GOD, GOVERNING OF

And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year …

—Rev. 9:15

1902 Under New Management?

As soon as Russia’s satellite touched outer space, Moscow’s magazine Krokidil, indicated “that creation, from a Communist point of view, is at last under new management.”

1903 Unchanging “A” Note

Author Lloyd C. Douglas used to tell how he loved to visit an old man who gave violin lessons because the teacher had a kind of homely wisdom that refreshed him. One morning Douglas walked in and said, “Well, what’s the good news today?” Putting down his violin, the teacher stepped over to a tuning fork suspended from a cord and struck it a smart blow. “There is the good news for today,” he said. “That, my friend, is the musical note A. It was A all day yesterday, will be A next week and for a thousand years.”

—A. Purnell Bailey

1904 Napoleon’s Vain Boast

Napoleon Bonaparte, when intoxicated with success and at the height of his power, is reported to have said, “I make circumstances.” But let Moscow, Elba, Waterloo, and St. Helena, testify to his utter helplessness.

—J. B. Gugh

1905 Lincoln’s View of God

William J. Wolfe has called Abraham Lincoln “one of the greatest theologians of America.” He added that Lincoln’s theology was profound, “not in the technical meaning of producing a system of doctrine, certainly not as the defender of some one denomination, but in the sense of seeing the hand of God intimately in the affairs of nations.”

—Gospel Herald

1906 Garfield Calms The Crowd

On the morning of Lincoln’s death, a crowd of fifty thousand people gathered before the Exchange Building in New York. Feelings ran high, natural enough in the circumstances, and there was danger of its finding expression in violence. Then a well-built man in officer’s uniform stepped to the front of the balcony, and in a voice that rang like a trumpet call, cried:

“Fellow citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him. His pavilion is dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne. Mercy and truth go before His face. Fellow citizens! God reigns! And the Government at Washington still lives!”

Instantly the tumult was stilled, as the people grasped the import of those sublime words. The speaker was General James A. Garfield, himself to become a martyr-president sixteen years later.

—Moody Monthly

1907 Same Amount Oxygen In Air

The Technical News Bulletin, November 1970, carries the report of a study by the National Bureau of Standards which indicates that the abundance of oxygen in clean air during the period 1967 to 1970 is the same as found in all reliable measurements since 1910. There have been reports of fear of disaster because some have thought that the amount of oxygen in the air might be seriously affected by pollution. Folks also tell us that the burning of fuels in industry is using up the earth’s supply of oxygen and that eventually we will all suffocate as there won’t be any oxygen left.

The National Science Foundation collected air samples of 78 sites around the world and compared them with samples taken 61 years ago. Result? There is precisely the same amount of oxygen in the air as there was in 1910—20.95 percent.

—Christian Victory

1908 The Chance World

There used to be a children’s book which bore the fascinating title The Chance World. It described a world in which everything happened by chance. The sun might rise or it might not; or it might appear at any hour, or the moon might come up instead. When children were born they might have one head or a dozen heads, and those heads might not be on their shoulders—there might be no shoulders—but arranged about the limbs.

If one jumped up in the air it was impossible to predict whether he would ever come down again. That he came down yesterday was no guarantee that he would do it the next time. For every day, antecedence and consequence varied, and gravitation and everything else changed from hour to hour. To-day a child’s body might be so light that it was impossible for it to descend from its chair to the floor; but to-morrow, in attempting the experiment again, the impetus might drive it through a three-story house and dash it to pieces somewhere near the center of the earth.

In this chance-world cause and effect were abolished. Law was annihilated. And the result to the inhabitants of such a world could only be that reason would be impossible. It would become a lunatic world with a population of lunatics.

—Henry Drummond

1909 The Greeks

Had the Greeks been placed in Scandinavia or Iceland, or even Spain, would not their genius have been wholly wasted? Had their isles and peninsulas been occupied by people of Roman type, where would have been the delicate intellectual and artistic culture?

Indeed, the Greeks themselves were not the same in all their branches. Had the whole race been Dorian we should hardly have seen an Athens. Not only was Greece thus rightly placed with reference to Africa and Asia, and provided with a people able to profit by such opportunities, it had a third cooperating factor of physical conformation. It was sheltered against invasion far more effectually than Italy, by lofty mountains like a series of watertight compartments in a ship. The small size of its isolated territories led to the formation of great numbers of small states, none sufficiently powerful to crush the individuality.

—Laramie

1910 God Upholds All Things

A human mechanic may leave the machine he has constructed to work without his further personal superintendent, because, when he leaves it, God’s laws take it up; and, by their aid, the materials of which the machine is made retain their solidity—the steel continues to be elastic, the vapor keeps its expansive power.

But, when God has constructed his machine of the universe, he cannot so leave it, or any the minutest part of it, in its immensity and intricacy of movement, to itself; for, if he retires, there is no second God to take care of this machine. Not from a single atom of matter can He for a moment withdraw his superintendent and support. Each successive moment, all over the world, the act of creation must be repeated. The existence of the world witnesses to a perpetuity of creating influence. Active omnipotence must flood the universe, or its machinery stops, and its very existence terminates.

The signs of an all-pervading supernatural energy meet us wherever we turn. Every leaf waves in it, every plant in all its organic processes lives in it; it rolls round the clouds, else they would not move; it fires the sunbeam, else it would not shine; and there is not a wave that restlessly rises and sinks, nor a whisper of the wanton wind that “bloweth where it listeth,” but bespeaks the immediate intervention of God.

—Caird

1911 An Eye That Never Sleeps

There is an eye that never sleeps,

Beneath the wing of night;

There is an ear that never shuts,

When sink the beams of light;

There is an arm that never tires.

When human strength gives way;

There is a love that never fails,

When earthly loves decay.

—Selected

1912 If God Forgot

If God forgot the world,

Forgot for just one day—

Forgot to send the sunshine,

And change the night to day;

Forgot to make the flowers grow,

Forgot the birds and bees.

Forgot to send the sweetness

Of the south wind in the trees;

Forgot to give us friendships,

Forgot to send us rain,

Forgot to give the children play,

Forgot to soften pain;

What would happen to this world and us?

Would we still be gay?

If God should forget—

Forget for just one day?

—George M. Anderson

1913 Epigram On God (Governing of)

•     “If not a single cock crows, will daylight fail to appear?”

—Malay Proverb

See also: Heavenly Phenomenon.