New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 36
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, August 19, 1855, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.
“That clouds are the dust of his feet.”—Nahum 1:3.
IT IS POSSIBLE for a man to read too many books. We will not despise learning, we will not undervalue erudition, such acquisitions are very desirable; and, when his talents are sanctified to God, the man of learning frequently becomes in the hands ofthe Spirit far more useful than the ignorant and the unlearned; but at the same time, if a man acquire his knowledge entirely from books, he will not find himself to be a very wise man. There is such a thing as heaping so many books on your brains that they cannot work—pouring such piles of type, and letters, and manuscripts, and papers, and prints, and pamphlets, and volumes, and tomes, and folios, upon your weary head, that your brains are absolutely buried and cannot move at all. I believe that many of us, whilst we have sought to learn by books, have neglected those great volumes which God has given us; we have neglected to study this great book, the Bible! moreover, perhaps, we have not been careful enough students of the great volume of nature, and we have forgotten that other great book, the human heart. For my own part, I desire to be somewhat a student of the heart; and I think I have learned far more from conversation with my fellow-men than I ever did from reading, and the examination of my own experience, and the workings of my own heart, have taught me far more of humanity than all the metaphysical books I have ever perused. I like to read the book of my fellow creatures; nothing delights me so much as when I see a multitude of them gathered together, or when I have the opportunity of having their hearts poured into mine, and mine into theirs. He will not be a wise man who does not study the human heart, and does not seek to know something of his fellows and of himself. But if there be one book I love to read above all others, next to the book of God, it is the volume of nature. I care not what letters they are that I read, whether they be the golden spellings of the name of God up yonder in the stars, or whether I read, in rougher lines, his name printed on the rolling floods, or see it hieroglyphed in the huge mountain, the dashing cataract, or the waving forest. Wherever I look abroad in nature I love to discern my Father’s name spelled out in living characters; and if we had any fields a little greener than Moorfields, Smithfield, and Spafields, I would do as Isaac did, go into the fields at eventide and muse and meditate upon the God of nature. I thought in the cool of last evening. I would muse with my God, by his Holy Spirit, and see what message he would give me. There I sat and watched the clouds, and learned a lesson in the great hall of Nature’s college. The first thought that struck me was this, as I saw the white clouds rolling in the sky—soon shall I see my Saviour mounted on a great white throne, riding on the clouds of heaven, to call men to judgment. My imagination could easily picture the scene, when the quick and the dead should stand before his great white throne, and should hear his voice pronounce their changeless destiny. I remembered, moreover, that text in the Proverbs, “He that observeth the wind shall not sow and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.” I thought how many a time myself and my brother ministers have regarded the clouds. We have listened to the voice of prudence and of caution we have regarded the clouds, we have stops when we ought to have been sowing because we were afraid of the multitude, or we refused to reap and take in the people into our churches, because some good brother thought we were too hasty about the matter. I rose up and thought to myself, I will regard neither the clouds nor the winds, but when the wind blows a hurricane I will throw the seed with my hands, if peradventure the tempest may waft it further still; and when the clouds are thick, still I will reap, and rest assured that God will preserve his own wheat, whether I gather it under clouds or in the sunshine. And then, when I sat there musing upon God, thoughts struck me as the clouds careered along the skies thoughts which I must give to you this morning. I trust they were somewhat for my own instruction, and possibly they may be for yours. “The clouds are the dust of his feet.”
I. Well, the first remark I make upon this shall be—the way of God is generally a hidden one. This we gather from the text, by regarding the connection, “the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” When God works his wonders he always conceals himself. Even the motion of his feet causes clouds to arise; and if these; clouds are but the dust of his feet,” how deep must be that dense darkness which veils the brow of the Eternal. If the small dust which he causes is of equal magnitude with our clouds—if we can find no other figure to image “the dust of his feet” than the clouds of heaven, then, how obscure must be the motions of the Eternal one, how hidden and how shrouded in darkness! This great truth suggested by the text, is well borne out by facts. The ways of God are hidden ones. Cowper did not say amiss when he sang,—