Holy Bible

Praise ye the Lord from the heavens. Psalm 148 The great, the greater, and the greatest: David Thomas, D. D. I. THE GREAT. Sun, moon, stars, etc. 1. How boundless in variety. 2. How immeasurable in extent. II. THE GREATER. 1. Rational and responsible existences.(1) Angelic existences.(2) Human existences. 2. This moral universe is greater than the non-moral.(1) It reflects more of God. It mirrors His spirituality, His freedom, His conscience, etc. There is more of God seen in one holy soul than in the whole stellar universe. This moral universe is greater because —(2) The non-moral is but the symbol, the instrument, the tenement, the garment of the moral. Great as is the non-moral universe, what is it without moral mind? A theatre without a spectator, a school without a pupil, a temple without a worshipper, a house without a tenant. III. THE GREATEST. What is the greatest? "The Lord." "His name alone is excellent; His glory is above the earth and heaven." Greatest because — 1. He is the Author of all. 2. He is the stability of all. 3. He is the law of all. The whole universe is His will in action. ( David Thomas, D. D. ) Praise Him, all ye stars of light. Psalm 148:3 Lessons of the stars W, Walters. : — 1. One of the most impressive lessons we learn from a study of the stars is the immensity of creation. As they crowd the sky on a clear, bright night we see the beauty and force of the words employed of old to express the increase of Israel — "God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude." The distance between the furthest planet and the nearest star is twenty-one billions of miles. If we could travel as fast as light travels, we should go round the world four hundred and eighty times a minute; and yet, travelling at the same rate, it would take us three years and seven months to get to that nearest star. The distance of Sirius is so great that it would require a journey of twenty-one years to reach it. There is another star, visible by the naked eye, so far away that we could not cover the distance in less than seventy-two years. Travelling at the same rate, it would take seven hundred thousand years to visit the group, remote and cloudlike, which Sir William Herschell discovered with his telescope. 2. We learn from the stars the existence of abiding law and order in creation. The celestial bodies perform their revolutions in fixed periods; and though some seem an exception to this rule, yet they only exemplify it the more strikingly, for their irregularities, occurring at stated times, have as much method as their uniform movements. Byron sings of — "A pathless comet and a curse, The menace of the universe."But now it is known of some, and may be inferred of all, that they are as obedient to law as the planets themselves. Another illustration of law we have in the elliptic movements of the planetary bodies. We owe to Kepler the discovery of the fact that they all move in elliptic orbits — that if you draw a line from the planet to the sun, the areas described by that line in its motion round the sun are proportional to the times employed in the motion, and that the squares of the periodic times are as the cubes of the distance. The first of these is a law of forms, the other two are laws of numbers. By their mutual attractions the planets sometimes produce disturbance among themselves. Through observing the irregular movements of Uranus the astronomers discovered Neptune; yet even at such times order reigns. The primal law of gravitation, discovered by Sir Isaac Newton — that law which keeps all the stars in their places and regulates the descent of a snowflake — abides for ever. Law and order are seen in the motions of the double stars. In many parts of the heavens two or more stars are seen, apparently near each other, and mutually connected as part of a system. In some cases these companion stars revolve round each other; in other cases two or more revolve round a common centre. They are at a much greater distance from each other than the furthest planet of our system is from the sun. The period of their revolution varies from thirty to upward of seven hundred years. Yet they all travel according to fixed law. And this reign of law is observable in the most remote part of the heavens as much as in the nearer. Every fresh discovery reveals its existence and operation. 3. The stars remind us of the beauty and grandeur of creation. In the spheroid shape of the planets and their satellites we have beauty of form. Then we have degrees of magnitude and brightness. It requires the light of a hundred stars of the sixth magnitude to make that of one of the first magnitude. One star differeth from another star in glory. There is a variety of colour as well as of size and lustre. "Through the clear, transparent atmosphere of a Syrian night, without any optical aid whatever, one star is seen to shine like an emerald, another like a ruby, a third like a sapphire, and a fourth like a topaz — the whole nocturnal heavens appearing to sparkle with a blaze of jewels." There are individual stars, each shining in a splendour all its own. There are starry clusters which hang in the heavens like fruit in the tree. Some are extremely irregular in shape, while others show regular forms of a round, spiral, or other tendency. The Great Bear is a grand and striking constellation. Pleiades glitters and quivers with radiance like a breastplate of jewels. Orion, with his brazen girdle, is not only the most glorious constellation in the heavens — he is also one of the few visible in all parts of the habitable globe. 4. The stars witness for God. An atheistic leader of the French Revolution said one day to a Christian villager: "We are going to pull your church-tower down, so that you may have nothing left to remind you of God, or religion." "You will not only have to pull down the church-tower," said the man, "you will also have to blot out the stars before you can destroy all that reminds us of God. They speak to us of Him."(1) They speak of His living, all-pervading presence; and so illustrate Christ's words, "My Father worketh hitherto." He upholds them by the constant acting of His power.(2) They bear witness to God's condescension and care. While they speak of His majesty and power, they speak at the same time of our littleness. Yet the power that made and upholds the stars made and upholds man. ( W, Walters. ) Snow and vapours. Psalm 148:8 The glaciers as prophets J. W. Horsley, M. A. : — From the visible we divine the invisible. In what is physical we find parables concerning the spiritual, and even discern natural law in the spiritual world. The Teacher of teachers took often His texts from the freer Bible of Nature when He would expound either the constitution of His Kingdom or the attributes of Deity. To-day let us "enter into the treasuries of the snow," and remind ourselves of some precious lessons therein. Snow is the vapour of water crystallized. The atoms of which all matter is compounded tend, when free, to assume the crystalline form, and by water, which is a solvent of nearly all substances, atoms are generally set free, and in their freedom they combine. So we get rock crystal from the resolution of flint, Iceland-spar as a crystalline form of the atoms of chalk, diamonds from carbon, and snow-crystals from the moisture aggregated in clouds directly the temperature is low enough to freeze that moisture. When the air is calm six-rayed stars are produced, as we can see with the naked eye when they are caught on a cold surface. Their being driven together by currents of air causes their beauty and their individuality to be lost in the shapeless snowflake. The colder the air, the smaller the crystal. Can we doubt that their geometrical form is an evidence of the active presence and action in nature of an orderly mind? That the structure of all crystals being based on mathematical laws and relations shows the handiwork of a grand Geometrician of the Universe? Catch some snow-crystals. So ordered in beauty are they, that we feel that to them also has been whispered, "Be ye perfect, even as your Father is perfect." Tiny is each, but perfect in beauty of form. On our microscopes we may have learned to inscribe, Maximus in mini-mis es — Immeasurably great art Thou in Thy least, O God! The lovely sculpture of diatoms in the vegetable kingdom, of the tests of infusoria in the base of animal life, and the remembrance that only the most infinitesimal number of their inconceivable hosts can ever be seen by the eye of man, that only their Maker can delight in their absolute perfection, bids us burst out with a creed that is a commandment. We can, we must, aim at perfection, for nothing short of perfection expresses and imitates the quality of the Divine mind and work. So beautiful is each, and yet how varying. Over a thousand forms of snow crystals have been noted, albeit all have the necessary unity of being six-rayed. There is no act of uniformity here, or anywhere in Nature, for uniformity is man's ignorant parody of the unity which alone God desires and creates. But now let us trace these crystals and these flakes, not backwards but forwards, as one might who saw them falling softly on a mountain top. Into quite other thoughts than those of beauty and goodness will they lead, and what has been as a guiding star may now become a beacon of warning. Tiny is each, and well nigh without weight. Can such as they have had relation to the valleys from which we have ascended, the ravines we have clambered up? Have they anything to do with the hard blue ice of the glacier, its crevasses, and its graving of even the granite rocks? Light, and falling noiselessly; white from the entangled air of the flakes and from the blending of the prismatic colours in their reflection from the minute faces of the crystals; yet in their multitude causing pressure as they lie sheet upon sheet; and this pressure gradually eliminating the air until neve , half snow and half ice, is formed. But still the pressure increases by fresh falls of snow above, and at last the neve becomes the blue, airless ice of the glacier. But this mighty field of ice remains not level or at rest; surely, and without pause, it is moving downwards, although imperceptibly to the eye. Nor is it without effect on all it touches. It chisels out with its imbedded stones grooves in the cliffs that bound it and form its bed; it smoothes, as with a vast plain, the hardest rocks over which it crawls, and leaves these testimonies graven in the rock to be read in ages far in the future when and where the glacier itself has ceased to be. Now in all this we may see a parable of the usual course of moral evil, from its beginning in the almost unnoticed venial sin which is unresisted as being considered unimportant, continuing by repetition and aggregation to gather force and destructive power, until at last there is the fixity of evil that mightily affects its surroundings. So light is each snow-crystal as it falls; so trivial it seems that little bit of self-love, or self-will, or self-confidence, the slight exaggeration, the only momentary harbouring of an evil thought; that questionable additional one per cent. of profit; the pride that is little more than the consciousness of success; the resentment which seems justified, that, considering each one by one, and forgetting the cumulative weight of numbers, the sense of sin is as yet unroused, and watchfulness appears unneeded while still it is the day of small things. And even the snowflake, formed when crystals have been blown together, is felt only when falling on the uncovered and uplifted face, and then but as a touch — no bruise, and certainly no wound resulting, no burden felt; and so white still from the entangled air. So together with the venial sins there is yet so much of the atmosphere of habitual grace, such spiritual vitality still, such activity in good works, that there seems no prospect of the elimination of the air of heaven that may in time turn the snowdrift that a wind may move into the ponderous and crushing, dark and airless ice of the glacier. Yet the process is natural when once begun. The multitude of imponderable crystals causes weight. The superimposition of small forces creates the power that hardly can be resisted. Gradually the snow-beds change into neve as their pressure forces out the air; and gradually, unnoticed and unresisted, little sine chill the heart, dull the sensitiveness of the conscience, and form first the tendency and then the habit of coldness and apathy towards the interests, and invitations, and even the commands of duty towards one's higher life-duty towards one's neighbour, and duty to God. Not that overt evil is as yet apparent: neve to the casual glance is not so very different from snow. Respectability remains, morality is not apparently lost: the hardness of the airless ice is not yet produced. But it is only a question of time and of the continuance of increasing pressure as snowstorm upon snowstorm and winter after winter thickens the superincumbent mass. At last the ice is formed — airless, hard, and ready to destroy. To the eye, at any given moment, there seems no motion, and only by minute and scientific observation is the downward flow noted and calculated. Is it not so in the moral decadence of the human spirit? One day brings no obvious deterioration of character. The lethargic and frozen spirit thinks and avows that it is much as usual from year to year, and yet all the while, visibly enough to the grieving eye of its Creator, its Redeemer, and its Sanctifier, the continued downward course is rendering any arrest of this deathward progress less easy. Acts create habit, and habit forms permanent character assuredly, though perhaps as unobservedly, as snow changes into neve , and neve into the glacier. But, again, we observe the dead, descending stream of ice not merely in itself, but as it affects all it touches. No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself is an axiom true in the economic, the social, the natural, and the spiritual order of things. How absolutely impossible is the existence of any trust in the common saying, "He is no man's enemy but his own," and still more in the popular excuse, "If I do it, I injure no one but myself." The cold heart must chill other hearts. Not only the fervour of zeal, but the paralysis of indifference and inaction is contagious. Our friends, our associates, and the greater number who, unknown to us, yet must be and are influenced for good or evil by what we say, or write, or do, and by the greater eloquence of what we are, form, as it were, the banks of the river of our life, and each atom of that bank is thrilled by our motion. Do they seem of sterner stuff than we? Yet even the granite cliffs are planed by the softer ice of the passing glacier, and scored by the fragments of rock it has absorbed. And, lastly, the scars remain when the glacier has disappeared, melted away by a kindlier climate. Glaciers in England passed away ages before historic or even traditional memory, but their effects remain. Not only "the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust," but equally are unrighteous deeds a source of infection long after the doers are forgotten. These thoughts have been solemn — sombre if you will — but nature is a school-room, not simply a playground, and it is by enduring hardness, intellectually and spiritually, that one becomes the soldier of Christ, the prophet of God. Our mountain rambles derive their charm from the mixture of what is ever terrible with that which is lovely; black precipices linger in our mind as well as the wealth of flowers in the meadows; the startling roar of an avalanche echoes in our memory as well as the soft harmony of bells and rivulets below; and so, while mostly we are noting with thankful glee all things that seem sparkling ripples on the stream of a Maker's love, the undertone of warning may well be heard — Be wooed to life; be scared from death. Sing thy Eucharist at the evidences of the love; chant also thy Litany at the reminder of the necessary justice of God. ( J. W. Horsley, M. A. ) Stormy wind fulfilling His word. The Divine use of destructive forces Canon Liddon. : — Some of us may remember a walk through a park on the day after a hurricane: leaves, twigs, branches wrenched violently from their trunks strew the soil in every direction; oaks which have stood erect perhaps since the days of the Plantagenets now lie prostrate. Nor is vegetable life the only sufferer. The eye rests on what may remain of a nest of young birds dashed from their shattered home upon the ground; or perhaps here and there the carcase of an animal which had run for shelter beneath the cover of a tree already tottering to its fall. Or we are on the sea coast, the angry waves are subsiding, and as we watch them they presently lay at our feet the timbers of what we know a few hours ago must have been the home of human beings; and then one and another fragment of a ship's furniture is floated up, and then, perhaps, at last, a human body, so bruised and gashed by its rude contact with the rocks as to be scarcely recognizable. "Fulfilling His word." Somehow or other, then, His word is fulfilled in this devastation and disfigurement of that which His own hands have made; and the agent which inflicts it obeys some law as regular as that which governs the motion of the planet, although with more complex conditions. In its early history this earth seems to have been the scene of a series of catastrophes, each of them the product of existing law, each of them the preparation for some higher forms of life. As we pass from the physical and inanimate world and enter the human, the spiritual, and the moral, we find new and rich applications of the words before us. Here the wind and the storm become metaphorical expressions, having, however, real counterparts in the passions and the agency of man. Here, too, as elsewhere, we watch them fulfilling God's word. I. LET US BEGIN WITH THE STATE. Every reflecting person must know how intimately the well-being of mankind is bound up with the maintenance of social order, and the stability and vigour of existing institutions with good government, with the due security of life and property: It is the State which organizes and combines the conditions of well-ordered human life. The State answers in the social life of man to physical nature in man's animal life. Its strength and unvarying order are the guarantee of man's well-being; and yet the State is exposed to destructive storms which rival in their sphere the most violent catastrophes of nature: and the question is how such storms are fulfilling God's word. 1. There is, for instance, the storm of invasion, the extreme and most dreaded result of the storm of war. Never, probably, before the establishment of the Roman Empire were such blessings as well-ordered government can secure secured for so large a proportion of the human family as was then the case. Upon the subjugation of a number of petty States continually at war with each other, the Romans established a vast system of law and police, which was almost conterminous with the civilized world. It extended from the Euphrates to the Straits of Gibraltar, from the Grampian Hills far into the deserts of Africa. This wonderful political edifice, which was begun by the soldiers of Rome, which was built up and completed by her lawyers and her administrators, was such that its seeming strength and its compactness and its practical wisdom made men believe that it would last for ever. But the centuries passed, and moral corruptions, imported chiefly from the East, ate out the very heart and fibre of Roman strength; and then there came the storm of the barbarian invasions. On they came, Goths, and Huns, and Vandals; on they came, wave after wave, breaking upon the enfeebled defences of decaying civilization; on they came, wrecking cities, devastating provinces, breaking up altogether the old fabric of society, and establishing in its place a state of things from which Rome had delivered the world, a number of petty States constantly at war with each other, and lacking in not a few instances the primary conditions of social order. And yet this wind and storm, we can see it, fulfilled God's word. Rome had done its work, and the evil which festered under its ordered splendour at last greatly outweighed the good that could be secured by its longer continuance. It left to the world its great conceptions of law and rule that were never better appreciated than in our own day; it had to make room for new and vigorous nations instinct with a healthier spirit, guided from the infancy of their existence by a Divine religion; and the scenes of ruin in which it perished had a sanction which has been justified by the event. 2. There is the storm of revolution, more dreadful in its extreme phases than the storm of invasion or the storm of war, just as cruelty or wrong at the hands of relations is more unendurable than at the hands of strangers. Such a storm was that which burst upon France in the closing years of the eighteenth century. We may go far, indeed, to find a parallel to the Jacobin terror in point of deliberate ferocity perpetrated in the name and in the midst of an advanced civilization. The brutalities of the Committee of Public Safety are the more revolting from the contrast which they present with the lofty professions of a sensitive philanthropy amid which the Revolution was ushered into being. And yet, as we look back on those terrible years which occupied the whole attention of our grandfathers, we can trace in them, too, the wind and storm fulfilling God's word. The old society which was thus destroyed was inconsistent with the well-being of the greater part of the French people; and the agonies of the Revolution have been counterbalanced by the exchange which millions have made of a life of great hardship and oppression for a life in which all men are equal before the law. He who makes the clouds of human passion His chariots, He who walks upon the wings of the wind of human violence, He permitted a company of pedantic ruffians, who for the moment controlled the destinies of France, to work its miserable will, because He had in view a larger future which would show that, however unconsciously, they were fulfilling His high purposes of benevolence and justice. II. IN THE CHURCH, THE DIVINE SOCIETY, WE TRACE THE OPERATIONS OF THE SAME LAW. The Church is exposed to storms which in her higher life correspond to the storms of invasion and the storms of revolution in the life of the State. 1. Thus there is the storm of persecution which in Scripture is distinctly ascribed to the agency of Satan. It might well have seemed to the first Christians hard and almost unintelligible that the almighty and loving Father should have called out from among mankind into existence the society of His true children and worshippers only to expose it to the fierce trial which beat on it with such pitiless, with such well-nigh incessant fury during the first three centuries of its existence; and yet as we look back we can see that this education in the school of suffering was neither needless nor thrown away. If the Head of the new society had been crowned with thorns, the members could not expect to be crowned with roses, and withal to be in true correspondence and communion with the Head. If the storm of persecution swept round the cradle of Bethlehem when the holy innocents were sent to their appointed thrones by the sword of Herod; if it beat with relentless fury upon that cross where He hung, the Infinite and the Eternal, expiating human sin, it could not but be that His members would be perfected through suffering. 2. And there is the storm of controversy. Between the sacredness of Divine truths, and the angry passions which rage around them when the floodgates of controversy have been opened, there is the hideous contrast which we all feel most deeply in our best moments; and yet the wind and the storm of controversy have their place and use in God's providential government of His Church. If St. Paul had not withstood St. Peter to his face at Antioch, it seems probable that, humanly speaking, the Church of Christ would never have exceeded the dimensions of a Jewish sect. If had not opposed at Alexandria, it is difficult to see how, but for a miraculous intervention, the Church would have continued to teach the Divinity of Jesus Christ. If had allowed and his coadjutors to pass uncontradicted, Western Christendom at least would have ceased to believe that we are saved by grace. The controversies of the sixteenth century plunged a large part of Europe into spiritual anarchy; but at the same time they cleared away mists which else must have hung in ever-thickening corruption over the face of Christendom. Our own age has not been wanting in its full share of religious disputes, and we have not escaped the heart-burnings and the other evils which always accompany them. But those winds and storms of controversy have in their measure fulfilled God's word by rescuing from oblivion almost-forgotten truths; by reminding Christians of a truer and higher standard of life and practice which they had well-nigh forgotten; by bringing out into the sunlight the agreement which often underlies apparent differences, as well as the deep differences which often traverse a specious agreement; by persuading men of goodwill to combine courage in defence of truth with a chivalrous and charitable bearing towards its opponents; by deepening our sense of the preciousness of that well of truth of God which is itself attested by our misunderstandings, by our struggles, by our faults of conduct and of temper which accompany the effort that is made to recognize and to proclaim it. Yes, even controversy may have its blessings. III. And not less applicable are the words to THE EXPERIENCE OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE which is assailed by storms that in their various ways fulfil the will or word of God. There are the outward troubles of life; loss of means, loss of friends, loss of reputation, the misconduct of children, the inroads of bad health, the slow decay of hopes that once were bright and promising; these things are what men only mean when they use the metaphor in their common talk. The storms of life also represent disasters and failures of a more or less external kind. And no doubt when they fall upon us in quick accumulation they do break down nerve and spirit, they do lay us low, as the psalmist says, "even to the dust." But these storms most assuredly are not seldom our best friends if we only knew it. They break up the class of alliance which the soul, despite her higher origin and destiny, is ever too ready to make with the outward world of sense. They throw us back from the realm of shadows upon the other kingdom which is so close to us, which we forget so easily, but where all is life. Life is full of illustrations of the truth that these storms are meant to fulfil and do fulfil God's word by promoting the conversion and the sanctification of souls. There are, for instance, souls who are exposed to fierce intellectual trials, because in no other way, as it seems, would they or could they learn the patience, the courage, the humility, the self-distrust which are so essential to the Christian's character. There is no doubt a dreadful risk lest the violence of the storm should wear them out and they should sink disheartened and lie down and die. But the struggle need not be given up in any case; and God's grace is sufficient for all who will seek it, since "His strength is made perfect in weakness." ( Canon Liddon. ) God's word fulfilled in Nature G. E. Jelf, M. A. : — We are apt to think and speak as if everything had been made for us — as if the sun and moon and stars, the mountains and hills, the fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl had had no other object but our pleasure and comfort. Whereas, in truth, all these were designed to praise God. First, then, each of these glorifies the Lord by obeying its Maker's will. The fulfilment of His design in making them is, according to His own appointment, the proof that He has wrought them well, and therefore that He is worthy to be praised. They also praise Him by accomplishing His work. Sometimes He entrusts them with special commissions. The fire which came, at Elijah's prayer, to decide the people's choice between Baal and the Lord, fulfilled a distinct word of God; so did the hail which destroyed the crops of the Egyptians; so did the cloud which received our ascending Lord; and the mighty wind which raged around Jonah's ship; and the great rain which began in the little cloud of promise granted to the kneeling prophet. And so, again, the glory of God is subserved by these, when they awaken the minds of His sons and daughters to consider in these material forces the operations of His hands. How good it is, what honour is rendered to the Lord of all things, when we are taught by those sights and sounds of nature which are the instruments of God, to discern even Him the Lord Himself, in the snow-storm, and the ocean tempest, and the prairie fire, and the great hailstones, and the impenetrable mists! How gloriously, too, all of these may extol Him by suggesting analogies to us — teachings of that spiritual world, whereof we find so many pictures and parables around us on all sides. These are not fanciful — God forbid that we should think so. They are employed again and again by our blessed Lord, in His Gospel doctrine, when He is showing the heavenly meaning of earthly scenes. And as the Everlasting Son, so also the Eternal Father, does, in Gospel prophecy, use just this imagery ( Isaiah 55:10, 11 ). 1. One of the very first lessons to be learnt from such visitations is our utter dependence upon God. Look at the way in which the complex machinery of this great country has been suddenly put out of gear by a few hours' snow — how our postal service, our telegraphs, our common business, our markets, our trade, our schools, our mutual intercourse have been interrupted as in a moment by the tiniest particles of snow joining together against us in irresistible masses — a great army of the Lord, as mighty as the locusts of His sending. Here is, indeed, a disclosing to us of the power of God to hold us down, and to show us His great strength at any time. 2. Since we are entirely dependent on Him ourselves, we should remember, with a self-denying charity, those whom He has suffered to be smitten by the rushing waters, or the raging wind, or the cutting frost and snow. There must not only be, — though He does desire this, — the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His Name: besides this, we must not forget to do good and to distribute, for it is with such sacrifices that God is well pleased. 3. Though the heart is the seat of holy gratitude, the lips are the gates through which it passes to the throne of the heavenly grace. Should net our prayer be this, the familiar petition which yet is too little our own: "O Lord, open Thou our lips; and our mouth shall show forth Thy praise"? ( G. E. Jelf, M. A. ) God's hand in the wind and storm J. Henderson, D. D. : — God's hand is in the wind and storm. He raises it, He directs and rules it, and He stilleth it again. I. GOD EMPLOYS THE STORMY WIND TO FULFIL HIS THREATENED JUDGMENTS. I do not say or suppose that men who perish in the storm are sinners above others, more than were the men on whom the tower of Siloam fell, or the men whose blood Pilate mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. We are forbidden to judge of any man's eternal state by the manner of his death. But we know and are assured that death is never an accident — that in every case, and as the common effect of sin, it is always a judgment; and that, so often as it is brought to pass by the stormy wind, this is the minister of the judgment which God has decreed and threatened. II. THE STORMY WIND FULFILS GOD'S WORD OF PROMISED MERCY. Directly, and by its proper effect, it is the executioner of judgment; indirectly God makes use of it for the very opposite result. For need I tell you that God pursues a plan of mercy on behalf of our world, as well as judgment, which in His wonderful working doth in part accomplish it by the very judgment which He sends abroad on the earth? The same events in providence, you know, work to the most opposite ends in regard to different individuals — as the pillar of cloud, which threw fear and confusion into the hos

Benson Commentary Psalm 148:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights. Psalm 148:1-2 . Praise ye the Lord — Bishop Lowth, speaking of the origin of this divine ode, observes, “that it had its birth from the most pleasing affections of the human soul, joy, love, admiration.” “If we contemplate man,” says he, “newly created, such as the sacred Scriptures exhibit him to us, endued with the perfect power of reason and speech; neither ignorant of himself nor of God; conscious of the divine goodness, majesty, and power; no unworthy spectator of the beautiful fabric of the universe, the earth, and the heavens; can we suppose that, at the sight of all these things, his heart would not so burn within him, that his mind, carried away by the warmth of his affections, would, of its own accord, pour itself forth in the praise of his Creator, and glow into that impetuosity of speech, and that exultation of voice, which almost necessarily follows such emotions of mind. This seems to have been exactly the case with the contemplative author of this beautiful Psalm, wherein all created things are called upon to celebrate together the glory of God. Praise ye the Lord, &c., a hymn which our Milton, by far the most divine of poets, after the sacred ones, hath most elegantly imitated, and very aptly given to Adam in paradise: see Paradise Lost, book 5. ver. 153, &c. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive rightly of that primeval and perfect state of man, unless we allow him some use of poetry, whereby he might worthily express, in hymns and songs, his piety and affection toward God.” See the 25th Prelection. Praise the Lord from the heavens — Let his praises be begun by the host of heaven, which he particularly expresses in the following verses. Praise him in the heights — In those high and heavenly places. Praise ye him, all his angels — He invites the angels here, and inanimate creatures afterward, to praise God, not as if the former needed, or the latter were capable of receiving his exhortation, but only by a poetical figure, the design whereof was, that men, by this means, might be more excited to this duty. Praise him, all his hosts — The angels, as in the former clause, called hosts, here and 1 Kings 22:19 , on account of their vast number, excellent order, and perfect subjection to their general the Lord of hosts. Psalm 148:2 Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts. Psalm 148:3 Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light. Psalm 148:3-4 . Praise him, sun and moon, &c. — You were adored by the blind heathen for gods; you are but his creatures, and therefore would be obliged, if you were capable of it, to worship and praise him for your glorious light and powerful influences. “The material heavens, through their various regions,” says Dr. Horne, “with the luminaries placed in them, and the waters sustained by them, though they have neither speech nor language, and want the tongue of men, yet, by their splendour and magnificence, their motions and their influences, all regulated and exerted according to the ordinance of their Maker, do, in a very intelligible and striking manner, declare the glory of God; they call upon us to translate their actions into our language, and copy their obedience in our lives; that so we may, both by word and deed, glorify, with them, the Creator and Redeemer of the universe.” Praise him, all ye stars of light — Which bespangle the firmament, and constantly burn and shine to his glory, attracting, night after night, and from age to age, the attention, and exciting the admiration of every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people. Praise him, ye heavens of heavens — Ye highest and most glorious heavens, the place of God’s throne, and glorious presence, as this expression seems to mean, Deuteronomy 10:14 ; 1 Kings 8:27 : or, rather, the starry heavens, which also may be so called, because they are above the air, which is often called heaven in the Scriptures. And ye waters — Ye clouds, that be above the heavens — Above a part of them, above the aerial heavens: of which see note on Genesis 1:7 . Psalm 148:4 Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens. Psalm 148:5 Let them praise the name of the LORD: for he commanded, and they were created. Psalm 148:5-6 . Let them praise the name of the Lord — “Who hath set forth his most transcendent wisdom, power, and magnificence in such a variety of stupendous works, that there is not the smallest of them, but ministers such matter of praise and admiration to those who attentively consider them, that they cannot but wish, with the psalmist here, that every one of them were able to tell us how much skill he hath shown in its contrivance; or that we were able to find it out and comprehend it.” He commanded, and they were created — They owe their existence wholly to his will and pleasure. He hath also established them for ever and ever — To the end of the world. They are, by his superintending and watchful providence, constantly preserved and continued. He made a decree, &c. — “That is, prescribed rules to the heavens, the stars, and other creatures, as to their situation, motion, and influence; which, though inanimate, they never transgress.” — Dodd. Psalm 148:6 He hath also stablished them for ever and ever: he hath made a decree which shall not pass. Psalm 148:7 Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps: Psalm 148:7 . Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps — “From heaven above the psalmist descends to the deep beneath, which, while it proclaims the power, observes the laws and decrees of him who made it, and poured it abroad. And the same may be said of its enormous inhabitants, which are under the command of Jehovah, and of none but him.” By dragons here, we may either understand serpents, which abide in the deep caverns or holes of the earth; or, rather, whales, crocodiles, and other sea monsters, which dwell in the depths of the sea, or of rivers, and are often intended by the word ?????? , here rendered dragons. Psalm 148:8 Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word: Psalm 148:8 . Fire — Lightning, thunderbolts, fiery meteors, in which God shows his wonderful power, lighting up those powerful flames, even in cold regions, which are far removed from subterraneous fires. And the noise and stupendous effects of these fires, and especially of thunder and lightning, are such, that they have been justly termed, the voice of God, and the arrows of the almighty. Hail, snow, and vapour — It is really wonderful, that from the same places where the hot lightnings flash, and from whence the thunderbolts are thrown, hail and snow should also descend: nor could this possibly happen, but by the power and wisdom of that Being that can effect every thing. The word ?????? , here rendered vapour, signifies fumes, or hot exhalations, as cold exhalations are comprehended under the title of snow; and both of them, arising from the earth, are here fitly mentioned as belonging to it. Stormy wind — Which is of very great use in vehemently agitating the air, and thereby keeping it from stagnating and becoming unwholesome. But the expression, ???? ??? , ought, perhaps, rather to be rendered whirlwind, a wind which moves in a spiral direction, as well as horizontally, and is exceedingly rapid and impetuous: see on Job 37:9 . This also wonderfully displays the power of God. Fulfilling his word — Going forth as so many messengers to execute his commands and effect his purposes, either of mercy for the comfort, or of judgment for the punishment of the inhabitants of the earth. And they all praise and glorify God after their manner, while they accomplish his pleasure. Psalm 148:9 Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars: Psalm 148:9-10 . Mountains, and all hills — These are of great use in the earth. From them descend the running streams into the valleys, without which animals could not live. On the mountains grow those vast trees which are necessary for daily use in various ways; and on the hills and mountains is herbage for vast multitudes of cattle, whereby men are supplied with food and clothing. And all cedars — Under the name of cedars, as being the chief, seems to be included all kinds of trees which do not bear fruit. A little reflection will show how much it is a subject for praise to God that he hath furnished us with so many kinds of trees; some of which produce for us the most delicious, the most wholesome, and most useful fruits; others supply us with materials for building our habitations and ships, whereby we trade to all parts of the world; and for making our household goods, and various kinds of tools and instruments. If all these were wanting to us, we could hardly subsist; and if but a great part of them were wanting, we should lead a much more laborious and unpleasant life than we do. Beasts, and all cattle — Let the wild beasts also of the forest, and all the cattle that feed in the fields, furnish matter of praise to him who hath shown his manifold wisdom and diffusive goodness in and by them all. And, certainly, whoever considers to how many useful and beneficial purposes of life they are employed, in one way or another, must see and acknowledge that they furnish a powerful motive for praise to the great Creator, for the vast multitude and various kinds of them, which he hath formed and subjected to the dominion of man. Creeping things — Including many animals in the waters, as well as in the land; and flying fowl — In the various forms, capacities, and instincts of which, as well as in the beautiful plumage of many of them, and the ample provision made for them all, much of the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Creator is manifested. Psalm 148:10 Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl: Psalm 148:11 Kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth: Psalm 148:11-12 . Kings of the earth, and all people — “After the whole creation hath been called upon to praise Jehovah, man, for whom the whole was made; man, the last and most perfect work of God; man, that hath been since redeemed by the blood of the Son of God incarnate, is exhorted to join and fill up the universal chorus of heaven and earth, as being connected with both worlds, that which now is, and that which is to come. Persons of every degree, of each sex, and of every age; kings, whose power God hath made an image of his own, and who are the suns of their respective systems; judges, and magistrates of all kinds, who derive their power, as the moon and planets do their light, from its original source; young men and maidens, in the flower of health, strength, and beauty; old men, who have accomplished their warfare, and are going out of life; children, who are just come into it, and see every thing new before them; all these have their several reasons for praising the Lord.” — Horne. Psalm 148:12 Both young men, and maidens; old men, and children: Psalm 148:13 Let them praise the name of the LORD: for his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth and heaven. Psalm 148:13-14 . Let them praise, &c. — Let them acknowledge and celebrate the wisdom, goodness, and power of the Lord; for his name alone is excellent — For how great soever any other beings may be, there is none equal to him, whose most excellent majesty infinitely surpasses that of all other beings; and whose glory is above the earth and heaven — Above all that the earth or heaven can utter of him. He also exalteth the horn of his people — And so great is God’s condescension unto us, the children of Israel, that he takes a peculiar care of us, hath bestowed upon us many peculiar benefits, and raised us to the highest pitch of honour, especially to this, that he hath brought us more near to himself than any other people upon the earth, and hath placed among us a visible token of his presence: we therefore are under peculiar obligations to praise him for his singular kindness. Psalm 148:14 He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints; even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him. Praise ye the LORD. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Psalm 148:1 Praise ye the LORD. Praise ye the LORD from the heavens: praise him in the heights. Psalm 148:1-14 THE mercy granted to Israel ( Psalm 148:14 ) is, in the psalmist’s estimation, worthy to call forth strains of praise from all creatures. It is the same conception as is found in several of the psalms of the King ( Psalm 93:1-5 ; Psalm 94:1-23 ; Psalm 95:1-11 ; Psalm 96:1-13 ; Psalm 97:1-12 ; Psalm 98:1-9 ; Psalm 99:1-9 ; Psalm 100:1-5 ), but is here expressed with unparalleled magnificence and fervour. The same idea attains the climax of its representation in the mighty anthem from "every creature which is in heaven and on the earth, and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them," whom John heard saying, "Blessing and honour and glory and power unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." It may be maintained that this psalm is only a highly emotional and imaginative rendering of the truth that all God’s works praise Him, whether consciously or not. but its correspondence with a line of thought which runs through Scripture from its first page to its last-namely, that, as man’s sin subjected the creatures to "vanity," so his redemption shall be their glorifying-leads us to see prophetic anticipation, and not mere poetic rapture, in this summons pealed out to heights and depths, and all that lies between, to rejoice in what Jehovah has done for Israel. The psalm falls into two broad divisions in the former of which heaven, and in the latter earth, are invoked to praise Jehovah. Psalm 148:1 addresses generally the subsequently particularised heavenly beings. "From the heavens" and "in the heights" praise is to sound: the former phrase marks the place of origin, and may imply the floating down to a listening earth of that ethereal music; the latter thinks of all the dim distances as filled with it. The angels, as conscious beings, are the chorus leaders, and even to "principalities and powers in heavenly places" Israel’s restoration reveals new phases of the "manifold wisdom of God." The "host" (or hosts, according to the amended reading of the Hebrew margin) are here obviously angels, as required by the parallelism with a. The sun, moon, and stars, of which the psalmist knows nothing but that they burn with light and roll in silence through the dark expanse, are bid to break the solemn stillness that fills the daily and nightly sky. Finally, the singer passes in thought through the lower heavens, and would fain send his voice whither his eye cannot pierce, up into that mysterious watery abyss, which, according to ancient cosmography, had the. firmament for its floor. It is absurd to look for astronomical accuracy in such poetry as this; but a singer who knew no more about sun, moon. and stars, and depths of space, than that they were all God’s creatures and in their silence praised Him, knew and felt more of their true nature and charm than does he who knows everything about them except these facts. Psalm 148:5-6 assign the reason for the praise of the heavens-Jehovah’s creative act, His sustaining power and His "law," the utterance of His will to which they conform. Psalm 148:6 a emphatically asserts, by expressing the "He," which is in Hebrew usually included in the verb, that it is Jehovah and none other who "preserves the stars from wrong." "Preservation is continuous creation." The meaning of the close of Psalm 148:6 b is doubtful, if the existing text is adhered to. It reads literally "and [it?] shall not pass." The unexpressed nominative is by some taken to be the before mentioned "law," and "pass" to mean cease to be in force or be transgressed. Others take the singular verb as being used distributively, and so render "None of them transgresses." But a very slight alteration gives the plural verb, which makes all plain. In these starry depths obedience reigns; it is only on earth that a being lives who can and will break the merciful barriers of Jehovah’s law. Therefore, from that untroubled region of perfect service comes a purer song of praise, though it can never have the pathetic harmonies of that which issues from rebels brought back to allegiance. The summons to the earth begins with the lowest places, as that to the heavens did with the highest. The psalmist knows little of the uncouth forms that may wallow in ocean depths, but he is sure that they too, in their sunless abodes, can praise Jehovah. From the ocean the psalm rises to the air, before it, as it were, settles down on earth. Psalm 148:8 may refer to contemporaneous phenomena, and, if so, describes a wild storm hurtling through the lower atmosphere. The verbal arrangement in Psalm 148:8 a is that of inverted parallelism, in which "fire" corresponds to "smoke" and "hail" to "snow." Lightning and hail, which often occur together, are similarly connected in Psalm 18:12 . But it is difficult to explain "snow and smoke," if regarded as accompaniments of the former pair fire and hail. Rather they seem to describe another set of meteorological phenomena, a winter storm, in which the air is thick with flakes as if charged with smoke, while the preceding words refer to a summer’s thunderstorm. The resemblance to the two pictures in the preceding psalm, one of the time of the latter rains and one of bitter winter weather, is noticeable. The storm wind, which drives all these formidable agents through the air, in its utmost fury is a servant. As in Psalm 107:25 , it obeys God’s command. The solid earth itself, as represented by its loftiest summits which pierce the air; vegetable life, as represented by the two classes of fruit-bearing and forest trees; animals in their orders, wild and domestic; the lowest worm that crawls and the light-winged bird that soars, -these all have voices to praise God. The song has been steadily rising in the scale of being from inanimate to animated creatures, and last it summons man, in whom creation’s praise becomes vocal and conscious. All men, without distinction of rank, age. or sex, have the same obligation and privilege of praise. Kings are most kingly when they cast their crowns before Him. Judges are wise when they sit as His vicegerents. The buoyant vigour of youth is purest when used with remembrance of the Creator; the maiden’s voice is never so sweet as in hymns to Jehovah. The memories and feebleness of age are hallowed and strengthened by recognition of the God who can renew failing energy and soothe sad remembrances; and the child’s opening powers are preserved from stain and distortion, by drawing near to Him in whose praise the extremes of life find common ground. The young man’s strong bass, the maiden’s clear alto, the old man’s quavering notes, the child’s fresh treble, should blend in the song. Psalm 148:13 gives the reason for the praise of earth, but especially of man, with very significant difference from that assigned in Psalm 148:5-6 . "His name is exalted." He has manifested Himself to eves that can see, and has shown forth His transcendent majesty. Man’s praise is to be based not only on the Revelation of God in Nature, but on that higher one in His dealings with men, and especially with Israel. This thief reason for praise is assigned in Psalm 148:14 and indeed underlies the whole psalm. "He has lifted up a horn for His people," delivering them from their humiliation and captivity, and setting them again in their land. Thereby He has provided all His favoured ones with occasion for praise. The condensed language of Psalm 148:14 b is susceptible of different constructions and meanings. Some would understand the verb from a as repeated before "praise," and take the meaning to be "He exalts the praise [ i.e., the glory] of His beloved," but it is improbable that praise here should mean anything but that rendered to God. The simplest explanation of the words is that they are in apposition to the preceding clause, and declare that Jehovah, by "exalting a horn to His people," has given them especially occasion to praise Him. Israel is further designated as "a people near to Him." It is a nation of priests, having the privilege of access to His presence; and, in the consciousness of this dignity, "comes forward in this psalm as the leader of all the creatures in their praise of God, and strikes up a hallelujah that is to be joined in by heaven and earth" (Delitzsch). The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.