations reveal But it does not follow that his impression of that vastness, or his awe in the contemplation of it, is in proportion to his knowledge. A child, with a true child's heart, may be more deeply impressed with the glory of the over-hanging heavens, than a full-grown man who exercises all his intellectual power in endeavouring to understand them. The Hebrews knew enough and saw enough to produce the profoundest feeling. Perhaps the chief explanation of the feeling with which the Hebrews contemplated nature is that they saw God in everything.

II. THIS IS THE SECOND POINT TO WHICH OUR TEXT INTRODUCES US. "He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might; for that He is strong in power not one faileth." But what of the laws of nature? The Hebrew Scriptures, instead of denying the constancy of nature, seem to affirm it more consistently than some modern scientists. Take, e.g., these primitive statements: "God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so. And God saw that it was good. But the Bible, While explicit in regard to the constancy of nature, asserts with equal explicitness a continued Divine agency in nature (Psalm 104:14; John 5:17).

III. ALL THIS IS MADE THE FOUNDATION OF AN ARGUMENT OF COMFORT PRIMARILY TO THE ANCIENT ISRAEL OF GOD, AND EQUALLY TO ALL THE SPIRITUAL ISRAEL. "Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel?" etc. Galileo approached this idea, whether he got it from Isaiah or not, in a very significant form. "I would not that we should so shorten the arm of God in the government of human affairs, but that we should rest in this, that we are certain that God and nature are so occupied in the government of human affairs, they could not more attend to us if they were charged with the care of the human race alone." The prophet goes a step beyond this, and draws an argument from God's care over the universe to assure us of His care over us. Christ said, "Behold the fowls of the air; for they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" But the prophet seems to argue from God's care over the greater to His care over the less. As if he said, He watches over suns and stars, therefore He will watch over you. More than this, the Bible story of creation gives us the keynote of the Bible idea of man. Man is not merely one of innumerable living creatures made to people the earth; the earth was made for him. He was the end for which and towards which progressive changes, spread over vast ages, were effected. Glorious as that star may be, and wonderingly as I contemplate its brightness, I am more to God than it is; I am nearer of kin to God than it is; and if God cares for it, much more will He care for me, His own child.

(J. Kennedy, D. D.)

The heavens testily of God
Sir E. Strachey, Bart.
Cicero could ask, with unfailing constancy, "Can we doubt that some present and efficient ruler is over them?" And Seneca says, "They all continue, not because they are eternal, but because the watchfulness of their Governor protects them: imperishable things need no guardian; but these are preserved by their Maker, who, by His power, controls their natural tendency, to decay." And Hume, though his. philosophy was irreligious in comparison with that of either Roman, could raise his hands to the starry sky and show that he too had a human heart, by exclaiming to Fergusson, "Oh, Adam, how can a man look at that and not believe in a God!"

(Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

People
Isaiah, Jacob
Places
Jerusalem, Lebanon, Zion
Topics
Abundance, Army, Behold, Bringeth, Bringing, Brings, Calleth, Calling, Calls, Created, Faileth, Forth, Greatness, Heavens, Host, Lacking, Leads, Lift, Lifted, Mighty, Missing, Names, Numbered, Places, Power, Prepared, Sends, Starry, Stars, Strength, Strong
Outline
1. The promulgation of the Gospel
3. The preaching of John Baptist foretold
9. The preaching of the apostles foretold
12. The prophet, by the omnipotence of God
18. And his incomparableness
26. Comforts the people.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 40:26

     1020   God, all-knowing
     1060   God, greatness of
     1105   God, power of
     1305   God, activity of
     1325   God, the Creator
     1355   providence
     4065   orderliness
     4170   host of heaven
     4212   astronomy
     4281   stars
     4937   fate, fatalism
     5149   eyes
     7785   shepherd, occupation

Isaiah 40:25-26

     1165   God, unique
     4026   world, God's creation
     8321   perfection, divine

Isaiah 40:25-28

     4007   creation, and God

Library
April 18. "They Shall Mount up with Wings" (Isa. Xl. 31).
"They shall mount up with wings" (Isa. xl. 31). "They shall mount up with wings as eagles," is God's preliminary; for the next promise is, "They shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint." Hours of holy exultation are necessary for hours of patient plodding, waiting and working. Nature has its springs, and so has grace. Let us rejoice in the Lord evermore, and again we say, rejoice. And let us take Him to be our continual joy, whose heart is a fountain of blessedness, and who …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

'Have Ye Not? Hast Thou Not?'
'Have ye not known, have ye not heard? hath it not been told yon from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?... Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard?'--ISAIAH xl. 21 and 28. The recurrence of the same form of interrogation in these two verses is remarkable. In the first case the plural is used, in the second the singular, and we may reasonably conclude that as Israel is addressed in the latter, the nations outside the sphere illumined by Revelation are appealed …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Unfailing Stabs and Fainting Men
'...For that He is strong in power; not one faileth.... He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength.'-- ISAIAH xl. 26 and 29. These two verses set forth two widely different operations of the divine power as exercised in two sadly different fields, the starry heavens and this weary world. They are interlocked, as it were, by the recurrence in the latter of the emphatic words of the former. The one verse says, 'He is strong in power'; the other, 'He giveth …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

O Thou that Bringest Good Tidings
'O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!'--ISAIAH xl. 9. There is something very grand in these august and mysterious voices which call one to another in the opening verses of this chapter. First, the purged ear of the prophet hears the divine command to him and to his brethren--Comfort Jerusalem with the message of the …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Shepherd and the Fold
... Thou hast guided them in Thy strength unto Thy holy habitation.' EXODUS XV. 13. What a grand triumphal ode! The picture of Moses and the children of Israel singing, and Miriam and the women answering: a gush of national pride and of worship! We belong to a better time, but still we can feel its grandeur. The deliverance has made the singer look forward to the end, and his confidence in the issue is confirmed. I. The guiding God: or the picture of the leading. The original is 'lead gently.' Cf. …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Secret of Immortal Youth
'Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.'--ISAIAH xl. 30, 31. I remember a sunset at sea, where the bosom of each wavelet that fronted the west was aglow with fiery gold, and the back of each turned eastward was cold green; so that, looking on the one hand all was glory, and on the other …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Salvation Published from the Mountains
O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid: say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! I t would be improper to propose an alteration, though a slight one, in the reading of a text, without bearing my testimony to the great value of our English version, which I believe, in point of simplicity, strength, and fidelity, is not likely to be excelled by a new translation …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

The Consolation
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received at the LORD 's hand double for all her sins. T he particulars of the great "mystery of godliness," as enumerated by the Apostle Paul, constitute the grand and inexhaustible theme of the Gospel ministry, "God manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

The Harbinger
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD , make straight in the desert a high-way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. T he general style of the prophecies is poetical. The inimitable simplicity which characterizes every …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 1

The Withering Work of the Spirit
THE passage in Isaiah which I have just read in your hearing may be used as a very eloquent description of our mortality, and if a sermon should be preached from it upon the frailty of human nature, the brevity of life, and the certainty of death, no one could dispute the appropriateness of the text. Yet I venture to question whether such a discourse would strike the central teaching of the prophet. Something more than the decay of our material flesh is intended here; the carnal mind, the flesh in …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 17: 1871

This Sermon was Originally Printed
"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God."--Isaiah 40:1. WHAT A SWEET TITLE: "My people!" What a cheering revelation: "Your God!" How much of meaning is couched in those two words, "My people!" Here is speciality. The whole world is God's; the heaven, even the heaven of heavens are the Lord's and he reigneth among the children of men. But he saith of a certain number, "My people." Of those whom he hath chosen, whom he hath purchased to himself, he saith what he saith not of others. While …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858

8Th Day. Reviving Grace.
"He is Faithful that Promised." "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint."--ISAIAH xl. 31. Reviving Grace. "Wilt thou not revive us, O Lord?" My soul! art thou conscious of thy declining state? Is thy walk less with God, thy frame less heavenly? Hast thou less conscious nearness to the mercy-seat,--diminished communion with thy Saviour? Is prayer less a privilege than it has …
John Ross Macduff—The Faithful Promiser

"And the Redeemer Shall Come unto Zion, and unto them that Turn,"
Isaiah lix. 20.--"And the Redeemer shall come unto Zion, and unto them that turn," &c. Doctrines, as things, have their seasons and times. Every thing is beautiful in its season. So there is no word of truth, but it hath a season and time in which it is beautiful. And indeed that is a great part of wisdom, to bring forth everything in its season, to discern when and where, and to whom it is pertinent and edifying, to speak such and such truths. But there is one doctrine that is never out of season, …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

Hillis -- God the Unwearied Guide
Newell Dwight Hillis was born at Magnolia, Iowa, in 1858. He first became known as a preacher of the first rank during his pastorate over the large Presbyterian church in Evanston, Illinois. This reputation led to his being called to the Central Church, Chicago, in which he succeeded Dr. David Swing, and where from the first he attracted audiences completely filling one of the largest auditoriums in Chicago. In 1899 he was called to Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, to succeed Dr. Lyman Abbott in the pulpit …
Various—The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10

Of Loving Jesus Above all Things
Blessed is he who understandeth what it is to love Jesus, and to despise himself for Jesus' sake. He must give up all that he loveth for his Beloved, for Jesus will be loved alone above all things. The love of created things is deceiving and unstable, but the love of Jesus is faithful and lasting. He who cleaveth to created things will fall with their slipperiness; but he who embraceth Jesus will stand upright for ever. Love Him and hold Him for thy friend, for He will not forsake thee when all …
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

Prayer and Devotion
"Once as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly had been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God. As near as I can judge, this continued about an hour; and kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.. I felt an ardency of soul to be what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to love …
Edward M. Bounds—The Essentials of Prayer

The God of all Comfort
"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." Among all the names that reveal God, this, the "God of all comfort," seems to me one of the loveliest and the most absolutely comforting. The words all comfort admit of no limitation and no deductions; and one would suppose that, …
Hannah Whitall Smith—The God of All Comfort

Appendix xi. On the Prophecy, Is. Xl. 3
ACCORDING to the Synoptic Gospels, the public appearance and preaching of John was the fulfilment of the prediction with which the second part of the prophecies of Isaiah opens, called by the Rabbis, the book of consolations.' After a brief general preface (Is. xl. 1, 2), the words occur which are quoted by St. Matthew and St. Mark (Is. xl. 3), and more fully by St. Luke (Is. xl. 3-5). A more appropriate beginning of the book of consolations' could scarcely be conceived. The quotation of Is. xl. …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

Justification.
Among all the doctrines of our holy Christian faith, the doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, stands most prominent. Luther calls it: "The doctrine of a standing or a falling church," i.e., as a church holds fast and appropriates this doctrine she remains pure and firm, and as she departs from it, she becomes corrupt and falls. This doctrine was the turning point of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It was the experience of its necessity and efficacy that made Luther what he was, and …
G. H. Gerberding—The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church

The Humble Worship of Heaven.
1 Father, I long, I faint to see The place of thine abode, I'd leave thy earthly courts and flee Up to thy seat, my God! 2 Here I behold thy distant face, And 'tis a pleasing sight; But to abide in thine embrace Is infinite delight. 3 I'd part with all the joys of sense To gaze upon thy throne; Pleasure springs fresh for ever thence, Unspeakable, unknown. 4 [There all the heavenly hosts are seen, In shining ranks they move, And drink immortal vigour in, With wonder and with love. 5 Then at thy feet …
Isaac Watts—Hymns and Spiritual Songs

At Rest
Gerhard Ter Steegen Is. xl. 11 O God, a world of empty show, Dark wilds of restless, fruitless quest Lie round me wheresoe'er I go: Within, with Thee, is rest. And sated with the weary sum Of all men think, and hear, and see, O more than mother's heart, I come, A tired child to Thee. Sweet childhood of eternal life! Whilst troubled days and years go by, In stillness hushed from stir and strife, Within Thine Arms I lie. Thine Arms, to whom I turn and cling With thirsting soul that longs for Thee; …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen, Suso, and Others

His Schools and Schoolmasters.
(LUKE 1.) "Oh to have watched thee through the vineyards wander, Pluck the ripe ears, and into evening roam!-- Followed, and known that in the twilight yonder Legions of angels shone about thy home!" F. W. H. MYERS. Home-Life--Preparing for his Life-Work--The Vow of Separation--A Child of the Desert Zacharias and Elisabeth had probably almost ceased to pray for a child, or to urge the matter. It seemed useless to pray further. There had been no heaven-sent sign to assure them that there was any …
F. B. Meyer—John the Baptist

Impiety of Attributing a visible Form to God. --The Setting up of Idols a Defection from the True God.
1. God is opposed to idols, that all may know he is the only fit witness to himself. He expressly forbids any attempt to represent him by a bodily shape. 2. Reasons for this prohibition from Moses, Isaiah, and Paul. The complaint of a heathen. It should put the worshipers of idols to shame. 3. Consideration of an objection taken from various passages in Moses. The Cherubim and Seraphim show that images are not fit to represent divine mysteries. The Cherubim belonged to the tutelage of the Law. 4. …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

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