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31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
God is invisible. He hides Himself behind the veil of nature. But the folds of that veil move themselves in undulations and vibrations whereby we perceive that God Himself behind that veil of nature is close to us. In everything that in nature lives before our eye, murmurs, throbs and moves itself, we feel the pulse-beat of God's own Life. Scripture has no knowledge of a dead nature, and in all sorts of ways it makes us hear in nature the voice of God, and listen for His footfalls. When the earth trembles, it is because He is wroth and makes the foundations of the mountains to shake. In the darkened firmament, "God bows the heaven and comes down." In the whirlwind, "God rode upon a cherub and flew." When "the deep abysses of water" foam, it is God Who rebukes them and drives them forth with "the blast of the wind of his nostrils." The flashes of lightning are arrows which He shoots forth into the firmament. The stars appear when it becomes dark, because God calls them, and behold not one faileth. He waters the mountains from His heights. He sends forth fountains, so that they walk between the hills. He makes grass grow for cattle, and for man bread come up from the ground. It is He Who cleaves the sea, so that the waves foam. And he who has a spiritually trained ear, observes how God as his Good Shepherd goes before him on the way, and hears God's rod and staff beat upon his life's path, and is comforted thereby.
Hence, all this is not for the sake of a poetic, vivid view of nature; heathen poets also have given us this. No, even in nature everything is for the sake of religion, to reveal to you the glorious presence of God, and to bring you the warm, fostering sense, that in all this life of nature the living, Almighty God is round about and with you, in order to fill you with the sublime impression of His Almightiness, His Divinity and His Majesty.
But this is not all.
This same living God, Who in nature always envelops you and presses Himself upon you, reveals Himself in a far richer way to you in man, whom He has appointed as lord of creation.
Yea, His revelation of life in man is so wonderfully Divine, that after saying: "Thou shalt love God with all thy soul, all thy heart, all thy mind and all thy strength," He transposes this great commandment into an altogether different one, to wit: "Thou shalt love man as thyself," and in this second commandment declares that it is entirely like unto the first (Mark 12:31). To love God in His Majesty and to love God in one's neighbor, is one and the same commandment.
To love God in God Himself and God in man, or in one's neighbor, differs in form and in fulfillment, but, as commandment, it is one.
Errable science more and more forces the idea upon us that, as though from dead matter, gradually, of itself, the plant has been evolved; presently from the plant, of itself, the animal; and finally from the animal, of itself, man. This wisdom has been christened with the name of Evolution and Darwin is called the prophet of this new evangel.
This whole system is nothing but the self-deception of unbelieving thought. But there is this truth in it, that the whole creation seems built up round about us as a temple in which man should minister as priest. Everything points to man; calls for man. And when at length man appears in this temple of nature, everything that went before, seems to have served to prepare for his arrival. Not for naught has man been called a world in miniature. Only in man does the creation reach its consummation. Almighty God Who in nature hides Himself as behind a veil, appears in man in personal revelation, not alone in His Power and Majesty, but, what means far more, as Spirit. In man is self-perception, clear consciousness, a thinking out of God's thoughts after Him, a revelation of will, a thirst after holiness, the spark of genius, an appreciation of the beautiful, the grasp after the ideal, presentment of eternal existence, the totality (embodiment) of being in one personal existence, the imprinted, innate knowledge of the Eternal Being. And all this is in him solely and alone because God created him after His Image.
You can know a masterbuilder by the palace he has built; a poet, by his songs; a mighty thinker, by his works; but altogether different is the impression that remains of him, when you have seen his likeness and have watched therein the features of his face, the flashing of his eye, the expression of his person.
Such is the case here. The supreme Masterbuilder and Artist shows you first His works in nature; but then He comes a second time, and in man shows you His Image, the image of His own Being.
Not in one man, this is impossible; but in man, as in the course of centuries, by millions and millions individual men have been born, have lived and died. But among these millions, there was the hyssop and the cedar. In these few mighty examples which as cedars stood out prominently above the forest of men, the revelation of His Being drew itself ever clearer together; and when you take all virtues and excellencies and choice gifts together, which have been evident in the best of the children of men, then this mighty, this overwhelming whole gives you a revelation of God, which very far exceeds the revelation of God in nature.
Such is the case now. What would it not have been, if no sin had marred and ruined the features of the Divine Image in man?
Now there is disturbance. The mirror in which the Image is reflected, is torn by a thousand cracks. It is time-worn, it is darkened. Some lines and parts of features you still discern, but no more the Image in the beauty of its unity, nor in the clearness of its tones. And when, even so, this Image still interests you and attracts, and ever continues to fill you with warm sympathy, what must it have been to Adam, when in Eve he beheld this Image inviolate before him, and how deep has been the fall into sin, which at once and irrevocably marred this holy Image.
It is true, your experience of people can be so bitter that hatred rather than love of those within your environment springs up within you. But then there is history, which renders permanent for you the best the centuries have to give, and this superlatively rich revelation of human life at its highest reconciles you again to man. Consider the picture-gallery of history, of the heroes of common life and of the heroes of faith. As the Apostle declares (Hebrews 12:1), "we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, wherefore we should lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us."
This now is Divine revelation, revelation of God even in fallen man, and if love awakens within you—real drawing love for man as man—it is in virtue of the glory that is seen in man, glory of God in human talent, in human genius, in human heroism, shining out toward you in human love.
Human love, that is the zenith!
Then there is something mysterious in your own self which draws after something equally mysterious in another whom you meet on the highway of life, whereby you overlook failings, forgive sins, no more notice plainness, and with the mysterious power of love envelop him in the hiddenness of his being.
And though this love can become untrue, yea, this love itself may become sin, yet it is in this love for one who loves you, that the warm glow of Divine sympathy overpowers your heart, and the mystery of the love in God reveals itself to you.
At first this is governed by choice. Your love is then limited, narrow-hearted, and at the same time repels others. It is a light, highly illuminant in the measure in which it casts as a deep shadow around itself the darker indifference for others. It is love still captive in selfishness. Love from God, but not yet for God's sake. Love for a few, whom we count worthy of our love, but not yet love for neighbor, i.e., for man as man, for man as the creature of God and created after God's Image.
But the Spirit purifies, the Spirit refines this love. Love for man must be like the love for God. There must be no conflict, or else the love for man would put back the love for God in your heart.
So it becomes a sifting more and more, a loving in man of what there is of God in him; and likewise a hating in man of what there is of evil in him; an incapacity to tolerate it, and with all the seriousness of love, repressing it, until it vanishes from his heart.
And this opens the way by which to search out in every man whatever of God, however hidden, still glows in his soul, and to increase the volume of this spark, and not suffer it to be extinguished.
Until at length love for neighbor loses itself in that most tender appreciation of the fact that in every man on this side of the grave, however deeply fallen and however dead in sin, there always remains the evidence that he has been created after God's Image and that it is still possible for this Image to be restored. The lover of choice porcelains gathers with great care the shards of the broken dish, recognizing their worth, in the hope they may be put together again.
Even so, love for neighbor has become nothing else than love for whatever of God there still remains in him.
The second commandment is like unto the first.
* * * * * * *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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