American Horniletic Review Luke 2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, There are two classes of persons between whom a mutual distrust exists, because they fail to appreciate each other's attitude toward the events of the universe. I. The first class expects all things to come to pass gradually, so that their courses may be traced. The motive of this class is intellectual; the mind wants to correlate facts. Sudden transitions, having been hitherto supposed to argue the absence of natural causes, are unwelcome to the scientific mind. II. The other class cares little for natural causes, but rather delights in things supposed to be unexplainable by any but extra-natural interventions. It knows that worship is the highest exercise of the mind, and it desires sudden and mysterious events to quicken the feeling of reverence. III. Between these extremes our text mediates by affirming the sudden occurrences, but associating them by a copulative, rather than an adversative conjunction with the things that went before them. In this it has the authority of many scientific men (notably Dr. Maudsley), who assert that there are indeed leaps and sudden changes and specific differences, while they assign them to natural causes, thus contrasting them only with other events and things, not with nature as a whole, and connecting them copulatively instead of adversatively with other phenomena. Nor does this destroy the value of such events as calls to worship. The surprise caused by a sudden event often wakes up a sleeping sense of reverence whether the event is explainable or not. God means to surprise us, but He does not mean to put us to confusion. The scientific mind is compelled by the facts to concede the actual occurrence of sudden and surprising events. With the universe full of God the devout mind can afford to concede the presumptive universality of natural causes. Science has kept saying "not suddenly;" religion has reiterated "but suddenly;" the Bible calmly says "and suddenly." The "and" suits science, the "suddenly" suits religion. Let us seek to be devout and scientific both, and sing with spirit and understanding. (American Horniletic Review.) Parallel Verses KJV: And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,WEB: Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God, and saying, |
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