Man's Care of God's Goodness
E. Johnson, M. A. Psalm 145:9 The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. : — "The Lord is loving to every man" (P. B. Version). Every man implicitly owns this when he says, "Life is sweet." How much of unconscious enjoyment flows through us from day to day of which we take no heed, until some disturbance takes place, some obstruction occurs in the channel of communication with the world without. The blessing of sight, the joy of looking out on the green pasture and the trees — we can only fully appreciate when these windows of sense are darkened. We see the blessing and the joy of hearing by contrast with the deprivation of the deaf, and of speech by contrast with those of the dumb. If it were not for suffering, awakening reflection, we should ignore this great sum of unconscious good which the "long blue hours serenely flowing" have brought us from day to day. And then this good of reflection itself — how great! To hold up the magic mirror of memory, to see our past therein, not as it was when present, mixed with much that was painful and repulsive, but beautified, idealized, glorified by that poet-soul which is within us all. If we could all paint, or versify, or compose in music, we should all leave works of art behind us, the material of which should be drawn from our own experience. We should leave behind us songs like this ancient Hebrew psalm. Your own personal impressions must always be worth more to you than those of any other thinker, however profound. What, then, are our impressions about the world, about the existing constitution of things? May we venture to speak for one another on such a point, and say that while with each of us there are "mixed" impressions, on the whole the impression of good preponderates? We are governed greatly by our temperament in these matters; our minds are of different tone; but upon each and all of us, may it not be said, the world and life have left impressions of something exceedingly beautiful, exceedingly precious, though profoundly mysterious? In passing through a gallery of paintings, and studying the style of the different masters, we gain much insight into the turn of feeling and of fancy of the particular painters. One man steeps his views in light; another throws the sombre hue of melancholy thought upon rock, and river, and waterfall, and mountain height. One will suggest the majesty of Nature and the littleness of man; another will use the grandest effects of Nature but as the background to human passion and action. Each seer makes something different of the world and of man; each artist adds something to the world as we see it, or takes away something that we had found there. And all these different representations, suggesting feelings so various in the mind of the observer, from sadness to gaiety and exhilaration, unite in one point: they are all representations of that which is beautiful. And with all our diversities of natural feeling and experience — if we should try to describe the print that life has made upon our minds — we should, whether in stumbling accents or in eloquent strains, be describing something that has been, in part painful, in part pleasurable, but in both pleasure and pain profoundly interesting, unspeakably beautiful and holy; something in part severe, in part humorous in its expression, but in this mixture of severity and of humour, truly loving and gentle in its purport. These passive impressions teach us more than we can learn from books. Whether we leave our mark upon the world or no, it is certain the world leaves its mark upon us. And is it not the fact that the longer we live the better worth reading the inscription becomes? Do not men become more tolerant as they grow older? Does not the fact of evil give way before the far greater fact of good as the explanation of life? If men ever try to build up systems of theology again, they must choose out new ground and build on fresh foundations; on the ground and foundation of our text, that the Lord is loving to every man, and that His tender mercies are over all His works. Not only our passive impressions and the general pictures which insensibly form in our minds as the result of experience of the world — but in our active life we have evidence that points the same way. This little world within — what an undiscovered country it is still to every one of us! We never know what we can do till we try, the proverb says. We never know what we are until we have wrought ourselves into deeds. And the very power seems to come by the exertion. Cells full of energy seem to open in the mind at the touch of need, and not before. People are surprised at what they can do and bear upon an emergency. There is indeed a marvel in the life of mind, of soul. So long as we study this we shall be believers in miracles. All that is supposed to pass outside the mind that is marvellous can be but parables of the life of the soul itself. First and last, we must seek for God at that shrine; there the living oracles must be found; and it is the deepest superstition if we suppose that Scripture, however sacred, souls, other than our own, however inspired, can do aught for us except help us to bring to light and read a little more distinctly the inscription and record of God upon our own souls. The discovery of ourselves and of our vocation means some fresh discovery of the meaning of God to us. The return to Nature, the falling back on what is original in us, the exertion of ourselves according to the proper bent and direction of our faculties — all this, giving distinctness to the picture of ourselves, gives at the same time distinctness to the picture of the God who is good and loving to every man. Then we may extend these reasonings from ourselves to the rest of the creation. If I feel that God is good to me, I have a reason for believing that He is good to others like me. Some seem nearer to God and to know more of His secrets than I do. Others seem less favoured. Yet why should I doubt, concerning the most miserable and pitiable, that the tender mercies of the Eternal are over him, as over me? Thus may we reason from the particular to the general — from the truth learnt in our own hearts to the truth of the vast universe of which we form a part; and conversely. At times we may see more clearly the universal than the particular truth. We may see that the world is the expression of an infinite benevolence, we may need to see that our personal being is the expression of the same. Let us then remember that the great Power which throbs through the universe is the same Power which causes our heart to throb, our brain to think. So may we end in "Feeling God loves us and that all that errs Is a strange dream which death will dissipate,"in endorsing from our own life-experience the words of the psalmist. (E. Johnson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. WEB: Yahweh is good to all. His tender mercies are over all his works.