Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 448
“To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God.” Ephesians 3:10.
ALL the world has been talking during the last three days of the splendid pageant which adorned the opening of the International Exhibition. Crowds have congregated in the palace of universal art. Representatives of all the nations of the earth have journeyed for many a league to view its wonders. Eminent personages of all empires have appeared in the gorgeous spectacle, and such a scene has glittered before the eyes of all men, as has never before in all respects been equaled and may not for many a year find a successor to rival it.
Why all these gatherings? Why muster you, all you nations? Why do you come here, you gazing sons of men? Surely your answer must be, that you have come together that you may see the manifold wisdom of MAN. As they walk along the aisles of the great Exhibition, what do they see but the skill of man? First in this department, and then in the other. At one moment in the magnificent, at the next in the minute. At one instant in a work of elegance in ornament, in the next in a work of skill and usefulness—“manifold wisdom”—the works and productions of many minds. The different hues and colors of thought, embodied in the various machines and statues and so forth, which human skill has been able to produce.
We grant you that God has been most rightly recognized there, both in the solemn prayer of the Archbishop and in the hymn of the Laureate. But still the great object, after all, was to behold the manifold wisdom of man. And had they taken away man’s skill and man’s art, what would there have been left? Brethren, may the greatest results follow from this gathering! We must not expect that it, or anything else short of the Gospel, will ever bring about the universal reign of peace. We must never look to art and science to accomplish that triumph which is reserved for the second advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yet may it spread the feelings of benevolence—may it bind together the scattered children of Adam—may it fuse into a happy and blessed union the kindreds of men that were scattered abroad at Babel, and may it prepare the way and open the gates, that the Gospel may proceed to the uttermost ends of the earth. It is, however, very far from my mind to direct your attention to the marvels which crowd the area of the huge temple of 1862. I invite you, rather, to follow me to a nobler exhibition than this, where crowds are gathering—not of mortals but of immortal spirits.
The temple is not of art and science but of Divine Grace and goodness, built with living stones, cemented with the fair colors of atoning blood, “built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.” That temple, the Church of the living God, “the pillar and ground of the truth.” Into this great palace crowd ten thousand times ten thousand of the host of God, “cherubim and seraphim,” or by whatever other names those bright intelligences may be known among themselves—“principalities and powers.”
The different degrees in the hierarchy of immortal spirits, if such there is—they are all represented as intently gazing upon the wondrous fabric which God has reared. Along the aisles of that Church, along the ages of its dispensations, stand the various trophies of Divine Grace and love—the jewel cases of virtues and graces which adorn the Believer—the mementoes of triumphs gotten over sin and hardness of heart and of victories achieved over temptation and trial. And as the spirits walk along these corridors full of Divine workmanship, they stand, they gaze, they admire and wonder and speed back their way to Heaven and sing more loudly than before, hallelujahs to the God whose manifold wisdom they have beheld in the Church of God below.
Beloved Friends, our text is a strange one. If you will reflect that the angels, the elder-born of creatures when compared with us, have been with God for many an age. And yet I do not know that it is ever said that by anything else they ever learned “the manifold wisdom of God.” They were with Him when He made the earth and the heavens—perhaps during those long periods when the earth was forming. “In the beginning,” when “God created the heavens and the earth,” the angels were likely to visit this world and to behold alive, and in their glory, those strange shapes of mystery which now we dig up in fossil from the earth.
Certainly in that day when “the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face thereof,” the angels knew the hidden treasure. And when He said, “Let there be light and there was light,” when that first ray of light seemed like a living finger to touch the earth and waken it to beauty, then seraphic fingers swept their heavenly harps and “the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy.” Yet I do not learn, though they were with the Great Worker during the six days of creation, though they saw “the cattle after their kind and the fowls of the air after their kind,” and the fish of the sea and all the plants and herbs, yet I see not that in all this there was made known unto them “the manifold wisdom of God.”