God's Glory
Charles Spurgeon
"The heavens declare the glory of God."
Psalm 19:1
The book of nature has three leaves: heaven, earth, and sea. Heaven is the first and the most glorious, and by its aid we are able to see the beauties of the other two. Any book without its first page would be sadly imperfect; especially the great Natural Bible, since its first pages--the sun, moon, and stars--supply light to the rest of the volume and are thus the keys without which the writing which follows would be dark and undiscernible. Man walking erect was evidently made to scan the skies, and he who begins to read creation by studying the stars begins the book at the right place.
The heavens are plural for their variety, comprising the watery heavens with their clouds of countless forms, the aerial heavens with their calms and tempests, the solar heavens with all the glories of the day, and the starry heavens with all the marvels of the night. What the Heaven of heavens must be has not entered into the heart of man. Any part of creation has more instruction in it than human mind will ever exhaust, but the celestial realm is peculiarly rich in spiritual lore.
The heavens declare, or are declaring, for the continuance of their testimony is intended by the participles employed. Every moment God's existence, power, wisdom, and goodness are being sounded abroad by the heavenly heralds which shine upon us from above. He who would guess at divine sublimity should gaze upward into the starry vault. He who would imagine infinity must peer into the boundless expanse. He who desires to see divine wisdom should consider the balancing of the orbs. He who would know divine fidelity must mark the regularity of the planetary motions. And he who would attain some conceptions of divine power, greatness, and majesty must estimate the forces of attraction, the magnitude of the fixed stars, and the brightness of the whole celestial train.
It is not merely glory that the heavens declare, but the "glory of God," for they deliver to us such unanswerable arguments for a conscious, intelligent, planning, controlling, and presiding Creator, that no unpredjudiced person can remain unconvinced by them. The testimony given by the heavens is no mere hint, but a plain unmistakable declaration, and it is a declaration of the most constant and abiding kind. Yet for all this, to what avail is the loudest declaration to a deaf man, or the clearest showing to one spiritually blind? God the Holy Ghost must illuminate us, or all the suns in the milky way never will.
"The firmament shows his handiwork." The expanse is full of the works of the Lord's skillful, creating hands (hands being attributed to the great creating Spirit to set forth his care and workmanlike action, and to meet the poor comprehension of mortals). It is humbling to find that even when the most devout and elevated minds are desirous to express their loftiest thoughts of God, they must use words and metaphors drawn from the earth. We are children and must each confess, "I think as a child, I speak as a child." In the expanse above us God flies, as it were, his starry flag to show that the King is at home, and hangs out his escutcheon that atheists may see how he despises their denunciations of him. He who looks up to the firmament and then writes himself down an atheist, brands himself at the same moment as an idiot or a liar.
"There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard." Every man may hear the voices of the stars. Many are the languages of terrestrials, but to celestials there is but one, and that one may be understood by every willing mind. The lowest heathens are without excuse if they do not discover the invisible things of God in the works which he has made. Sun, moon, and stars are God's traveling preachers; they are apostles upon their journey confirming those who regard the Lord, and judges on circuit condemning those who worship idols.
Treasury of David
"The firmament shows his handiwork." The expanse is full of the works of the Lord's skillful, creating hands (hands being attributed to the great creating Spirit to set forth his care and workmanlike action, and to meet the poor comprehension of mortals). It is humbling to find that even when the most devout and elevated minds are desirous to express their loftiest thoughts of God, they must use words and metaphors drawn from the earth. We are children and must each confess, "I think as a child, I speak as a child." In the expanse above us God flies, as it were, his starry flag to show that the King is at home, and hangs out his escutcheon that atheists may see how he despises their denunciations of him. He who looks up to the firmament and then writes himself down an atheist, brands himself at the same moment as an idiot or a liar.
"There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard." Every man may hear the voices of the stars. Many are the languages of terrestrials, but to celestials there is but one, and that one may be understood by every willing mind. The lowest heathens are without excuse if they do not discover the invisible things of God in the works which he has made. Sun, moon, and stars are God's traveling preachers; they are apostles upon their journey confirming those who regard the Lord, and judges on circuit condemning those who worship idols.
Treasury of David
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