Post by Admin on Jul 16, 2023 7:33:58 GMT -5
Hugh Martin
GOD'S BLESSEDNESS AND HIS STATUTES
"Blessed art thou, O Lord; teach me thy statutes."—Ps. 119:12.
THE blessedness of God; subjection to His statutes; and the relation between these topics;—such are the threefold materials of thought furnished by this verse. Depending on the blessed God himself to teach us, we take the three topics in their order.
Part First
The Blessedness of God
The blessedness of God! It is a great deep, it is a dazzling bright abyss. We can look into it only as with shaded eyes; we can speak of it only as with lisping tongue, like children. Yet if with childlike spirit we look, and listen, and meditate, our exercise may neither be unacceptable to the "blessed God" nor destitute of blessing to ourselves.
The blessedness of God! It is the result of His possession of all perfections, natural and moral. "God is light;" "God is love." Infinitely wise to devise the best conceptions, to entertain the infinitely true and good and grand ideals, and infinitely powerful to carry them out into accomplishment, His intelligent nature cannot but be characterized by that combination of inviolable repose and unhindered activity which constitutes a great element in our worthiest ideas of blessedness. His moral nature also in its glorious attributes severally, as also in the unison of their fulness and in the harmony alike of their indwelling in His being and of their outgoing into action, is at once suggestive of the highest conception we can form of blessedness.
Speaking even negatively—which to our feeble intellects is often the best means of grasping truth and guiding our own intelligence—speaking even negatively of God's moral nature, it must be very apparent that He is "the blessed God." In Him is no darkness, no gloom, no shadow; no variableness, or shadow of turning. In Him is no malevolence; no pleasure even in the death of the vilest or most wicked of the wicked. In Him is no unrighteousness, no inequality. His nature and His ways are "equal." Beautiful is that word "equal," as applied to God's nature and His ways; and blessed is that which it implies. There is nothing unequal in Him; there is no inequality; no excess; no defect; no incongruity, no conflicting element, no discord; no stain, no blemish, no shade, no spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing. In all the boundless fulness of His being He is right, and only right—right, righteous, upright; even as one of His adoring servants hath sung: "To show that the Lord is upright: "He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him" (Ps. 92:15). How then can we think of Himas other than the "blessed God?" But again: the blessedness of God is intimately connected not only with the absolute perfections of His being, but with His absolute natural supremacy and moral sovereignty. These may be distinguished. His natural supremacy is His necessary and absolute independence and superiority over all that exists; His moral sovereignty is His kingly rule over intelligent, responsible beings.
And in each of these relations Scripture assigns to Him the attribution of "blessedness." For in one passage He is designated as "God over all"—that is, the Supreme—"blessed for evermore" (Rom.9:5); and in another, "The blessed and only Potentate" (1 Tim. 6:16)
—the Sovereign; King of kings, and Lord of lords. As the Supreme He is blessed: "God over all, blessed for evermore." As the sovereign God He is blessed: "the blessed and only Potentate." Nor is it difficult to see the grounds of these glorious assertions. He is in the fullest, the deepest sense, "God over all," and therefore blessed. He is independent—absolutely so. He has relations to that which is without His own being; but He is independent of all that is outside His own being. All except Godhead exists by His will and at
His pleasure: "Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things." "For His pleasure they are, and they were created." His is the uncreated, self-existent, independent Being; infinite, eternal, unchangeable, inviolable. In virtue thereof, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, and He dwelleth in light that is inaccessible. Language fails to tell, and thought fails to body forth unto itself, the secret dwelling-place of the Most High, where the omnipotent and self-sufficient Godhead sits enthroned above all being beside, in His
supreme and absolute, yet not self-secluding independence; exalted above all circumstances, above all creatures, above all changes, above all influences; "God over all," in blessedness which no contingencies can invade, affect, control; which no creature-will can cross, no alien influence overshadow or approach; which no voice of querulousness or questioning can even penetrate or ruffle, even though a million of apostate creations should unite to cry, "What doest thou?"
For God is not only naturally, necessarily, and, so to speak, physically, the Supreme; He is morally and judicially the absolute Sovereign of the universe: and herein also He is blessed. "Blessed art thou, O LORD." Thou art the Lord; the Master; the Ruler. God is Judge, Lawgiver, King. The Church welcomes and glorifies Him very specially in this relation, with emphatic reiterated, rejoicing recognitions; and perilling and binding in her salvation with her recognition of it: "The Lord is our Judge; the Lord is our Lawgiver; the Lord is our King: He will save us:" as such
—in this capacity in which we give Him threefold recognition; as Judge, Lawgiver, King
—Sovereign Lord Most High
—as such, "He will save us." And in this moral sovereignty God is blessed. For it is the outcome, of His moral nature which is blessed; and is therefore a high exercise, expression, enjoyment of conscious blessedness. For His kingly rule is at once the outgoing of His blessed nature and the fitting action of His blessed supremacy, when He deals with intelligent and moral beings: and if His nature and His supremacy are blessed, then blessed is He also in that sovereignty which is the adequate expression alike of His nature with its perfections, and of His supremacy with its rights and claims. And the more pure and simple we perceive this sovereignty to be—the more absolute, independent, uncontrolled; the more we see it to be the pure and simple expression of His sheer and absolute will; so much the more will we see that it is blessed, and be disposed to acquiesce and rejoice in it. For if His will cannot contradict His nature, which is light and love, beneficence and righteousness; and if it vindicate to moral beings His supremacy and independence; why should it not be sheer and absolute—the mere good pleasure of His will? Shall we plead for its being brought down beneath His natural supremacy, as He is God over all, blessed forever? Shall we plead for its being taken outside the boundless glory of His blessed nature as light and love—the only wise, the only good; in whom is nothing tortuous, perplexed, unequal, unright, unrighteous? Would we not thereby impair His blessedness as our Sovereign? or rather would we not impair and destroy our own perceptions of His blessedness? Andwould we rather serve a sovereign whose blessedness we could not recognize, than one whom we cannot but perceive to be the blessed and the only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, absolute and uncontrolled? Nay; it concerns me much, if I am to be His subject and His servant, to see His sovereignty as ruled by nothing but His nature,
—His will controlled by nothing but His perfections,
—His reign worthy of His absolute supremacy, and unimpaired by influences that must be of infinite inferiority. Let Him do what seemeth good in His own sight alone. Let me rejoice that He taketh counsel with none
—whose counsel would be infinitely beneath His own, incongruous with His own, degrading to His own. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight." Thy sovereign rule is
blessed as Thy nature is blessed. Thou art the blessed and only Potentate. Thy kingdom come: Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!
But further: the blessedness of God subsists in fellowship—
fellowship worthy of His eternal being and Godhead; worthy of His glorious nature and its infinite perfections; worthy of His absolute supremacy and uncreated independence—fellowship in the everlasting relations of the ever-blessed Three in One. As far as I can see, after much and frequent thought, the doctrine of the Trinity enters indispensably into the blessedness of God. For it provides the element of fellowship—fellowship fully worthy of God's nature, and alone adequate to God's infinite capabilities of fellowship; and without fellowship, I confess, I cannot conceive of "blessedness" either in the creature or the Creator. I cannot conceive of a Unitarian's God as a blessed being. A uni-personal
Deity inhabiting a past eternity, absolutely without all relations, without converse, without reciprocations, without all love or aught to love; in solitariness, solitude, silence;
—such a past eternity inhabited by absolutely one only unrelated Person, contemplating naught and in naught conversing, alike unloving and unloved, seems to me to add only the element of infinity to the idea of all that is blank, and cold, and terribly repulsive,—to add the character of boundlessness—of illimitable magnitude—to that of the very
grave itself;—the most unchristian idea even of the grave, "the cold grave to which we haste, where everlasting silence reigns." I cannot imagine a uni-personal Deity blessed in contemplating Himself—contemplating His own nature in His own only person, however replete with all possible perfections that nature might be. I doubt whether it is even possible to imagine Him as self-conscious at all, or capable of saying from eternity, "I am;" and I do not wonder at the particular Oriental heathen doctrine which represents a uni-personal deity, Brahm, as asleep from all eternity, until He wakens up in the act of creating. And, as far as I can see, the profoundest modern doctrine of what is called the absolute Being
faints and fails because it proudly shuns to borrow light from revelation, and draw upon the glorious revealed truth that Godhead subsists as Three in One. I do not say that reason may discover that truth; but I do say that that truth being from any quarter suggested, reason cannot fail to justify it more fully than has, as far as I can see, been generally admitted. For how an absolutely unrelated unity —and God must assuredly be One—how an absolutely and eternally unrelated unity should ever begin to enter on relations, I utterly fail to understand; and, I think, as against such a notion of a personal God—a uni-personal Deity—Pantheism, which affirms that God is
all and all things are God, is not without something reasonable to say on its own behalf. How such a God, subsisting in one eternal Person alone, ever should begin to create, I cannot possibly imagine; more especially how He ever could call persons—personal beings—intelligent, moral persons into being. A personal God, selfconscious, can utter from all eternity the great word, "I AM." A dependent intelligent being created by Him, conscious of his own being, gives forth a created reflection of that utterance; and being in the image of God, self-conscious though dependent, expresses the essential dignity of highest created being by also saying, "I am." It is a result of the uncreated "I AM." That any creature in the universe can say, "I am," demonstrates that there must be One who from all eternity could say, "I AM,"—in His case, "I AM THAT I AM," Jehovah. But then, besides the great word "I am," there is another which seems to me as great—yea, it would appear, the necessary reciprocal and complement—"Thou art." A created intelligence can say, "I am," but that is not the first time that great word has been uttered; Jehovah was from everlasting the eternal utterance of it, —"I am;" "I AM THAT I AM." A created intelligence looking to his Creator can, in the instant following first consciousness, exclaim, "THOU ART;" and his Creator, looking to His intelligent creature, can say, "Thou art" Is this the first time that this great word has been uttered or utterable? Is it right that the great word "THOU ART," expressing relation, expressing recognition, expressing reciprocation, expressing fellowship, should begin to be uttered in time, and should have no place in eternity—should have no eternal root to grow upon, no eternal fountain to flow from, no eternal roc to lean and rest upon? I cannot think so. Is it right, is it fitting, is it conceivable, that God and His first intelligent creature should be on equal terms, in that each of them should, for the first time, begin reciprocally in recognizing each other to say, each unto the other,"Thou art?" They are not on equal terms in saying "I am." God has from everlasting been the "I AM;" "I AM THAT I AM." There was no beginning of circumstances to enable Him to say, "I AM" Shall there be a beginning of circumstances to enable Him to say, "Thou art?" Is it right and fitting that this self-existent God, who has no beginning of being, should have beginning of fellowship, the very crown jewel and diadem of being? that He should begin in time, and only on the poor frail platform of created things, to say, "Thou art?" Nay. "To which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art—thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee?" But to His eternal Son He has eternally—in the unbeginning, unending now—the day that knows no morning and no evening—been saying, "THOU ART." All along
the eternal line of His having said, "I AM," to His own Son He has been saying, "THOU ART—thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." And not reflecting merely on self, the Father hath seen, and been the blessed God in seeing, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person in His Son: and in Him hath He also
seen, and hath admired—in no self-seclusion, self-hood, or exclusiveness, but in fellowship, He hath seen and hath admired— and been blessed in admiring, Godhead's sovereignty; and unto the Son He saith, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." Yes; I cannot imagine a uni-personal God as a Creator at all. I cannot imagine God beginning to say "Thou art" to a creature, if He has not been eternally saying "THOU ART" to one altogether worthy to say "I AM"—to say "I AM" in all the same exhaustless fulness of meaning in which Jehovah says, "I AM THAT I AM." Without an eternal "THOU ART," we search in vain for a beginning of creation:
we meet with nothing but an eternal gulf between a uni-personal Deity and contingent created being. Reason fails to find a possibility of a beginning till she hear it said of a second Person in the Godhead, that "He is the beginning of the creation of God;" "The eternal Son;" the indispensible divine Mediator of creation— afterwards the divinely congruous divine Mediator of redemption. I repeat, I cannot possibly imagine a uni-personal eternal God, having in His own being no relations, no fellowship, no "THOU ART;" no one, therefore, to whom to say even, "I AM;" and therefore no voice,no word—no word at all. I cannot imagine a beginning to creation from such a God. But there has been a "beginning," for there has
been a "Word"—the eternal Word; and I adore the wisdom that links that Word and that beginning thus: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God"—there was fellowship: "and the Word was God"—it was fellowship adequate for Godhead—fellowship of God with God: yea, fully adequate, for the "same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Tell me not of a dark, blank, cold and cheerless past eternity, with one only, eternal, self-inclusive, self-contemplating Person dwellinin it, however you may accumulate into your description of His being all possible perfections. The more you tell me that He is selfsubsisting, self-sufficient, self-complete, and absolutely independent, so much the more do you remove Him far away from every idea of blessedness that reason, as it seems to me, can frame or can accept. It is a dark abyss of solitude and silence, from which I
shrink back in terror, and from which I cannot possibly believe that any bright and blessed creation could ever spring—any bright beginning, or blessed work, could ever emanate. I demand some inward, living, bright, and blessed relation in the eternal God himself ere I can imagine Him beginning to give birth to blessed and bright created beings. And if the problem of an absolute unity, such as reason tells that Godhead must necessarily be, combined with relation, such as reason and heart alike demand, be a problem insoluble, in which I can but doubtfully and darkly grope my way, my reason is more than satisfied, and my heart is more than joyful, when from what were otherwise the dark and blank abyss of unipersonal solitude and silence I hear an eternal Person—an eternal Word—saying: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way,
before His work of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, ere ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass on the face of the depth, when He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was with Him as one brought up with Him, I was daily His delight"—blessed art Thou herein, O God!—"I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Prov. 8:22–32).
O Thou everlasting Son of God!—Thou art the deepest depth of all philosophy truly so called; the solution of all profoundest problems; the satisfaction of our reason; the joy of our heart; the Saviour of Thy people. Thou art alike the light of men and the explanation of the Godhead's blessedness; Thou fillest with boundless uncreated bliss Thy Father's boundless bosom. Blessed art Thou, O Thou Father of an Infinite Majesty: and Thou, O Word of God, His true and honourable Son: also the Holy Ghost. For the communion of two Personalities is saved from being a mere mutual enjoyment of reflected self-hood, by being communion concerning a third Personality. The fellowship of two, each of whom can say, "I AM," and each of whom can say, "THOU ART," seems incomplete, and still only a kind of reciprocal and mutually reflected self-hood, till, going beyond themselves, they can add that other great word, "HE IS." But in Trinity there is provision for this also. And the Father and the Son having fellowship in the Spirit and concerning Him; the
Father and the Spirit, concerning the Son; and the Son and the Spirit, concerning the Father: blessedness in Godhead is in all relations and every light complete; complete in every kind and in every degree—complete in every kind beyond degree. "Blessed artThou, O Lord.
GOD'S BLESSEDNESS AND HIS STATUTES
"Blessed art thou, O Lord; teach me thy statutes."—Ps. 119:12.
THE blessedness of God; subjection to His statutes; and the relation between these topics;—such are the threefold materials of thought furnished by this verse. Depending on the blessed God himself to teach us, we take the three topics in their order.
Part First
The Blessedness of God
The blessedness of God! It is a great deep, it is a dazzling bright abyss. We can look into it only as with shaded eyes; we can speak of it only as with lisping tongue, like children. Yet if with childlike spirit we look, and listen, and meditate, our exercise may neither be unacceptable to the "blessed God" nor destitute of blessing to ourselves.
The blessedness of God! It is the result of His possession of all perfections, natural and moral. "God is light;" "God is love." Infinitely wise to devise the best conceptions, to entertain the infinitely true and good and grand ideals, and infinitely powerful to carry them out into accomplishment, His intelligent nature cannot but be characterized by that combination of inviolable repose and unhindered activity which constitutes a great element in our worthiest ideas of blessedness. His moral nature also in its glorious attributes severally, as also in the unison of their fulness and in the harmony alike of their indwelling in His being and of their outgoing into action, is at once suggestive of the highest conception we can form of blessedness.
Speaking even negatively—which to our feeble intellects is often the best means of grasping truth and guiding our own intelligence—speaking even negatively of God's moral nature, it must be very apparent that He is "the blessed God." In Him is no darkness, no gloom, no shadow; no variableness, or shadow of turning. In Him is no malevolence; no pleasure even in the death of the vilest or most wicked of the wicked. In Him is no unrighteousness, no inequality. His nature and His ways are "equal." Beautiful is that word "equal," as applied to God's nature and His ways; and blessed is that which it implies. There is nothing unequal in Him; there is no inequality; no excess; no defect; no incongruity, no conflicting element, no discord; no stain, no blemish, no shade, no spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing. In all the boundless fulness of His being He is right, and only right—right, righteous, upright; even as one of His adoring servants hath sung: "To show that the Lord is upright: "He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him" (Ps. 92:15). How then can we think of Himas other than the "blessed God?" But again: the blessedness of God is intimately connected not only with the absolute perfections of His being, but with His absolute natural supremacy and moral sovereignty. These may be distinguished. His natural supremacy is His necessary and absolute independence and superiority over all that exists; His moral sovereignty is His kingly rule over intelligent, responsible beings.
And in each of these relations Scripture assigns to Him the attribution of "blessedness." For in one passage He is designated as "God over all"—that is, the Supreme—"blessed for evermore" (Rom.9:5); and in another, "The blessed and only Potentate" (1 Tim. 6:16)
—the Sovereign; King of kings, and Lord of lords. As the Supreme He is blessed: "God over all, blessed for evermore." As the sovereign God He is blessed: "the blessed and only Potentate." Nor is it difficult to see the grounds of these glorious assertions. He is in the fullest, the deepest sense, "God over all," and therefore blessed. He is independent—absolutely so. He has relations to that which is without His own being; but He is independent of all that is outside His own being. All except Godhead exists by His will and at
His pleasure: "Of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things." "For His pleasure they are, and they were created." His is the uncreated, self-existent, independent Being; infinite, eternal, unchangeable, inviolable. In virtue thereof, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, and He dwelleth in light that is inaccessible. Language fails to tell, and thought fails to body forth unto itself, the secret dwelling-place of the Most High, where the omnipotent and self-sufficient Godhead sits enthroned above all being beside, in His
supreme and absolute, yet not self-secluding independence; exalted above all circumstances, above all creatures, above all changes, above all influences; "God over all," in blessedness which no contingencies can invade, affect, control; which no creature-will can cross, no alien influence overshadow or approach; which no voice of querulousness or questioning can even penetrate or ruffle, even though a million of apostate creations should unite to cry, "What doest thou?"
For God is not only naturally, necessarily, and, so to speak, physically, the Supreme; He is morally and judicially the absolute Sovereign of the universe: and herein also He is blessed. "Blessed art thou, O LORD." Thou art the Lord; the Master; the Ruler. God is Judge, Lawgiver, King. The Church welcomes and glorifies Him very specially in this relation, with emphatic reiterated, rejoicing recognitions; and perilling and binding in her salvation with her recognition of it: "The Lord is our Judge; the Lord is our Lawgiver; the Lord is our King: He will save us:" as such
—in this capacity in which we give Him threefold recognition; as Judge, Lawgiver, King
—Sovereign Lord Most High
—as such, "He will save us." And in this moral sovereignty God is blessed. For it is the outcome, of His moral nature which is blessed; and is therefore a high exercise, expression, enjoyment of conscious blessedness. For His kingly rule is at once the outgoing of His blessed nature and the fitting action of His blessed supremacy, when He deals with intelligent and moral beings: and if His nature and His supremacy are blessed, then blessed is He also in that sovereignty which is the adequate expression alike of His nature with its perfections, and of His supremacy with its rights and claims. And the more pure and simple we perceive this sovereignty to be—the more absolute, independent, uncontrolled; the more we see it to be the pure and simple expression of His sheer and absolute will; so much the more will we see that it is blessed, and be disposed to acquiesce and rejoice in it. For if His will cannot contradict His nature, which is light and love, beneficence and righteousness; and if it vindicate to moral beings His supremacy and independence; why should it not be sheer and absolute—the mere good pleasure of His will? Shall we plead for its being brought down beneath His natural supremacy, as He is God over all, blessed forever? Shall we plead for its being taken outside the boundless glory of His blessed nature as light and love—the only wise, the only good; in whom is nothing tortuous, perplexed, unequal, unright, unrighteous? Would we not thereby impair His blessedness as our Sovereign? or rather would we not impair and destroy our own perceptions of His blessedness? Andwould we rather serve a sovereign whose blessedness we could not recognize, than one whom we cannot but perceive to be the blessed and the only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, absolute and uncontrolled? Nay; it concerns me much, if I am to be His subject and His servant, to see His sovereignty as ruled by nothing but His nature,
—His will controlled by nothing but His perfections,
—His reign worthy of His absolute supremacy, and unimpaired by influences that must be of infinite inferiority. Let Him do what seemeth good in His own sight alone. Let me rejoice that He taketh counsel with none
—whose counsel would be infinitely beneath His own, incongruous with His own, degrading to His own. "Even so, Father; for so it seemed good in Thy sight." Thy sovereign rule is
blessed as Thy nature is blessed. Thou art the blessed and only Potentate. Thy kingdom come: Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven!
But further: the blessedness of God subsists in fellowship—
fellowship worthy of His eternal being and Godhead; worthy of His glorious nature and its infinite perfections; worthy of His absolute supremacy and uncreated independence—fellowship in the everlasting relations of the ever-blessed Three in One. As far as I can see, after much and frequent thought, the doctrine of the Trinity enters indispensably into the blessedness of God. For it provides the element of fellowship—fellowship fully worthy of God's nature, and alone adequate to God's infinite capabilities of fellowship; and without fellowship, I confess, I cannot conceive of "blessedness" either in the creature or the Creator. I cannot conceive of a Unitarian's God as a blessed being. A uni-personal
Deity inhabiting a past eternity, absolutely without all relations, without converse, without reciprocations, without all love or aught to love; in solitariness, solitude, silence;
—such a past eternity inhabited by absolutely one only unrelated Person, contemplating naught and in naught conversing, alike unloving and unloved, seems to me to add only the element of infinity to the idea of all that is blank, and cold, and terribly repulsive,—to add the character of boundlessness—of illimitable magnitude—to that of the very
grave itself;—the most unchristian idea even of the grave, "the cold grave to which we haste, where everlasting silence reigns." I cannot imagine a uni-personal Deity blessed in contemplating Himself—contemplating His own nature in His own only person, however replete with all possible perfections that nature might be. I doubt whether it is even possible to imagine Him as self-conscious at all, or capable of saying from eternity, "I am;" and I do not wonder at the particular Oriental heathen doctrine which represents a uni-personal deity, Brahm, as asleep from all eternity, until He wakens up in the act of creating. And, as far as I can see, the profoundest modern doctrine of what is called the absolute Being
faints and fails because it proudly shuns to borrow light from revelation, and draw upon the glorious revealed truth that Godhead subsists as Three in One. I do not say that reason may discover that truth; but I do say that that truth being from any quarter suggested, reason cannot fail to justify it more fully than has, as far as I can see, been generally admitted. For how an absolutely unrelated unity —and God must assuredly be One—how an absolutely and eternally unrelated unity should ever begin to enter on relations, I utterly fail to understand; and, I think, as against such a notion of a personal God—a uni-personal Deity—Pantheism, which affirms that God is
all and all things are God, is not without something reasonable to say on its own behalf. How such a God, subsisting in one eternal Person alone, ever should begin to create, I cannot possibly imagine; more especially how He ever could call persons—personal beings—intelligent, moral persons into being. A personal God, selfconscious, can utter from all eternity the great word, "I AM." A dependent intelligent being created by Him, conscious of his own being, gives forth a created reflection of that utterance; and being in the image of God, self-conscious though dependent, expresses the essential dignity of highest created being by also saying, "I am." It is a result of the uncreated "I AM." That any creature in the universe can say, "I am," demonstrates that there must be One who from all eternity could say, "I AM,"—in His case, "I AM THAT I AM," Jehovah. But then, besides the great word "I am," there is another which seems to me as great—yea, it would appear, the necessary reciprocal and complement—"Thou art." A created intelligence can say, "I am," but that is not the first time that great word has been uttered; Jehovah was from everlasting the eternal utterance of it, —"I am;" "I AM THAT I AM." A created intelligence looking to his Creator can, in the instant following first consciousness, exclaim, "THOU ART;" and his Creator, looking to His intelligent creature, can say, "Thou art" Is this the first time that this great word has been uttered or utterable? Is it right that the great word "THOU ART," expressing relation, expressing recognition, expressing reciprocation, expressing fellowship, should begin to be uttered in time, and should have no place in eternity—should have no eternal root to grow upon, no eternal fountain to flow from, no eternal roc to lean and rest upon? I cannot think so. Is it right, is it fitting, is it conceivable, that God and His first intelligent creature should be on equal terms, in that each of them should, for the first time, begin reciprocally in recognizing each other to say, each unto the other,"Thou art?" They are not on equal terms in saying "I am." God has from everlasting been the "I AM;" "I AM THAT I AM." There was no beginning of circumstances to enable Him to say, "I AM" Shall there be a beginning of circumstances to enable Him to say, "Thou art?" Is it right and fitting that this self-existent God, who has no beginning of being, should have beginning of fellowship, the very crown jewel and diadem of being? that He should begin in time, and only on the poor frail platform of created things, to say, "Thou art?" Nay. "To which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art—thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee?" But to His eternal Son He has eternally—in the unbeginning, unending now—the day that knows no morning and no evening—been saying, "THOU ART." All along
the eternal line of His having said, "I AM," to His own Son He has been saying, "THOU ART—thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." And not reflecting merely on self, the Father hath seen, and been the blessed God in seeing, the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person in His Son: and in Him hath He also
seen, and hath admired—in no self-seclusion, self-hood, or exclusiveness, but in fellowship, He hath seen and hath admired— and been blessed in admiring, Godhead's sovereignty; and unto the Son He saith, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom." Yes; I cannot imagine a uni-personal God as a Creator at all. I cannot imagine God beginning to say "Thou art" to a creature, if He has not been eternally saying "THOU ART" to one altogether worthy to say "I AM"—to say "I AM" in all the same exhaustless fulness of meaning in which Jehovah says, "I AM THAT I AM." Without an eternal "THOU ART," we search in vain for a beginning of creation:
we meet with nothing but an eternal gulf between a uni-personal Deity and contingent created being. Reason fails to find a possibility of a beginning till she hear it said of a second Person in the Godhead, that "He is the beginning of the creation of God;" "The eternal Son;" the indispensible divine Mediator of creation— afterwards the divinely congruous divine Mediator of redemption. I repeat, I cannot possibly imagine a uni-personal eternal God, having in His own being no relations, no fellowship, no "THOU ART;" no one, therefore, to whom to say even, "I AM;" and therefore no voice,no word—no word at all. I cannot imagine a beginning to creation from such a God. But there has been a "beginning," for there has
been a "Word"—the eternal Word; and I adore the wisdom that links that Word and that beginning thus: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God"—there was fellowship: "and the Word was God"—it was fellowship adequate for Godhead—fellowship of God with God: yea, fully adequate, for the "same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men."
Tell me not of a dark, blank, cold and cheerless past eternity, with one only, eternal, self-inclusive, self-contemplating Person dwellinin it, however you may accumulate into your description of His being all possible perfections. The more you tell me that He is selfsubsisting, self-sufficient, self-complete, and absolutely independent, so much the more do you remove Him far away from every idea of blessedness that reason, as it seems to me, can frame or can accept. It is a dark abyss of solitude and silence, from which I
shrink back in terror, and from which I cannot possibly believe that any bright and blessed creation could ever spring—any bright beginning, or blessed work, could ever emanate. I demand some inward, living, bright, and blessed relation in the eternal God himself ere I can imagine Him beginning to give birth to blessed and bright created beings. And if the problem of an absolute unity, such as reason tells that Godhead must necessarily be, combined with relation, such as reason and heart alike demand, be a problem insoluble, in which I can but doubtfully and darkly grope my way, my reason is more than satisfied, and my heart is more than joyful, when from what were otherwise the dark and blank abyss of unipersonal solitude and silence I hear an eternal Person—an eternal Word—saying: "The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way,
before His work of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, ere ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. When He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass on the face of the depth, when He appointed the foundations of the earth, then I was with Him as one brought up with Him, I was daily His delight"—blessed art Thou herein, O God!—"I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Prov. 8:22–32).
O Thou everlasting Son of God!—Thou art the deepest depth of all philosophy truly so called; the solution of all profoundest problems; the satisfaction of our reason; the joy of our heart; the Saviour of Thy people. Thou art alike the light of men and the explanation of the Godhead's blessedness; Thou fillest with boundless uncreated bliss Thy Father's boundless bosom. Blessed art Thou, O Thou Father of an Infinite Majesty: and Thou, O Word of God, His true and honourable Son: also the Holy Ghost. For the communion of two Personalities is saved from being a mere mutual enjoyment of reflected self-hood, by being communion concerning a third Personality. The fellowship of two, each of whom can say, "I AM," and each of whom can say, "THOU ART," seems incomplete, and still only a kind of reciprocal and mutually reflected self-hood, till, going beyond themselves, they can add that other great word, "HE IS." But in Trinity there is provision for this also. And the Father and the Son having fellowship in the Spirit and concerning Him; the
Father and the Spirit, concerning the Son; and the Son and the Spirit, concerning the Father: blessedness in Godhead is in all relations and every light complete; complete in every kind and in every degree—complete in every kind beyond degree. "Blessed artThou, O Lord.