Evening, September 5, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep?” — Job 38:16

Some things in nature must remain a mystery to the most intelligent and enterprising investigators. Human knowledge has bounds beyond which it cannot pass. Universal knowledge is for God alone. And if this is so in the things which are visible and temporal, I may rest assured that it is even more so in matters spiritual and eternal. Why, then, have I been tormenting my brain with speculations as to destiny and freewill, fixed fate, and human responsibility? These deep and dark truths I am no more able to comprehend than to find out the depth which resides beneath the sea, from which the ancient ocean draws her watery supplies. Why am I so curious to know the reasoning of my Lord’s benevolent will, the motive of his actions, the strategy of his manifestations? Shall I ever be able to clasp the sun in my fist, and hold the universe in my palm? Yet, these are as a drop in a bucket compared with the Lord my God. Let me not strive to understand the infinite, but spend my strength in love. What I cannot gain by intellect I can possess by affection, and let that be sufficient for me. I cannot penetrate the heart of the sea, but I can enjoy the healthful breezes which sweep over its surface, and I can sail over its blue waves with favorable winds. If I could enter the springs of the sea, the feat would serve no useful purpose either to myself or to others. It would not save the sinking skiff, or give back the drowned mariner to his weeping wife and children; neither would my solving deep mysteries avail me a single iota, for the least bit of love to God, and the simplest act of obedience to him, are better than the profoundest knowledge. My Lord, I leave the infinite to you, and pray you will put far from me any such love for the tree of knowledge as might keep me from the tree of life.