Notes of & sermon preached by the Rev. C. E. Darwent in Union Church on Sunday, June 30.
Text: Isaiah i, 2—''Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken."
No one puta Jew could have uttered these words, because a" Jew was the only man in the ancient world to whom the heavens and earth were not themselves God. As far as we can seo all heathenismeare panther ism; heaven and earth are the actual Supreme. It is the wonder, the miracle and eternal glory of the Jew that he saw that heaven and earth are not God; they were made by God, subservient to God. This was the beginning of true religion. As long as there was identification of God with heaven and earth there could be no true knowledge of God. This is why the Jewish book is the book—ths Bible. It gives us God ae Ho is in Himself.
But this did not mean that to men like Isaiah there was no connexion between God and the heaven and earth. Isaiah haa a beautiful thought in this verse, when He says that when God calls, heaven earth can hear and respond.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken." On this I think we can build an argument which may convince some and confirm others, and make the greatest thing in man his religion, i Appear more natural, beautiful, vitable and necessary than it may have appeared to us before.
Nothing in the universe goes on taking no notice of other things in the universe. That is our first point. Everything gives some answer to everything else, as Isaiah the heavens and earth give an answer when God speaks. There is nothing so isolated that it fails to respond when a voice is sent forth that it can answer. Strike a note on @ piano and a violin hanging on the wall will answer. You can sometimes break a gas globe by striking a note on a piano, Nature wonderland when looked at in this way. The mountain crags echo the thunder, the child the sea! is imprisoned in the shell that it holds to its ear. The primrose answers the rain and sun of April, even rain pool on the highroad reflects all the sun.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.