Love for All Things
“Holy, holy, holy Lord
God of hosts, when heaven and earth
Out of darkness, at Thy Word,
Issued into glorious birth,
All Thy works before Thee stood
And Thine eye beheld them good
While they sang, with sweet accord,
Holy, holy, holy Lord.”
Do you notice that these lines, which perhaps you have often sung, speak of the birth of the heavens and the earth. This is the way that the Word of God speaks of the creation of all things. Read the second verse of the nineteenth Psalm, with the margin:—
“Before the mountains were brought forth [of born]
Or ever Thou gavest birth to the earth and the world.”
Is it a new thought to you that the whole creation is really born of God, and He is the great Father of all His works? In the fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis we are told: “These are the generations [or births] of the heavens and the earth.”
The word Genesis means “the birth,” and this book is so-called because it tells us of the birth of all things, the light, the firmament, the seas, the grass and trees, the birds and fishes, creeping things and animals, as well as of the birth of man himself. It was by His Word that God brought forth all these things, so all things were born “by the Word of God which liveth and abideth for ever.” And it is by that same Word that everything that comes into being is still born. For to all the living things that He brought forth in the beginning, God said, “Be fruitful, and multiply,” and by the power of this Word they go on multiplying to this day.
Now if all things are, like ourselves, born of God, do you not see that this brings us into relationship with all, and not with our human brothers and sisters only? Last week we spoke of the different races of men that God has made “of one blood,” and of the words of Jesus, “All ye are brethren.”
But in one sense this is true also of all the things that He has made; for “through all created things thrills one pulse of life from the great heart of God.” This life of our Heavenly Father in which we all share makes us all one, “every one members one of another,” and
“Nothing useless is of low,
Each thing in its place is best,
And what seems but idle show
Strengthens and supports the rest.”
Speaking of “St. Francis of Assisi,” who never spoke to bird or beast but as his brother, Mr. Ruskin said: “None can love God, nor his human brother, without loving all things which His Father loves; nor without looking upon them, every one, as in that respect his brothers also.”
Perhaps this will remind you of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” which very likely you have in your reading books. This is a parable in which the poet teaches the effect upon the heart and life and character of cruelty to any of God’s creatures, or of love and kindly feelings towards them.
If you have read it you will remember that the mariner shot the albatross, the confiding bird that followed the ship
“And every day, for food or play,
Came to the Mariners’ hollo.”
From that time the bird seemed to hang like a dead weight round his neck, and trouble and misfortune followed him. He says:
“I looked to heaven and tried to pray,
But or ever a prayer had gushed,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.”
At last one day he was watching some beautiful water snakes that “moved in tracks of shining white” by the side of the ship.
“Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam, and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.”
And as he watched them and admired their beauty a feeling of love for them touched his heart.
“A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware.”
The first effect of this spring of love for his fellow-creatures that rose in his heart, he describes as follows:
“The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free,
The albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.”
And he ends the story of his experience with these true words:
“He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man, and bird, and beast.
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
The Present Truth – May 24, 1900
E. J. Waggoner