THE PRECIOUSNESS OF GOD'S PROMISES.
By C. H. Edwards
WE have found that amid our cares and perplexities the Lord has told us to look up, and see his mighty power as revealed in the open heavens. There we behold the countless millions of shining orbs, which he assures us that man cannot number, but he just as positively assures us that he has counted them all, and called them all by their names, yea, and further he holds them all by his power so that in their revolutions "not one faileth." Isa. 40: 26. Let us notice another illustration of the wonderful precision of the heavenly bodies:— Once as I entered the observatory at Harvard College, at the close of day, a friend who had led me there asked if I might be shown the new instrument that had just been introduced. The professor replied courteously, "Yes; I think there is time enough yet for him to see a star, if you will find one." My companion "found one" by looking in a worn book of astronomical tables lying on the desk, and replied quietly, "There is one at 5:20." So in a hurried instant the covering was stripped off from the great brass tube, and prone upon his back, under the eyepiece, lay the enthusiastic professor. While my friend stood by, with what seemed to be a tack hammer in his hand, I noticed that he kept his eye on a tall chronometer clock near us. Suddenly two sounds broke the impressive stillness; we had been waiting for the star. One was the word "there," spoken by the professor, the other was the tap of the hammer on the stone top of the table by my companion. Both occurred at the same instant, the same376particle of the instant; they were positively simultaneous. But the man who spoke the word could not see the clock; he was looking at the star that came swinging along till it touched the spider web line in his instrument; and the other man who struck the hammer stroke could not see the star; he was looking at the second hand on the dial plate. When the index in its simplicity of regular duty marked twenty minutes after five, there fell the click on the stone; and then, too, there came on in the heavens, millions of miles away, one of God's stars, having no speech, but rolling in on time, as he bade it ages ago. Then I was invited to look in, and see the world of light and beauty as it swept by the next fiber of the tube. But afterwards I went curiously to the book, and found that it had been published ten years before, and that its calculations ran far away into the future, and that it had been based on calculations 1,000 years old. . . . Need I say that these two professors almost wondered—so used to such things were they—at the awestruck devotion, the hushed reverence with which I left the room. —S. C. Robinson, in Christian Statesman. What infinite power and wisdom is this? It is not held before us to terrorize us, but to encourage us on and give us greater confidence in him. He does not leave us here alone, face to face with this glorious power, but to still lead us on he asks (Isa. 40: 28), "Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" Why should these questions be asked? What has been said that would lead us to think he might be weary and faint?—Ah, he has been holding the great universe in his grasp, so that not one has ever failed! What a sublime question! Now comes the precious promise (verse 29): "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young man shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." What power and strength will he give?—This same power he has been showing to us. Wonderful promises, wonderful power with which to fulfill them! Reader, do you sometimes shrink, and fear to trust him? If so, "look up," for "He that bears all nature up
Will guard his children well."
Walker, Mass.