Twenty-Five Village Sermons | Page 3

earth, with that blessed One of whom he said,
"Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and
the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou
shalt endure; they all shall fade as a garment, and like a vesture shalt
Thou change them, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same,
and THY years shall not fail. The children of Thy servants shall
continue, and their seed shall stand fast in Thy sight." "As a garment
shalt Thou change them,"-- ay, there was David's secret! He saw that
this earth and skies are God's garment--the garment by which we see
God; and that is what our forefathers saw too, and just what we have
forgotten; but David had not forgotten it. Look at this very 104th psalm
again, how he refers every thing to God. We say, 'The light shines:'
David says something more; he says, "Thou, O God, adornest Thyself
with light as with a curtain." Light is a picture of God. "God," says St.
John, "is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." We say, 'The clouds

fly and the wind blows,' as if they went of themselves; David says,
"God makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of the
wind." We talk of the rich airs of spring, of the flashing lightning of
summer, as dead things; and men who call themselves wise say, that
lightning is only matter,--'We can grind the like of it out of glass and
silk, and make lightning for ourselves in a small way;' and so they can
in a small way, and in a very small one: David does not deny that, but
he puts us in mind of something in that lightning and those breezes
which we cannot make. He says, God makes the winds His angels, and
flaming fire his ministers; and St. Paul takes the same text, and turns it
round to suit his purpose, when he is talking of the blessed angels,
saying, 'That text in the 104th Psalm means something more; it means
that God makes His angels spirits, (that is winds) and His ministers a
flaming fire.' So shewing us that in those breezes there are living spirits,
that God's angels guide those thunder-clouds; that the roaring
thunderclap is a shock in the air truly, but that it is something
more--that it is the voice of God, which shakes the cedar-trees of
Lebanon, and tears down the thick bushes, and makes the wild deer slip
their young. So we read in the psalms in church; that is David's account
of the thunder. I take it for a true account; you may or not as you like.
See again. Those springs in the hill- sides, how do they come there?
'Rain-water soaking and flowing out,' we say. True, but David says
something more; he says, God sends the springs, and He sends them
into the rivers too. You may say, 'Why, water must run down-hill, what
need of God?' But suppose God had chosen that water should run
UP-hill and not down, how would it have been then?--Very different, I
think. No; He sends them; He sends all things. Wherever there is any
thing useful, His Spirit has settled it. The help that is done on earth He
doeth it all Himself.--Loving and merciful,--caring for the poor dumb
beasts!--He sends the springs, and David says, "All the beasts of the
field drink thereof." The wild animals in the night, He cares for them
too,--He, the Almighty God. We hear the foxes bark by night, and we
think the fox is hungry, and there it ends with us; but not with David:
he says, "The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from
God,"--God, who feedeth the young ravens who call upon Him. He is a
God! "He did not make the world," says a wise man, "and then let it
spin round His finger," as we wind up a watch, and then leave it to go

of itself. No; "His mercy is over all His works." Loving and merciful,
the God of nature is the God of grace. The same love which chose us
and our forefathers for His people while we were yet dead in trespasses
and sins; the same only- begotten Son, who came down on earth to die
for us poor wretches on the cross,--that same love, that same power,
that same Word of God, who made heaven and earth, looks after the
poor gnats in the winter time, that they may have a chance of coming
out of the ground when the day stirs the little life in them, and dance in
the sunbeam for a short hour of gay life, before they return to the