the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
THE MERCY OF GOD
" Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens." - Psalms 36:5
"Mercy " or " loving-kindness " in the Old Testament is ’ very nearly equivalent to the New Testament "love"; or perhaps still more nearly equivalent to the New Testament "grace." Both the one and the other mean substantially this - active love communicating itself to the creatures that are inferior and that might have expected something else to befall them. Mercy is a modification of love, inasmuch as it is love to an inferior. The hand is laid gently upon the man, because if it was laid with all its weight it would crush him. It is the stooping goodness of a king to a beggar.
And mercy is likewise love, in its exercise to persons that might expect something else, being guilty. As a general coming to a body of mutineers with pardon and favour upon his lips, instead of with condemnation and death; so God comes to us, forgiving and blessing. All His goodness is forbearance, and His love is mercy, because of the weakness, the lowliness, and the ill desert of us on whom the love falls. All the attributes of the Divine nature, all the operations of the Divine hand, lie within the circle of His mercy - like a diamond set in a golden ring. Mercy, or love, flowing out in blessings to inferior and guilty creatures is the root and ground of all God’s character; it is the foundation and impulse of all His acts. Modern science reduces all modes of physical energy to one, for which it has no name but - energy. We are taught by God’s own revelation of Himself - and most especially by His final and perfect revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ - to trace all forms of Divine energy back to one which David calls mercy, which John calls love.
It is last as well as first, the final upshot of all revelation. The last voice that speaks from Scripture has for its special message " God is love." The last voice that sounds from the completed history of the world will have the same message, and the ultimate word of all revelation, the end of the whole majestic unfolding of God’s purposes, will be the proclamation to the four corners of the universe, as from the trump of the Archangel, of the name of God as Love.
The northern and the southern pole of the great sphere are one and the same, a straight axle through the very heart of it, from which the bounding lines swell out to the equator, and towards which they converge again on the opposite side of the world. So mercy is the strong axletree, the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world of the Divine perfections revolves and moves.
"Thy mercy is in the heavens," towering up above the stars, and dwelling there, like some Divine aether, filling all space. The heavens are the home of light, the source of every blessing, arching over every head, rimming every horizon, holding all the stars, opening into abysses as we gaze, with us by night and by day, undimmed by the mist and smoke of earth, unchanged by the lapse of centuries, ever seen, never reached, bending over us always, always far above us.
And so the mercy of God towers above us, and stoops down towards us; rims us all about, and arches over us all; sheds down its dewy benedictions by night and by day; is filled with a million stars, and light points of beauty and of splendor; is near us ever to bless and succor, to help, and holds us all in its blue round.
'Music For The Soul' daily readings for a year from the writings of the Rev. Alexander Maclaren, D.D., selected and arranged by the Rev. Geo. Coates, published by A.C. Armstrong and Son, 51 East Tenth Street, (1897). The original text is in the Public Domain and this electronic version is free for anyone without cost or obligation. This a year long daily devotional was written by the Rev. Alexander Maclaren over 100 years ago. This Scottish pastor had a heart to follow Jesus and a love for souls.
