Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2976
“Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk everyone in his path.” Joel 2:8.
THOSE who have been able to observe the marching of an army of locusts have been amazed beyond measure with the marvelous regularity of their advance. Agur, who must surely have seen them, says, “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” The wonder is that creatures comparatively so insignificant in size, and so low down in the scale of intelligence, should maintain such more than martial order, both in their long flights and in their devouring marches. The ablest commanding officers would be at their wits’ end if ordered to marshal a multitude numbering even a thousandth, or perhaps a millionth part of the countless hordes of these destructive marauders and yet, by instinct, the locust soldiery can and do keep rank better than the most veteran regiments of the line, as I can personally testify, from having seen miles of them in one of the Italian valleys. “They shall march everyone on his ways,” says the Prophet, “and they shall not break their ranks: neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk everyone in his path.”
I. As I considered this remarkable fact in insect life, my meditations led me to note THE ORDER WHICH REIGNS, not only among locusts, but THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE OF GOD’S WORLD. And then I said within myself— After this fashion should there be order and arrangement in the Christian Church. God has trained His great insect army and among them order reigns, but this is no exception to the general rule, for all the hosts of God are marshaled in rank and file and are never left to be a disorganized mob of forces. From the most minute to the most magnificent, all creatures feel the sway of order and they well observe the laws imposed by their Creator!
Look up to the heavens and observe the innumerable stars that glisten there so plenteously that numeration fails. Looked at through the telescope, stars are so abundant that the heavens appear to be covered with dust of gold and yet we have no record that one of these bodies has ever interfered with the orbit of its fellow sphere, or if such a catastrophe has ever been permitted, it has been part of the all-comprehending scheme. The majestic orbs move, each one in its own orbit, and all in perfect harmony. Even the aberrations, as we call them, are nothing but the result of regular law and the astronomer finds that he can calculate them with the greatest possible accuracy. There are no irregularities, discords, or failures among the constellations! And if to the student of the heavens such should appear to be the case, he has but more fully to master the universal law and he discovers, with astonishment, that every eccentricity is a necessary incident in a system grander than he had thought. Mere amateurs in astronomy talked of irregularities, but Newton and Kepler found a mathematical precision manifest in all. At no point need we be afraid that the universe will be thrown out of gear! If a man had placed innumerable wheels in a machine, there would be, in due time, a breakdown somewhere. Oil would be needed here, a cog would be broken there, a band would be snapped in this place, or a piston would be immovable there—but God’s great machine of the universe, whose wheels are so high that the sublime Ezekiel, when he saw them, felt that they were terrible, has continued to revolve these many thousands, perhaps millions of years, and has never yet been stopped for cleaning or repair because God has impressed upon every atom of it the most docile spirit of submission—and His powerful hands are at work every instant amidst the machinery giving force to His laws.
Nor is it so in the coarser inanimate forms of matter only, but the same law holds good with the whole animal creation. Not locusts alone, but the fish of the sea and the birds of the air all observe their Maker’s bidding and both live and move according to rule and order, all forming portions of the perfect circle struck out by the Divine compasses. What a wonderful thing it is that mighty streams of fish should come, during certain seasons, from the North and swim near enough to our coasts to afford our citizens so large a portion of their daily food! If there is complaining in our
streets, there need not be, for extended fisheries could supply all the inhabitants of Britain, even if they were multiplied a hundred times, and yet there would be no perceptible declining in the teeming population of all the sea, for God has so arranged it that there shall be most of those kinds which are most required for food. But what a marvel that at the fixed period, the unguided fish should migrate in such countless shoals and should return again, in due season, to their old abodes among the Arctic waves!
Mark, too, how every tribe of animals is necessary to all the rest. So beautiful is the order of Nature that we cannot wantonly destroy a race of little birds without suffering from their removal. When the small birds were killed in France by the peasantry, who supposed that they ate the corn, the caterpillars came and devoured the crops. Man made a defect in an otherwise perfect circle—he took away one of the wheels which God had made and the machine did not work perfectly. But leave it alone and no jars or grindings will occur, for all animals know their time and place and fulfill the end of their being. You spoil the harmony of Nature’s concert if even the sparrow’s chirrup is unheard. The stork and the crane fly at God’s bidding, the swallow and the martin know their pathway—the prowling beasts and ravenous birds, as well as the domestic cattle, all hold their own in Nature’s arrangements. Like the bejeweled breastplate of the high priest, Nature is full of gems, each one in its setting—and the glory is marred if one is lacking. Be assured that the wild ass and coney, leviathan and behemoth, eagle and dove, gnat and lizard are all arranged for the highest good and are beautiful in their season. “Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk everyone in his path.”