Joshua 2:11

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"... the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath." Jos 2:11

Everything depends upon a right conception of the personality and character of God. The Hebrew conception was marked by great exaltation and comprehensiveness. Again and again we have observed that a little conception of God means a little religion, and a little religion means a little morality. We must in all our thinking strive after the largest conceptions, not simply for their own value as thoughts, but for their moral influence upon the whole circuit of thinking and action. Joshua's description of God is absolutely inclusive: (I) he is "the Lord your God;" as if he were associated with the Israelites only, and with every Israelite in the whole community: thus he is made a personal, or social, or tribal God; but such a God can never be more than a mere idol; to save God from the rank of idols we must have a true conception of his greatness as well as of his moral qualities: (2) Then "he is God in heaven above;" there the thought receives wonderful and sublime enlargement: what "heaven above" is must be left to the imagination, and imagination itself reels in any attempt to comprehend the vastness and glory of the expression: though the mind is thus bewildered, it is yet exalted and ennobled by the very endeavour to comprehend the incomprehensible: (3) Then he is God "in earth beneath;" thus all the dimensions are included; a beautiful method of education is this, for it enables the mind to begin at certain clear and ascertain-able points and to move onward and upward to greater distances and to sublimer effects. The Christian conception of God has never enlarged the thought of the Hebrew theology. Christianity has introduced tenderness into it by describing God by more familiar and endearing names, yet not at the expense of the sublimity, but rather in illustration of it, showing that true sublimity is not far from true condescension. The Hebrew conception of God should have been followed by a grand conception of personal character. To have a great God in the intellect, and no God in the life, is the most criminal atheism. When a man with this conception of God does that which is unworthy of the conception, he not only drags himself downwards, but he drags also the conception of God along with him. It is possible to have an intellectual conception without a moral realisation. This is the most painful irony that can occur in life. When we speak of a great conception of God, it is not intended that the mind alone or the pure reason should be interested in that conception, but that it should fill the whole being, enlightening the mind, subduing the heart, chastening the disposition, and regulating the will. With such a conception immorality is simply impossible; because it is impossible that such light should be quenched by the darkness round about it. The vital point to be ever remembered in these studies is that a great intellectual theology does not necessitate a grand moral purification. Theology must be made more than an intellectual science; it must supply the motive and the reward of sanctified impulse and action.