BY SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.
WHAT beauty must be in this Lord! Angels and glorified souls are not able to look off His face for all eternity. Matt. xviii. 10. Rev. xxii. 4. Is. xxiv. 23. “The moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem before his ancients gloriously.” He must be a fair Lord when the fair sun blusheth and is ashamed to appear and shine before Him. Nothing David desired on this side of time but “to dwell all the days of his life in the house of the Lord, and behold the beauty (the heavenly, uncreated beauty) of the Lord.” Ps. xxvii. 4. Put all the imaginable colours of the firmament, of the morning sky, of all the lilies and roses of the earth, which surpass Solomon’s royalty, in one; imagine each rose to be of the quantity of the earth: all these should be but created shadows to Him. Zech. ix. 17, “How great is his goodness, how great is his beauty!” He is both gracious and fair.
Who can worthily speak of Omnipotence and the boundless power in God? Is. xl. 12, “Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?” There is but One in all the world, and from eternity to eternity never was there any save One who can do all this. What fingers be those which at one time are in the furthest borders of the eastern heaven and of the western heaven? “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” And He can take up the whole Isle of Britain in His hand, and can hang the weight of the massy body of heaven and earth on the top of His finger. Who is He who hangeth the earth, yea, the whole world, upon nothing? What hindereth (seeing there be such broils, tumults, motions in heaven, earth and hell) but this great huge vessel of the great All, this whole world, should fall to the one side and break, but only that Omnipotence holdeth it up? Who hath arms
* This extract is taken from a sermon preached by Samuel Rutherford before the House of Commons in 1644, when he was in London as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the memorable Westminster Assembly. Referring to this great honour, he says in one of his letters:—”I am now called for to England; the government of the Lord’s House in England and Ireland is to be handled. My heart beareth me witness, and the Lord who is greater knoweth, my faith was never prouder than to be a common rough country barrowman at Anwoth; and that I could not look to the honour of being a mason, to lay the foundation for many generations, and to build the waste places of Zion in another kingdom, or to have a hand or finger in that carved work in the cedar and alnug trees in that new temple.”
to spread a web of black darkness from the East to the West? Is. i. 3, “I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sack-cloth their covering.” And alas! all that I say here is nothing. It must be true here that it is better to be silent in so great a matter than to speak a little.
Then let us not be in love with the creature, or with man. What is man but a weeping, groaning, dying nothing! Is. xl. 17, “All nations are before God as nothing, and less than nothing, and vanity.” What is nothing? It is the least thing that can be; but, I pray you, what is less than nothing? Nothing can be less than nothing; but all nations being compared with God, vanish infinite miles out of the world of things. And if one man be nothing, nations of men and nations of nations are nothing. Multiply ciphers to millions of millions, they cannot make a number, because every cipher is nothing, and therefore the product must be nothing. So multiply infinite nations,—the product shall be nothing. Millions and hosts of men are millions and hosts of vanities. God is All, and an infinite All, and what can we do to make Him lovely and desirable? We may preach this admirable Lord, but we shall never out-preach Him: and praise Him, but shall never out-praise him: His favour is more to be sought than favour of kings; He is more to be feared than kings. Is. li. 12, “I, even I, am the Lord, the Lord that comforteth you; who art thou that thou shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die, and of the son of man that shall be made as grass?” Hence are you to see to the prerogative royal of the king, but more to the prerogative royal of the Prince of the earth. And therefore, O judges, be wise. O, all you who carry on your heads diadems and royal crowns of yellow dust and glittering clay, I mean of gold and precious stones, stoop, stoop, before this Monarch, cast down your crowns and sceptres at the feet of the King of Kings. Know your Superior, the highest Landlord of dying monarchies. In Zech. ii. 12, it is said, “The Lord shall inherit Judah, and shall choose Jerusalem.” O but kings and dominions who keep Judah captive, cry out with a shout, “Judah shall serve us and our king, and Jesus Christ shall not reign over us!” But there is a royal proclamation given with an “O, yes,”* from His palace of glory, Who inhabiteth Eternity: “Be silent, O all flesh, before the Lord.” Many are upon foot, raging and consulting with all: “Let us break his bands and cast his cords from us,” Ps. ii. 2. Nay, One who is not on foot, but sitteth in heaven, laughing, not troubling Himself with the tumults of clay-nothings, sent out a princely mandate, “I have set My King upon my holy hill of Zion, I have put the Crown on Christ’s Head, what men of dust and ashes shall pull it off His Head?” Ps. xlvii. 9, “He breaketh the bow and cutteth the spear, he burneth the chariots in the fire.” The heathen cannot endure this: they flee on armies and cry with a shout, “He shall not
* “Oyez,” a herald’s formal cry.
break our bows, He shall not burn our chariots with fire!” Therefore a royal commandment and decree cometh out,—“Be still, and know that I am God, I will be exalted above the heathen, I will be exalted on earth.” He is crying, “O Rome, O kings and powers of the world, O Babylon, Lady of nations, O Pope and Cardinals, hold your peace, speak no more.”
Learn, then, to bring your hearts in a fervour and sickness of love with God, and seek to mould higher and more majestic thoughts and conceptions of this most high Lord than ordinarily we do. And, therefore, consider how incomprehensible He is. Summon all created glory before Him, by way of comparison, and make Him your last end. First, then, consider two words that Paul hath: (Eph. iii. 18, 19) “That you may be able (it is his prayer), with all the saints, to comprehend what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.” Now, from the love of Christ you may take the measure, in some proportion, of this great Lord Himself. Then conceive a love higher than the heaven of heavens, deeper than the earth, broader than the sea, yea, broader and longer than the circumference of the outmost shell or orb of the heaven of heavens,—that love should not pass knowledge, but seeing, I am warranted to speak of this Love according to dimensions of height, breadth, depth, length, then imagine, in the capacity of knowledge and understanding, ten thousand millions of new-created heavens and worlds at the east end of this heaven that now is, and ten thousand millions of new worlds created at the west end of this heaven that now is, and let your knowledge run along to the north and south and to the thirty-two points of the four cardinal arches, here would be great height, length, breadth, and depth of love; yet I am sure this love should not pass all knowledge, for the understanding of man will go along through all these to multiply and multiply again and again, and yet all is love within knowledge. What then must Himself be, if we could separate God and God’s love! Again, conceive so many multiplied new worlds, new heavens, new earths, new seas, new forests, woods, trees, reeds, herbs, grass, stones, and all the rest multiplied; and conceive so many worlds of men and new-created angels, and let all those millions of woods, trees, forests, herbs, grass be all made pens, and let all these thousand millions of new-created seas, fountains, rivers be all ink; and all these thousand millions of heavens, yea, of heavens, earth, air be paper; and let these thousands of millions of men and angels write books and psalms of praise of this infinite and incomprehensible Lord; and let their wits be enlarged in the capacity of so many thousand millions of degrees of understanding above what they now have according to the former multiplied numbers; and let their wits for all Eternity conceive new expressions and most heavenly conceptions of the infinite excellency, transcendent glory, incomparable goodness and matchless and boundless highness, greatness, omnipotence of this
never-enough admired and adored Lord, of this High and Lofty One who inhabiteth Eternity; and yet all these should not pass knowledge, for you and I, and any ordinary understanding of no great capacity, may know all this; and therefore all these should not say anything to express this Love and this Lord who passeth all knowledge. O, if we could be drawn to a higher measure of love, and to put a greater price on this Lord than we do! From this we may easily see the comparison betwixt this Lord and peers* of created nothings. And if all nations be before Him as nothing, and as less than nothing, as it is said by Himself (Is. xl. 17), then say, “O small base nothing of a creature; O highest, O excellency of all things in the Creator! O little and really small creature; O great and surpassingly great and incomparable Creator! O man, poor man, that living lie and that dying and expiring nothing; but O infinite All, O unspeakable and infinite glory of uncreated Being! O man, a breathing fable, a living and laughing vanity; O Self-sufficient and all-sufficient Life of solid happiness! O creature, a dying vanity and a weeping nothing, a nothing rejoicing, eating, drinking, sighing, dying; O highest Creator, O Eternity of ever-living and ever-joying Life, O Self-living Immortality of endless and uncreated joy! O created sparks and poor drops of creature-goodness and creature-mercy; O sea, O boundless world of worlds of infinite goodness and bottomless mercy in the Creator of all things! O shamed and despised royalty of princes of earth and clay; O never-enough admired glory of uncreated royalty in the incomprehensible God! O fair sun! O beautiful moon! But rather, O confounded and shamed sun and moon (Is. xxiv. 23), and O infinitely fair and glorious Lord Who made sun and moon! O pleasant roses and lilies; but O more pleasant Lord, the Creator of roses and lilies! O mighty and powerful kings and emperors; but most mighty and matchless King of Kings! O foolish and unwise men, O unsteadfast and changeable angels! O Lord, there is no searching out of Thy understanding, O unchangeable and immovable Mover of all things! O pieces of breathing, laughing and then dying clay, O creature of yesterday, of the last by-past hour, for the world is not of one week’s standing to Him, seeing a thousand years are to Him as one day—but O Lord, the Ancient of days. O Father of Eternity (Is. ix. 6), O King of Ages (1 Tim. i. 17), and King of Time! O weak men, O mightless and infirm heavens which wax old as a garment; O eternal Lord! What an Arm of Omnipotence is in Him Who shall with a shake of His right arm move the heavens and loose all the fixed stars, and cause them to fall out of heaven as figs fall off a fig-tree shaken with a mighty wind! Rev. vi. 13. O all you created gardens and orchards and paradises, be ashamed, blush and hide yourselves beside the Tree of Life which beareth twelve manner of fruit every month! Every apple growing on this Lord, who is
* Men who are equals of nothing.
the Tree of Life, is life eternal. O gold, O silver, O rubies, O precious stones, much desired of Adam’s sons, what are you to Him Whose city is fairer? Rev. xxi. 18, “And the building of the wall was of jasper, and the city was pure gold like unto clear glass.” He saith not there was abundance of gold in the city, and multitudes of precious stones; but the city was all gold and precious stones. O all fair rivers and seas, what are you but pools of dead water, being compared with the pure river of water of life proceeding out of the Throne of God and of the Lamb? Rev. xxii. 1. Every drop of that water is a heaven. O created well-beloveds, you are black and the sun hath looked on you when you come out and stand beside the Standard-bearer among ten thousand! Cant. v. 10. O, who are sick of love for this Lord? O for Eternity’s leisure to look on Him, to feast upon a sight of His face! O for the long summer-day of endless ages, to stand beside Him, and to enjoy Him! O Time, O Sin, be removed out of the way! O day, O fairest of days, dawn! O morning of Eternity break out and arise, that we may enjoy this incomprehensible Lord!