Observe that emphatic' told you'; then the witness here appealed to is truly a Revelation, though a silent one. There is no speech nor language,' yet their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.'
The general idea of the divine nature, as revealed from the beginning' and from the foundation of the earth,' is that of Majesty transcending all comparison.
The contrast is drawn between Him and men, in the magnificent image of Him as throned above' the circle of the earth,' and so far above that all the busy tribes of men are as grasshoppers,' their restless activity but aimless leaping, and the tumult of the peoples' only as a meaningless chirping.
God's creative and sustaining power is further set forth by that great image of His stretching out the heavens as a curtain, and spreading them out as a tent to dwell in.' As easily as travellers set up their tents when the day's march is done, did He stretch the great expanse above the low earth; and all its depths and spaces are, in comparison with Him, thin, transient, and as easily rolled up and put aside as the stuff that makes a nomad's home for a night. Nor are the two implied thoughts that the heavens' are a veil screening Him from men even while they tell of Him to men, and that they are His lofty dwelling-place, to be loft out of view.
But in Isaiah 40:26 we have a more specific and grander exhibition of God's relation to the Universe. The stars, in number numberless, are conceived of as a great army drilled and directed by Him. And that metaphor, familiar to us as it is, and condensed into the divine title so frequent in this prophetic book, is pregnant with great truths.
It speaks of God as the Imperator, the Commander, exercising supreme authority by the word of His power,' and of creation as obedient thereto. For over, O Lord, Thy word is settled in the heavens.' The Commander needs but to speak, and so mystic is the power of His uttered will, that effects on the material universe follow that altogether immaterial energy.
It speaks of the harmony and order of the whole Creation. By number' and' by name' He sways and ranks them. All things work together.' They are an ordered whole--a kosmos, not a chaos. Modern science is slowly establishing by experiment the truth which is enshrined in that old name, the Lord of hosts,' that all things in the physical universe are a unity.
It speaks of the perfectness of God's knowledge of each item in the mighty whole. He calleth them all by name.' Thereby are expressed authority, ownership, particular knowledge of, and relation to, each individual of the overwhelming aggregate. God knows all, because He knows each.
It speaks of the inexhaustible energy of His sustaining power, and the consequent strength of His creatures. Preservation is a continued creation.' The prophet saw much deeper than the mechanical view of the creative act. To him God was, to use more modern language,' immanent' as well as transcendent.' True, He sits above the circle of the earth,' but as truly He is working on His creatures, and it is by His communicated strength that they are strong. If any being--star, or insect--were separated utterly from Him, it would crumble into nothingness.
But the appeal to Creation is singularly interrupted by an appeal to History. The prophet drops from the serene expanse of the silent yet eloquent heavens to the stormy scenes of changing dynasties and revolutions of earth's kingdoms. How calm the one, how tumultuous the other! How the one witnesses to Him by its apparently unchanging continuance! how the other witnesses by its swift mutations! In the one, He is revealed as Preserver; in the other, the most clear demonstration of His power is given in His destroying of rebel kingdoms. But in these acts by which ancient and firmly rooted dynasties are rooted up or withered as by the simoom, He reveals a side of His nature to which the calm heavens bore no witness. He is the moral Governor of the world. The history of the world is the judgment of the world,' and when hoary iniquities are smitten to death,' the Holy One' is revealed as the righteous Judge. And the conjoint witness of creation and of history attests that none can be likened' to Him.
