The Unity of God's Word by L. Gaussen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 11, 1915

The Unity of God's Word

By L. Gaussen

As a skillful musician, when he would execute a long score by himself, takes up by turns the funeral flute, the shepherd's pipe, the merry fife, or the trumpet that summons to battle; so did Almighty God, when he would make us hear his eternal word, choose out from of old the instruments which it seemed fit to him to inspire with the breath of his Spirit. He chose them before the foundation of the world, and separated them from their mothers' womb.

Has the reader ever paid a visit to the astonishing organist who so charmingly elicits the tourist's tears in the cathedral at Freiburg, as he touches one after another his wondrous keys, and greets your ear by turns with the march of warriors on the riverside, the voice of prayer sent up from the lake during the fury of the storm, or of thanksgiving when it is hushed to rest? All your senses are electrified, for you seem to have seen all, and to have heard all. Well, then, it was thus that the Lord God,

mighty in harmony, applied, as it were, the finger of his Spirit to the stops which he had chosen for the hour of his purpose and for the unity of his celestial hymn.

He had from eternity before him all the human stops which he required; his Creator's eye embraces at a glance this range of keys stretching over threescore centuries; and when he would make known to our fallen world the everlasting counsel of his redemption, and the coming of the Son of God, he put his left hand on Enoch, the seventh man from Adam, and his right hand on John, the humble and sublime prisoner of Patmos. The celestial anthem, seven hundred years before the flood, began with these words, “Behold, the Lord cometh with the thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all;” but already, in the mind of God, and in the general harmony of his work, the voice of John answered to that of Enoch, and closed the hymn, three thousand years after him, with these words: “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him.” “Even so, come, Lord Jesus. Amen.” And during this hymn of thirty centuries, the Spirit of God never ceased to breathe in all his messengers.

You see, then, it was sometimes the artless and sublime simplicity of John; sometimes the impassioned, elliptical, rousing and logical energy of Paul; sometimes the fervor and solemnity of Peter; it was Isaiah's magnificent and David's lyrical poetry; it was the simple and majestic narratives of Moses, or the sententious and royal wisdom of Solomon,—yes, it was all this; it was Peter, it was Isaiah, it was Matthew, it was John, it was Moses; yet it was God.

“Are not all these which speak Galileans?” the people exclaimed on the day of Pentecost; yes, they are so; but the message that is on their lips comes from another country—it is from heaven. Listen to it; for tongues of fire have descended on their heads, and it is God that speaks to you by their mouths.—“The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,” by L. Gaussen, D. D., pages 50-53.