Psalm 23:2:
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
The will should be considered still more closely, if you would attain unto the knowledge of God. The field in which our will operates, was not sufficiently plowed and harrowed in the days of our fathers. The great question then was, whether the will is free or bound. Beyond this, even in preaching and catechising, the great significance of our will was ignored. Yea, are there not many people now, by whom the whole realm of the will is left fallow?
This does not mean to say that in the time of our fathers, and in our own past, there has been no increase in the knowledge of God through the will. How could that be? The will does not only come into action by what is written about it in a book, or taught from the pulpit. It is the Lord, Who makes your will to operate, and direct itself for good. It is He Who worketh in you both to will and to do his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13), and how could your God be bound to sermon or book?
We only mean that he who is so blessed and fortunate as to be refreshed every morning and evening with a drop of grace from the Fountain of Divine Compassion, and has time and insight to ponder and meditate on holy things, does wrong, when he leaves so important a component part of his soul's power, as resides in the will, almost if not wholly uninvestigated. This can not help but impoverish him in consequence. Our will is something inscrutably wonderful, so Divine a product of creation in our soul, and so deeply engraven a trait of the Image of God that reflects itself in us, that lack of reverence and of admiration betrays itself when we do not lift the veil from before it.
Moreover, our will is so powerful an instrument, that he who handles it thoughtlessly, readily wounds himself therewith.
We should also distinguish between times and times.
There is a time of childhood, followed by a time of early youth, in which one lives by instinct, and does what he does without knowing why he does it.
But there comes a time when, as it were, the sediment disappears from the waters, and the mirror of the consciousness becomes clear, and then comes reflective thought. Our age is farther advanced than that of our fathers. The former instinctive life becomes more and more the conscious life. And he who takes no part in the transition falls behind.
The whole Church will become aware that she loses power, when she adheres to the old without harmonizing her insight into the past with the claims of our clarified consciousness. She then gets out of touch with life; her preaching does not concern itself with what stirs and moves in life. She does not arm the faithful, and amid the great conflict of spirits it comes to pass that in her ever weakening condition she at length passes out of the fight.
Will it do then, for a time like ours, when in every way the will is the object of investigation and thought, for Christians to act as though the study of the will did not concern them?
Yet we must confine ourselves to our subject.
These meditations aim to lead the soul closer to the hidden walk with her God; to bring her such knowledge of God as is itself eternal life. In this knowledge of God we must increase. And this increase in the knowledge of God is effected more through the will than through our understanding.
This is the point which we now press.
The holy Apostle expresses it so clearly: "Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, whereby we shall be fruitful in every good work, and at the same time increase in the knowledge of God" (Colossians 1:10).
He who so bends his will that at length he himself has no other will than to forgive his debtor, comes through this his will to the knowledge of the compassionate God Who forgives him.
To God, forgiveness is no outward rule which He applies. Forgiveness comes from His will to forgive, and this will to forgive comes from His Being. If now you come to will like this of yourself, then you become conformed in this to your Father who is in heaven. What Jesus said: "Be ye perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect," is in this particular point then realized in you; and feeling thus that you yourself are of the family of God, you come to a knowledge of God that is not a lesson learned by heart, but one that springs from your relationship to God itself.
Do you understand the beauty, the intimacy, the Godliness of this?
Now this.
All men are not alike in power of thought nor in freedom of time. There are those who are able to analyze deeply and sharply and to look into questions. But there are far more who can not do this. We would not call the latter dull, but, for all that, it is a fact that, for the most part, people are not able to scrutinize to the full every part of our glorious Creed. They simply can not do this. They lack capacity.
Freedom in the matter of time also differs with one man and another. A laborer who leaves home at early dawn and comes back tired at night, what time has he for study in sacred things, especially compared with a clergyman or a professor in theology who can spend all day in it? For such study requires preparation, books, and retirement. And what a difference there is between a farm hand at the plow, and a minister with a university training, a well supplied library and a study of his own.
If now you seek the knowledge of God mainly in education, and if you say that this knowledge thus obtained is everlasting life, how cruel you become. As though eternal life came for the most part to people of study, and as though the shepherd wandered aimlessly behind his sheep.
You feel yourself, this can not, this must not be.
If knowledge of God is eternal life, then increase of this knowledge must be obtainable by some means within everyohe's reach—the scholar in his study, the laborer at his work, the busy mother in her home.
Then of itself you discover the importance of the will, and the relative unimportance of mere intellectual attainment. Do not many learned people give the impression of standing almost altogether outside the knowledge of God, while numbers upon numbers of hard-working, simple souls exhale a fragrance of eternal life?
And here you touch the sensitive nerve of life itself.
A will works in every man. The will is in action every day. The will is active in, and with, everything. The work, the act, the power of the will, its impulse and passion may be widely divergent, but without the will there is no act, no deed, no career in life.
Here every difference between man and man falls away. Every one faces it daily for himself. In whatever retirement or simple position in life one may find himself, there is a will that wills, a will that operates.
It is not a something apart, something added to life; it is the urgency of the soul itself that throbs in every artery of the life.
Quietly, by the side of still waters, this action of the will goes on all day long till the very end of life—with every one; at every moment, on every occasion. It is a never resting, ever newly-fed stream of will-choice, will-decision, will-action, which continuously, quietly ripples along, bearing life company and in part carrying it.
Thus it is in everyone's power, by this continual exercise of the will, to increase continually in the knowledge of God, and thereby to attain unto an ever fuller possession and enjoyment of eternal life, provided we separate this exercise of the will ever less from the will of God and derive it ever more from God's will.
Thus all cruelty disappears. Whether you have a limited life or a large one makes no difference; even though it continue on its way like the quiet flow of a gentle stream, the knowledge of God can daily be enriched by it, and you can daily increase in eternal life as well as the queen on her throne, or the farm-hand behind the plow; and the professor in his study is not then necessarily better off than he who moves the shuttle in a loom.
All this goes on quietly as by the side of very still waters; and the best part of it is that it asks for no extra time outside of the daily life.
All intellectual training demands special time. In behalf of it the daily task must be abandoned. Time must be set apart for it. For most people this is almost impossible. For most of us life is a mill that never stops.
But as regards the knowledge of God through "the willing of your will" all this is of no account.
The will never operates outside of the life, but always within it. Whether you walk behind the plow, or stand behind a school desk, care for your children in the home, or nurse the sick, it is all the same. It is all the expression and activity of the will. And provided you do not go counter to the will of God, but make your will coincide with His, it is all one process of activity whereby you can increase in the knowledge of God, in order by this knowledge to mature in the eternal life.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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