It does not seem a strange thing that the creature and
the Creator should meet face to face, and that they
should hold intercourse without any obstructing
medium.
We may not understand the mode of communication
between the visible and the invisible, but we can see
this, at least, that He who made us can communicate
with us, by the ear or the eye or the touch. He can
speak and we can hear; and, again, we can speak and He
can hear. His being and ours can thus come together,
to interchange thought and affection: He giving, we
receiving; He rejoicing in us, and we rejoicing in
Him: He loving us, and we loving Him. He can look on
us, and we can look on Him; He "guiding us with His
eye" (Psa 32:8), and we fixing our eye on His, as
children on the eye of a father, taking in all the
love and tenderness which beam from His paternal look,
and sending up to Him our responding look of filial
confidence and love. Not that He has "eyes of flesh,
or seeth as man seeth" (Job 10:4); but He can fix His
gaze on us in ways of His own, and make us feel His
gaze, as really as when the eyes of friends look into
each other's depths. "He that formed the eye shall He
not see" (Psa 94:9). He who made the human eye to be
"the light of the body" (Matt 6:22),--that organ
through which light enters the body,--in order that He
might pour into us the glory of His own sun and moon
and stars,--can He not, through some inner eye which
we know not, and for which we have no name, pour into
us the radiance of His own infinite glory, though He
be the "King invisible" (1 Tim 1:17),--He "whom no man
hath seen nor can see" (1 Tim 6:16),--the "invisible
God" (Col 1:15). He can touch us; for in Him we live
and move and have our being:[2] and we can lay hold of
Him, for He is not far from any one of us; He is the
nearest of all that is near, and the most palpable of
all the palpable. It would seem, then, that open and
free and near intercourse with the God who made us
arose from His being what He is, and from our being
what we are: as if it were a necessity both of His
existence and of ours.
That He should be our Creator, and yet be
separated from us, seems an impossibility; that we
should be His creatures, and yet remain at a distance
from Him, seems the most unnatural and unlikely of all
relations. Intercourse, fellowship, mutual love, then,
seem to flow from all that He is to us, and from all
that we are to Him.
We can conceive of no obstruction, no difficulty
in all this, so long as we remained what He has made
us. There could be nothing but the sympathy of heart
with heart; a flow and reflow of holy and unobstructed
love.
Unhindered access to the God who made us seems
one of the necessary conditions of our nature; and
this not arising out of any merit or worthiness on the
part of the creature, but from the fitness of things;
the adaptation of the thing made to Him who made it;
and the impossibility of separation between that which
was made and Him who made it. The life above and the
life below must draw together; heart cannot be
separated from heart, unless something come between to
put asunder that which had by the necessity of nature
been joined together. Distance from God does not
belong to our creation, but has come in as something
unnatural, something alien to creative love, something
which contravenes the original and fundamental law of
our being.
The tree separated from its root, the flower
broken off from its stem, are the fittest emblems of
man disjoined from God. Such distance seems altogether
unnatural. The want of vital connection, in our
original constitution, or the absence of sympathy,
would imply defect in the workmanship, of the most
serious kind,--and no less would it indicate
imperfection on the part of the Great Worker.
God made us for Himself; that He might delight
in us and we in Him; He to be our portion and we His;
He to be our treasure and we His.[3] He made us after
His own likeness; so that each part of our being has
its resemblance or counterpart in Himself: our
affections, and sympathies, and feelings being made
after the model of His own. We are apt to associate
God only with what is cold and abstract and ideal;
ourselves with what is emotional and personal. Herein
we greatly err. We must reverse the picture if we
would know the truth concerning Him with whom is no
coldness, no abstraction, no impersonality. The
reality pertaining to the nature of man, is as nothing
when compared with the reality belonging to the nature
of Him who created us after His own image. In so far
as the infinite exceeds the finite, in so far does
that which we call reality transcend in God all that
is known by that term in man. We are the shadows, He
is the substance. Jehovah is the infinitely real and
true and personal: and it is with Him as such that we
have to do. The God of philosophy may be a cold
abstraction, which no mind can grasp, and by which no
heart can be warmed; but the God of Scripture, the God
who created the heavens and the earth, the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a reality,--a
reality for both the mind and heart of man. It is the
infinite Jehovah that loves, and pities, and blesses;
who bids us draw near to Him, walk with Him, and have
fellowship with Him. It is the infinite Jehovah who
fills the finite heart; for He made that heart for the
very purpose of its being filled with Himself. Our joy
is to be in Him; His joy is in us. Over us He resteth
in His love, and in Himself He bids us rest. Apart
from Him creaturehood has neither stability nor
blessedness.
Free and open intercourse with the God who made
us, is one of the necessities of our being.
Acquaintanceship with Him, and delight in Him, are the
very life of our created existence. Better not to be
than not to know Him, in whom we live, and move, and
have our being. Better to pass away into
unconsciousness or nothingness, than to cease to
delight in Him, or to be delighted in by Him.
The loss of God is the loss of everything; and
in having God we have everything. His overflowing
fulness is our inheritance; and in nearness to Him we
enjoy that fulness. He cannot speak to us, but
something of that fulness flows in. We cannot speak to
Him without attracting His excellency towards us. This
mutual speech, or converse, is that which forms the
medium of communication between heaven and earth. Man
looketh up, and God looketh down: our eyes meet, and
we are, in the twinkling of an eye, made partakers of
the divine abundance.[4] Man speaks out to God what He
feels; God speaks out to man what He feels. The finite
and the infinite mind thus interchange their
sympathies; love meets love, mingling and rejoicing
together; the full pours itself into the empty, and
the empty receiveth the full.
The greatness of God is no hindrance to this
intercourse: for one special part of the divine
greatness is to be able to condescend to the
littleness of created beings, seeing that creaturehood
must, from its very nature, have this littleness;
inasmuch as God must ever be God, and man must ever be
man: the ocean must ever be the ocean, the drop must
ever be the drop. The greatness of God compassing our
littleness about, as the heavens the earth, and
fitting into it on every side, as the air into all
parts of the earth, is that which makes the
intercourse so complete and blessed. "In His hand is
the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all
mankind" (Job 12:10). Such is His nearness to, such
His intimacy with, the works of His hands.
It is nearness, not distance, that the name
Creator implies; and the simple fact of His having
made us is the assurance of His desire to bless us and
to hold intercourse with us. Communication between the
thing made and its maker is involved in the very idea
of creation. "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me:
give me understanding, that I may learn Thy
commandments" (Psa 119:73). "Faithful Creator" is His
name (1 Peter 4:19), and as such we appeal to Him,
"Forsake not the work of Thine own hands" (Psa 138:8).
Nothing that is worthless or unloveable ever
came from His hands; and as being His "workmanship,"
we may take the assurance of His interest in us, and
His desire for converse with us.[5]
He put no barrier between Himself and us when He
made us. If there be such a thing now, it is we who
have been its cause. Separation from Him must have
come upon our side. It was not the father who sent the
younger son away; it was that son who "gathered all
together and took his journey into the far country"
(Luke 15:13), because he had become tired of the
father's house and the father's company.
The rupture between God and man did not begin on
the side of God. It was not heaven that withdrew from
earth, but earth that withdrew from heaven. It was not
the father that said to the younger son, Take your
goods, pack up and be gone; it was that son who said,
"Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to
me," and who, "not many days after, took his journey
into the far country," turning his back on his father
and his father's house.
"O Israel! thou hast destroyed THYSELF" (Hosea
13:9). O man! thou hast cast off God. It is not God
who has cast off thee. Thou hast dislinked thyself
from the blessed Creator; thou hast broken the golden
chain that fastened thee to His throne, the silken
cord that bound thee to his heart.
Yet He wants thee back again; nor will He rest
till He has accomplished His gracious design, and made
thee once more the vessel of His love.
Be the first to react on this!
Horatius Bonar (1808 - 1889)
Bonar has been called “the prince of Scottish hymn writers.” After graduating from the University of Edinburgh, he was ordained in 1838, and became pastor of the North Parish, Kelso. He joined the Free Church of Scotland after the “Disruption” of 1843, and for a while edited the church’s The Border Watch. Bonar remained in Kelso for 28 years, after which he moved to the Chalmers Memorial church in Edinburgh, where he served the rest of his life. Bonar wrote more than 600 hymns.He was a voluminous and highly popular author. He also served as the editor for "The Quarterly journal of Prophecy" from 1848 to 1873 and for the "Christian Treasury" from 1859 to 1879. In addition to many books and tracts wrote a number of hymns, many of which, e.g., "I heard the voice of Jesus say" and "Blessing and Honour and Glory and Power," became known all over the English-speaking world. A selection of these was published as Hymns of Faith and Hope (3 series). His last volume of poetry was My Old Letters. Bonar was also author of several biographies of ministers he had known, including "The Life of the Rev. John Milne of Perth" in 1869, - and in 1884 "The Life and Works of the Rev. G. T. Dodds", who had been married to Bonar's daughter and who had died in 1882 while serving as a missionary in France.
Horatius Bonar comes from a long line of ministers who have served a total of 364 years in the Church of Scotland.
He entered the Ministry of the Church of Scotland. At first he was put in charge of mission work at St. John's parish in Leith and settled at Kelso. He joined the Free Church at the time of the Disruption of 1843, and in 1867 was moved to Edinburgh to take over the Chalmers Memorial Church (named after his teacher at college, Dr. Thomas Chalmers). In 1883, he was elected Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
He was a voluminous and highly popular author. He also served as the editor for "The Quarterly journal of Prophecy" from 1848 to 1873 and for the "Christian Treasury" from 1859 to 1879. In addition to many books and tracts wrote a number of hymns, many of which, e.g., "I heard the voice of Jesus say" and "Blessing and Honor and Glory and Power," became known all over the English-speaking world.
Horatius Bonar, had a passionate heart for revival and was a friend and supporter of several revivalists, He was brother to the more well-known Andrew Bonar, and with him defended D. L. Moody's evangelistic ministry in Scotland. He authored a couple of excellent revival works, one including over a hundred biographical sketches and the other an addendum to Rev. John Gillies' 'Historical Collections...' bringing it up to date.
He was a powerful soul-winner and is well qualified to pen this brief, but illuminating study of the character of true revivalists.
Horatius was in fact one of eleven children, and of these an older brother, John James, and a younger, Andrew, also became ministers and were all closely involved, together with Thomas Chalmers, William C. Burns and Robert Murray M'Cheyne, in the important spiritual movements which affected many places in Scotland in the 1830s and 1840s.
In the controversy known as the "Great Disruption," Horatius stood firmly with the evangelical ministers and elders who left the Church of Scotland's General Assembly in May 1843 and formed the new Free Church of Scotland. By this time he had started to write hymns, some of which appeared in a collection he published in 1845, but typically, his compositions were not named. His gifts for expressing theological truths in fluent verse form are evident in all his best-known hymns, but in addition he was also blessed with a deep understanding of doctrinal principles.
Examples of the hymns he composed on the fundamental doctrines include, "Glory be to God the Father".....on the Trinity. "0 Love of God, how strong and true".....on Redemption. "Light of the world," - "Rejoice and be glad" - "Done is the work" on the Person and Work of Christ. "Come Lord and tarry not," on His Second Coming, while the hymn "Blessed be God, our God!" conveys a sweeping survey of Justification and Sanctification.
In all this activity, his pastoral work and preaching were never neglected and after almost twenty years labouring in the Scottish Borders at Kelso, Bonar moved back to Edinburgh in 1866 to be minister at the Chalmers Memorial Chapel (now renamed St. Catherine's Argyle Church). He continued his ministry for a further twenty years helping to arrange D.L. Moody's meetings in Edinburgh in 1873 and being appointed moderator of the Free Church ten years later. His health declined by 1887, but he was approaching the age of eighty when he preached in his church for the last time, and he died on 31 May 1889.