Bible Commentaries

The Personal God

1 Chronicles 28:20

Every man has what practically amounts to a god of his own. That is to say, he has a conception of God which no other mind has seized, and that conception forms the living centre of his personal religion. There are several gods in Christendom which I have renounced, and against which every honest man should, from any point of view, inveigh with strong indignation. Three examples occur to me at this moment, (1) There is a god that specifically foreordains so many people to be saved and so many to be lost; this god calls upon all men to be saved, well knowing that the call will neither be heard nor answered, because of an arbitrary decree which he himself has issued. This god I abhor and renounce, and I treat his power with scorn and defiance. No such god could ever secure my confidence or tempt me into other than mocking prayer. (2) Then there is another god, in many respects the exact contrary of this. He is infinitely soft; he is "all tears"; he is constantly misspending his love and complaining of the daily waste; his life is a tumultuous sentiment, rushing like an unbanked river into any swamp that will receive it and turn it into fetid and barren greenness. This god I pity and avoid. There is further (3) a kind of gentleman-god who is the refined and respectable patron of a certain type of churches. He never attends any other place of worship; he is nothing if not genteel; he submits himself sabbatically to the mild encomiums of sundry feeble persons who use him for professional purposes and never make any vulgar or exciting allusions to him.

My God is wholly unlike these three idols. Were there but these three to choose from, I should in very deed be a godless man. My heart goes out towards another God, about whom I will say what little I can, the most being less than nothing, and the highest love being but dead coldness when spoken in the words of man. What I know about this God I have learned solely from the Son of the carpenter. He seemed to be a long time in saying anything about God. The first time he spoke of him, except by way of quotation, he did not call him God, or Lord, or Most High, or Eternal; he called him "your Father which is in heaven"! Not that he disavowed the more solemn name, for the next time he turned to the topic he said "God's throne." After long companionship with the Son of the carpenter, and even much loving intimacy with his most secret heart, I have come to know something about this Father who has a throne, and this God who is a Father.

Intellectually my God is as unthinkable as mathematically the horizon is immeasurable. We can lay one end of the tape upon the earth, but we cannot lay the other end on the horizon, yet the horizon is visible, and is just—yonder! But because God is unthinkable it does not follow that he is not to be thought about. The fatal mistake of some thinkers seems to lie just there. The unthinkable is not something contrary to thought, but is something above thought, as the immeasurable is not a quantity which disproves figures, but exceeds them. Astronomy gives us a universe whose orbit is so stupendous that any section of any circle ever measured by mathematics appears upon its circumference as merely a straight line. An unthinkable universe, yet objectively here, undeniable, most palpable, and not wholly without use! I like to think about it until thought falls into a dream, and the dream is too grand for words and becomes a dumbly religious amazement. If I think only of my own parish, I become small; of my own country only, a selfish patriot; of the universe, I heighten with the infinite idea. This experience has its inexpressible counterpart in religion. I am incomplete and restless without God. I grope for him in a great darkness, and my heart is pained with bitter crying and a very agony of desire. You must give me a God, or I will create one. Idolatry is philosophical; in its most tragic bloodiness it is but the desperation of a life that is nearly Divine. The God and Father of Jesus Christ fills me with ineffable satisfaction, not that he falls wholly within the lines of my intellectual capacity, but is as the sun which fills the earth with its glory and yet holds in reserve infinitely more than the earth can receive. It is open to others to call this phantasy on my part. I might call it phantasy, too, and endeavour to quench it, but that I am the better for it, coming out of the enrapturing reverie as I do with a sacred contempt for all meanness and a burning desire to help and bless all other human life. Such a phantasy is not without substance, and therefore is no phantasy, though seeming to be such to men whose intellectual guests are always less than themselves. If it perished like a cloud, I might value it at the price of a cloud, but so long as it constrains me to do good, to think nobly, to give generously, and to suffer patiently, I must encourage it, though it be called by no other name than phantasy.

Another thought. It is a mistake to suppose that knowledge tomes to us solely through what are known as intellectual proeesses. Some things we know intuitively, some sympathetically, some experimentally. Some knowledge 1 Chronicles 28:11.

David was determined to do as much as possible towards building the temple.—The temple itself he was forbidden to rear; and yet, whilst obeying the letter of the word, he zealously did his utmost to facilitate the progress of his son.—Some men can only give outlines, hints, suggestions, patterns.—These men are of great consequence and value in the education of the human mind.—A hint may be a stimulus.—Some men can see a long way through a small rent, and yet they never could make the rent for themselves.—In the Church we have statesmen and politicians—that is to say, men who can grasp the entirety of a case, and men who can only see parts of it, or attend to the detail of the working out of some great scheme.—Solomon can work according to a pattern when he may be destitute of original invention.—We mistake originality when we think that it consists of adaptation of old materials.—As a matter of fact, there is no originality. The only partial originality possible to us is the 1 Chronicles 28:19.

Thus David would not be a plagiarist.—Instead of saying that his own genius had invented the pattern, he distinctly, as in the12th verse, said, "The pattern of all that he had by the spirit," and again, in the19th verse, "The Lord made me understand."—In reality there is but one Architect.—The Lord is the builder of all things.—He supplies the material, he inspires the genius, he directs the skill; in short, they labour in vain that build the temple if the Lord be not with them and within them.—Of every man it may be inquired, What hast thou that thou hast not received?—We should look beyond the vessel to the treasure, beyond the instrument to the user of it.—The organ did not build itself; the organ cannot play itself; it must be an instrument used mightily and wisely, yea, with cunning skill, and not a little tender sympathy, by a living soul.—Have we correctly read the plans of God, so far as he has outlined them?—Have we not worked much under them, rather than fully up to all their possibility of meaning and use?—Have we not been afraid to mention all the ideas which God has communicated to us?—We may have feared the people, we may have feared our equals, we may have feared some loss of reputation or remuneration, by going out of the common way and declaring that God has made a narration to us respecting the enlargement of his purpose or the variation of his providence.—In this way we are to read the Bible.—David would say the same about his Psalm that is said about the patterns of the temple and its contents.—At the end of each psalm he would have written, This is what the Lord made me understand; or, This is the pattern that I have had by the spirit.—The same may be said of the whole Bible: it is God's book, it is God's plan of his earthly sphere, it is God's outline of providence and redemption.—We have to carry out many details, we have to readjust elements and materials to suit the image and aspect of the times passing over us; but we must never alter the plan, the essential thought, the ruling purpose of God.—We must not regard the Bible as of human origin; in every line of it we must see the movement of the Eternal Spirit.

"Handfuls of Purpose,"

For All Gleaners

".... the princes and all the people will be wholly at thy commandment."— 1 Chronicles 28:21.

This is the way to mingle the classes and the masses.—The only equalisation of human society possible or desirable is an equalisation wrought out by holy service—community of effort, united and consolidated sympathy, on behalf of the poor, the helpless, and the outcast.—The service was so great that the prince was as the peasant, and the peasant was as the prince.—In the glory of the mid-day sun all lights of our kindling seem to be equal, because the glory of the sun rules all and excels all: so in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ all his servants seem to be equal; the wise man is not vain of his wisdom, the strong man makes no account of his strength, the weak man is not ashamed of his weakness; all are inspired and dominated by a common exaltation of feeling.—When our spiritual zeal declines we begin to make invidious comparisons; we speak of great men and little men, leaders and followers: there is a sense in which this distinction will ever hold good, until, under the influence of the purest inspiration, all these differences will be but a variety of unity, and these distinctions themselves will be cited as a proof of the oneness of the Christian Church.—The stars are many, but the heavens are one; the flowers are innumerable, but they are all warmed and fostered by one common sun.—Let each do what he can; the first may be last, and the last may be first.—When we are in a right mood of mind we shall be characterised by obedience, we shall know the voice of the leader and respond to it, we shall know the commandment of God, and never hesitate to carry it out.—Princes and people were at liberty to reject the mere inventions either of David or of Solomon, but when David or Solomon became the obvious medium of divine communication the people looked at the message and not at the medium.