839
THE K I NG ' S BUS I NESS
of suns, on out in the vast, ageless, time less, fleckless eternity, in the solitudes of infinite being. J esus of th e carpenter shop in N azareth w a s w it h G od . II. Paul not. only preached a Pre-existent Jesus, he preached a Divine Jesus. “He was in the form of God.” “He was the express image of the Father’s person,” the forth-shining of the Father’s glory. He shared the divine nature. It pleased God that in Him all the fullness of the God-head should dwell. What God essentially and eternally is, Jesus essentially and eternally was. He was the word—or utterance of God: “for in Him Were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things vis ible and things invisible, whether thrones or- dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and unto him. And he is before all things.” (Col. 1:16, 17). Go abroad in the world with this con ception of the Carpenter. What an en chancement! What a previous activity! He tipped the clover leaf; He silvered the under green of the willow, that clinging, sweeping, swaying thing of the wood— Land, half nymph, half poem. He fash ioned the invisible looms of light that weave the hidden petals of the rose, fold upon fold, flinging the noiseless shuttles to and fro until that wedded mystery of earth and sea and sky breathes its frag rance out and lifts itself as though for the breast of God. He dug the channels for the rivers, upheaved the mountain’s majesty; bound the snowy scarf about the shoulders of the Alps. It was He that twisted darkness into a swaddling hand for the deep and made the cloud the gar ment for the shoulders of the sea. He stooped and kindled the fires of the mil lions of uncourited suns. Some of you will recall the memorable visit to America of Sir Robert Ball, Royal Astronomer of Great Britain. In one of his addresses he found occasion to refer to our little solar system and its place in
We do riot readily conceive it. We are creatures of a day. The trees outlive us. Last summer I stood beneath a wide branching elm that once flung its cooling shade down upon the bare feet and legs of the hoy that became my grandfather. The trees outlive us. The pre-existence of Jesus is so baf fling to thought that we need to approach it in terms of time as well as of eternity. Push your way hack across fifty years of history, and with saber stroke and jab of bayonet, and roar of cannon and shriek of shell and spit Of bullet, in the red dew of battle men are seeking to bind up the wounds of a severed nation that liberty and union may not perish from the earth. Push your way over another period of history. Washington is kneeling amid the snows of Valley Forge reaching his fingers up through the impenetrable gloom—reaching for the skirts of God. Push your way over a still vaster per iod and a cowled monk is nailing his thesis to the door of a church in Witten berg, and as his hammer strikes upon the nails God has begun to shake thrones and dominions of political and ecclesiastical powers in Europe and push hack the gates of a new era for the race. Push your way back across a still vaster period, and they are nailing a man to a jagged beam, beyond the city gates. Push your way on over a still vaster period. One is rising up from Ur of the Chaldees and going out not knowing whither. Soft now! It is the tinkling of the bell of Abraham’s camel. Push your way on over a still vaster period. And you are in the hush of Eden and love is whispering its first ecstacies and hope is dreaming her first dreams of unbroken bliss, and the first lovers walk in the deepening shadows at the cool of the day and God is abroad to companion their solitude and the flaming sword has not' yet shut them from the garden. Push your way out still farther before the mouritains were brought forth or ever God had lighted the fires of the millions
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter