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Psalm 84:7:
7They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.
To go from strength to strength is to grow, to wax strong, to increase. Not to remain what we are, and for the most part go backward, but, on the contrary, to make advance, to progress, to become richer, fuller, more abundant in faith, and, thanks to this more abundant faith, to become richer in Godliness and in fruits meet for repentance.
This going from strength to strength, God the Lord shows us in the plant. When the oak first began to grow, you could bend it over with your hand. But when the oak, slender at first, obtains its trunk and becomes a full-grown tree, its strength resists even the hurricance.
God shows you the same in the animal. That same young colt, which at first was scarcely able to stand up has in a few years become the strong horse, after whose strength man measures the power of steam, which laughs at the heavy load and, with his rider in the saddle, leaps over wall and hedge.
In a still more telling way God shows us this going from strength to strength in our own child. First the helpless babe which is fondled on the lap and has to be carried on the arm. Then the creeping with the difficult lesson of learning to walk, until, finally, the first successful venture is made when the ankles have become stronger. And so the growth goes on until full maturity is reached. And then there is strength for a strenuous run, for the bold leap, for climbing of steepest rocks, for a defying of all weariness and fatigue.
All this is but material, the growth of oak and horse, and the growth of the child.
But this growth in strength is not limited to the material. From the visible it passes over into the invisible. There is, likewise, development in the human spirit.
Development by exercise of the artistic talent, which was latent at first, then made itself known, and gradually became capable of more vigorous expression. But also development through training, education, through independent exertion on the part of the thinking spirit to furnish the galleries of the memory with ever richer treasures, to clarify more and more the insight into the world about us, to grasp the unity in the multiplicity, to feel the relation between dull reality and the high ideal, and thus to stand ever more strongly in power and in spirit.
Always growing, always going forward, with the excelsior flag wrapped around the breast, climbing the mountain steeps.
And this development, this growth, this going from strength to strength becomes different again when you pass from the unseen of art and the unseen of the understanding to the sphere where character unfolds and the moral stature is formed and nerved. To acquire power in the will and gradually to nerve this will-power. To feel the waking up of the sense of honor and to see it come to an ever finer point. To watch the bud of fidelity and honesty unfold and to see it blossom ever more beautifully. Over against the sense and love for truth to see the rise of hatred against falsehood. To feel the sense of justice cut in ever more deeply; to see the seriousness of life expand. It all presents the beautiful image in the inward personality of a going from strength to strength.
In the body the man grows; in the understanding, the scholar; in the character, the person.
And yet all this does not explain what is meant by the "going from strength to strength" in the song of the Psalmist.
There is in the child of God still another life, the life of Divine grace.
And in this life also, there must be progress, there must be growth and development.
Here, too, the law must be effective. Not to remain what we are, but to go on further and further.
A going from strength to strength.
In the material sphere growth knows its measure, its limit.
Already in the acorn it is determined how high the oak, which springs from it, shall be able to lift itself up. First it sprouts, then grows and expands, but finally the limit, the measure is reached. And then the oak may enlarge in thickness of trunk and breadth of foliage, but there is no more increase in height.
So it is, likewise, with the growth of the animal. From small it becomes large, it broadens itself and becomes full grown. After not many years, sometimes after only a few months or even after a few weeks the measure of the animal is exhausted, and it remains in size what it now is.
And no different is the growth of our body. Far slower than with the animal, man reaches gradually his limit in height. Sometimes this growth takes twenty and more years. But at last here, too, the measure is complete. And then there still is change, increase in strength and expansion, but he gains no more in height, and in old age there is not infrequently even shrinking and diminution.
With the artist there is a moment in his life when he has reached his zenith, when the fullness, the wealth of artistic utterance rather decreases than gains. And in the intellectual domain there may be a few whose brain at seventy or eighty years of age is still green and fresh, when it even still increases in depth and wealth of scope; but for most people here, too, a line is drawn beyond which there is no more advance, and which indicates the limit of development.
Only in the sphere of morals and in the development of character this limit by itself can not be shown. Love and devotion can always increase. Solidity of character can increase in strength even unto death.
And this same thing is put as a claim before every child of God.
Never here on earth to arrive at a goal, but always to go on farther and farther.
Until the day of our death a going from strength unto strength.
But here our lost estate appears, which, alas, inexorably shows itself even in the work of grace.
Consider it in your own case, watch it in the case of others. See it in a child of God, whom, after an absence of ten or twenty years, you meet again.
Then, indeed, he should see in you, and you in him, as with eyes, and be able to handle, as it were, with hands, the ripe fruit of this ten or twenty years old work of grace.
And is such the case?
Can you truly say that a child of God who was converted in early life, is ten years farther advanced in grace at sixty years of age than he was at fifty? Do you feel and realize a doubling of power in grace, when at forty years of age you meet again him whom you lost from sight at thirty? Do parents, in the measure of their years, as a rule, stand so much higher? Is the oldest among the children in the same family always farthest advanced in grace?
Notice particularly certain defects in character, certain (to you) well known weaknesses and little sins, which ten or twenty years ago you found offensive in a child of God. And is it a rule, that in meeting such a brother or sister again after the lapse of ten or twenty years, you at once observe the change, and perceive with delight that all those obtruding sins and defects of the long ago have tracklessly disappeared ?
Is it not rather true that after twenty and more years you find your acquaintances and friends, your own children and your own parents, all too frequently beset with the same limitations of grace which you mourned in them before, and the gift of grace as intricately bound up with the same thorns and thistles as then?
And more yet. When you consider yourself, and examine your own life in the presence of God, are you then not bound to confess with shame that sometimes ten long years have advanced you almost no step further in spiritual increase, and that the old weeds still flourish with old-time luxuriance in the field of the heart within?
What is the ordinary course?
Is it not this, that one becomes converted; that after conversion one sets his mind and soul on holy things; and in all sorts of ways acts differently from before, and that thus he feels within himself that the past is broken with and a new life has begun. At first it is even too ideally strung, so that after a few years a calmer state ensues.
And then this stadium in the life of grace in most cases becomes fixed. It remains what it is, but growth there is none. One feeds on what spiritual capital was acquired during this first period of grace. One increases fairly well in knowledge, also in spiritual experience and in spiritual wisdom, but it does not come to higher strength. Sometimes there is even backsliding, from which one does not recover save with difficulty. So one is satisfied. Strives after nothing higher. And remains what he became until his death.
We do not say that this is the case with all.
Thank God, there are those who as shining lights shed luster upon the life of the congregation, and who until they die, do not cease to take full draughts, again and again, from the cup of grace.
And yet how wholly different would be the revelation of the Kingdom of heaven among our people, if all believers, if all they who are conscious of the fact that they are the children of God, from the hour of conversion until the day of death, would continually cause the call of onward and forward to find its echo in their soul.
Who can say what it would be in your heart, in your home, in the Congregation of the Lord, if with all of us it were, and continued to be, an ever constant and unceasing going from strength to strength.
* * * * * * *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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