Meditate, dear friends, upon the whole range of God’s works in Creation and
Providence. There was a period when God dwelt alone — and creatures were not.
In that time before all time, when there was no day but “The Ancient of Days,”
when matter and created mind were alike unborn, and even space was not —
God, the great I AM, was as perfect, glorious, and as blessed as He is now.
There was no sun — and yet Jehovah dwelt in ineffable light.
There was no earth — and yet His throne stood fast and firm.
There were no heavens — and yet His glory was unbounded.
God inhabited eternity in the infinite majesty and happiness of His self-contained
greatness. If the Lord, thus abiding in solemn solitude, should choose to create
anything — the first thought and idea must come from Him, for there was no
other to think or suggest. All things must be of Him in design. With whom can He
take counsel? Who shall instruct Him? There existed no other to come into His
council-chamber, even if such an assistance could be supposable with the Most
High.
In the beginning of His way, before His works of old, eternal wisdom brought forth
from its own mind the perfect plan of future creations, and every line and mark
therein must clearly have been of the Lord alone.
He ordained the pathway of every planet — and fixed the abode of every star. He
poured forth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and girt Orion with its bands.
He appointed the bounds of the sea, and settled the course of the winds. As to
the earth, the Lord alone planned its foundations, and stretched His line upon it.
He formed in His own mind, the mold of all His creatures, and found for them a
dwelling and a service. He appointed the degree of strength with which He would
endow each creature, settled its months of life, its hour of death, its coming and
its going.
Divine wisdom mapped this earth — its flowing rivers and foaming seas, the
towering mountains, and the laughing valleys. The divine Architect fixed the gates
of the morning — and the doors of the shadow of death.
Nothing could have been suggested by any other, for there was no other to
suggest. It was in His power to have made a universe very different from this — if
He had so pleased. That He has made it what it is, must have been merely
because in His wisdom and prudence, He saw fit to do so.
“You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power — for
You created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being!” (Revelation 4:11)
