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Psalm 8:1, 9:
1O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
9O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
In one of the last Hallelujah-psalms the closing verse sings of the children of Israel as of a people that is near unto God.
It says in full: "He hath exalted the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him" (Psalm 148:14). Thus, the distinction here is, that not only may the individual soul find itself in closer fellowship, in more intimate communion, in more constant walk with God, but that, in a much vaguer sense, of course, this may also be true, under given circumstances, of a vast multitude of persons and even of a whole people.
This to a certain extent can be applied to the population of country districts, especially in contrast with the population of great cities.
The fairy-tale of the "Temple of uncarved wood" remains herewith under the sentence of its own unreality. In its hypocrisy this legend was never anything else than the poetic, pious talk of those who on Sunday would rather take a walk than go to Church.
No, what here is meant is the fact observed in almost every country, that the rural population taken as a whole has remained devoted to their religion, while, on the other hand, the great mass of city people, at least among what are called Protestants, have died to all home religion and public worship. It can even be said that this grave phenomenon increases in the measure in which the population of a city enlarges itself.
This does not mean that in these great cities there is no remnant of devout people. Sometimes, even, these people are very influential, their godliness in many ways is of a higher type than the rural godliness, especially in strength of purpose and buoyancy. This comes from the greater friction and fiercer conflict of city-life. He who in such cities remained faithful to the sacred traditions of the fathers, did this under protest, had to suffer for it, had to fight for it; but he who in this conflict held his ground, came out of it better disciplined, fortified, strengthened, and felt himself better equipped against unbelief and indifferentism.
But apart from these relatively small exceptions it cannot be denied that in rural districts reverence for religion is more firmly rooted, and that in city life this reverence wanes; especially where there are great industries, much commerce, and much speculation at the Exchange. Indeed among factory owners and factory hands, among merchants and office clerks, among the members of the Exchange and capitalists there are also truly consecrated children of God, but they are white ravens among the black flock.
Sundry causes have brought this about. In the country, with weather and wind, with harvests and failures of crops, with cattle and land plagues, one is far more dependent upon the direct doings of God. In the industrial world it is more the human factor, the machine-invention that exercises dominion. Also in the country temptation is less brutally on exhibition. There evenings are shorter and people rise earlier. People know one another personally, and hence the discipline of public opinion is more effective. A church has fewer members, so that supervision is more general. A number of causes here co-operate, the greatest among which will ever be: life in the country itself, and the consequent influence of nature, of the visible creation of God that surrounds country-people. From which it is to be inferred that he who seeks the nearness of God loses considerable power when he does not open eye and ear to the impression of God's nearness which the visible creation can give us.
How necessary this opening of eye and ear is, you readily see in the large numbers of city folk who in summer go to the country, but who, when there, look for nothing but fresh air and recreation, and return as estranged from God as they came. But it remains a fact that the city man misses nature. Parks and boulevards compensate something, but the great masses, especially of working people, only come home when it gets dark. Yet truly even above our cities the glory of the stars glistens in the firmament, but who among the many that walk the busy streets by night lifts up his eyes on high to see who has created all these things, bringeth out their hosts by number and calleth them by name?
In our villages one has nature all about him, whether he wills or not. It forces itself upon the inhabitants. In our cities, on the other hand, one is shut off from nature, and he alone finds it who seeks it above or outside of the town.
In the country, God's voice comes to us from within and from without; in our cities it comes to us alone from within, while in all manner of ways the voice of man loudly resounds to deafen the voice of the Lord, even in His starry heaven and in His thunder.
They who are advanced in years and whose life's work is done, seek the country to make good their loss; but by that time, in most cases, they have lost their susceptibility to nature and remain isolated from their surroundings.
Now in the face of this take the Scriptures.
Man comes up in a glorious paradise where all nature brings him a pure address from his God. And even after the Fall there remains so much glory in broken nature that the invisible things of God are understood from created things, both His eternal power and Godhead (Romans 1:20). "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. Day unto day abundantly uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no people or land where this voice of God is not heard" (Psalm 19). "Glorious is his name in all the earth. The voice of the Lord is upon the waters. The God of glory thundereth. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars, even the cedars of Lebanon" (Psalm 29). And so it goes on through all the Psalms. Read and reread the one hundred and fourth Psalm. And then at the end of the Psalter we have a striking description of nature in the hundred and forty-seventh and hundred and forty-eighth Psalms. And even before the Psalter, is Job with his magnificent descriptions of the Behemoth, the horse and the pleiades. It is all one mighty call in the greatness and beauty of nature to behold the glory of God.
And when in Scripture you have come to the appearance of the Son of Man, by His sayings: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow!"—"Behold the fowls of the air!"—light is thrown upon the mysteries of the kingdom from what is seen in the sower and the shepherds, and in the end there is the touching comparison of Jerusalem with the hen that gathers her chickens under her wings.
The whole of Revelation, the whole of Scripture is aglow with the glory of nature. God's ancient people was a rural people, and the holy land which God had given to them was then, though no longer now, a fertile region of unequaled beauty.
The new earth under the new heaven shall be a return of paradise. The wilderness shall blossom as the rose. And when our times know the honors lavishly conferred upon the landscape painter—because of the enchanting scenes which, with depth of glowing color and life, as by magic he works before our eyes—then what dullness of the spiritual eye it is that these same times have no eye, no perception for the thousandfold higher beauty in the handiwork of God, the greatest Artist?
For this very reason, therefore, it affects one strangely, when among Christian people he often finds so little, if any, appreciation of the glory in nature.
Undoubtedly the voice of the Herald of Peace rises far above the many voices of nature. "In his temple," says the Psalmist, after he has described God's mightiness in nature, "in his temple doth everyone speak of his glory" (Psalm 29:9). And in the Hallelujah-song of Psalm 147 it is said that Israel is highly exalted above the primitive peoples, because the Lord hath made known His words unto Jacob. And then it says: "He hath not dealt so with any nation, neither have the heathen knowledge of his laws." In the congregation of believers, when the Word is rightly proclaimed, there is spiritually a far higher beauty, than the beauty of nature can ever provide.
But shall we, therefore, be one-sided, and allow one half to be lost?
"From two sources," says one of our creedal Confessions, "have we knowledge of our God. From His Word very surely, but also from the creatures, who are as letters in the book of creation to make us understand God's Mightiness and Majesty."
Godly conversations, Christian gatherings, edifying books, are all excellent, but may you therefore leave the great book of creation to remain closed to your soul's eye?
It is all for the sake of impressions on the collodian-plate of our heart, for the sake of impressions which go out far above those of our daily life, and above the impressions which we receive from man.
We will not, we may not, live under the impression that the Divine could ever shrink to the measure of the human. We will not degrade and minimize God to our dimensions, but rather lift ourselves up to the measure of His Majesty. Not a God after our image, but ourselves created after the Image of God. And this your books will not give you, your mutual conversations will not provide.
All this remains within the pale and within the measure of our small proportions. So altogether different from a rising and a setting of God's sun. So altogether different from the light of a lightning flash or from the thunder that reverberates in the clouds. So altogether different from the starry glory that arches itself above you, and from the mighty forest, or from the lion that roars for prey.
What we have here is the sublime, and therein is the Divine outpouring of the super-beautiful and the glorious.
The sublime! A majesty that is elevated far above the small dimensions of our economy and of our making. By which you know and understand that you are not in touch with the bungling works of man, but with the glorious high art of the Creator of heaven and earth.
Of course this glistening, glittering nature can not disclose to you the way of salvation, the spiritual mysteries.
For this, God in His compassion has given you His Gospel.
But what the outshining of God's Almightiness and Divinity in nature does, is, that it broadens, expands and uplifts all your ideas to a higher sphere than your own seeing can give you.
This, that it lifts you up from the insignificant-human to the Divinely-great.
To the sublime!
And so brings the High and Lofty One nearer unto you.
* * * * * * *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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