The heavens are plural for their variety, comprising the watery
heavens with their clouds of countless forms, the aerial heavens with their
calms and tempests, the solar heavens with all the glories of the day, and the
starry heavens with all the marvels of the night; what the Heaven of heavens
must be hath not entered into the heart of man, but there in chief all things
are telling the glory of God. Any part of creation has more instruction in it
than the human mind will ever exhaust, but the celestial realm is particularly
rich in spiritual lore. The heavens declare, or “are declaring,” for the
continuance of their testimony is intended by the participles employed; every
moment God’s existence, power, wisdom, and goodness are being sounded abroad by
the heavenly heralds which shine upon us from above. He who would guess at
divine sublimity should gaze upward into the starry vault; he who would imagine
infinity must peer into the boundless expanse; he who desires to know divine
fidelity must mark the regularity of the planetary motions; and he who would
attain some conceptions of divine power, greatness, and majesty must estimate
the forces of attraction, the magnitude of the fixed stars, and the brightness
of the whole celestial train. It is not merely glory that the heavens declare,
but the glory of God, for they deliver to us such unanswerable arguments
for a conscious, planning, controlling, and presiding Creator, that no
unprejudiced person can remain unconvinced by them. The testimony given by the
heavens is no mere hint, but a plain, unmistakable declaration; and it is a
declaration of the most constant and abiding kind. Yet for all this, to what
avail is the clearest showing to one spiritually blind? God the Holy Spirit
must illuminate us, or all the suns in the milky way never will. Thefirmament showeth his handiwork. Not “handy” in the popular use of that term, but hand-work. The expanse is full of
the works of the Lord’s skillfull, creating hands; hands being attributed to
the great creating Spirit to set out his care and workmanlike action, and to
meet the poor comprehension of mortals. In the expanse above us God flies, as
it were, his starry flag to show that the King is at home, that atheists may
see how he despises their denunciations of him. He who looks up to the
firmament and then writes himself down an atheist brands himself at the same
moment as an idiot or a liar. It is strange that some who love God are yet
afraid to study the God-declaring book of nature. The wisest are those who with
pious eagerness trace the goings forth of Jehovah as well in creation as in
grace.
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