Words of Life's Last Years Author:John Sheppard Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The language of a German whom I met near the spot, who, in answer to some general phrase of admiration, said, " Our Lord God rejoices in these regions," [unser H... more »err Gott freuet sich an diese gegenden,] although it seemed at first hearing quaint, and almost irreverent, yet conveys a solemn truth. " Our Lord God," the all-perfect Spirit, must have all the highest and most refined emotions which a glorious spirit can possess. " When He stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and spread them out as a tent to dwell in; when He meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure ; when He weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance; when He renovated the earth which had become desolate and void, ' God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.'" We read, " the Lord shall rejoice in His works,"l and the eternal Wisdom is described as " rejoicing in the habitable parts of the earth." Indeed, in scenes like these we recognise irresistibly the fact, that the Creator and Upholder of all things is not sovereign and omnipotent only, but loves and rejoices over the sublime and beautiful in His own works. The Divine architect and sculptor who built the everlasting hills and carved the towering peaks, is also the heavenly painter of the vernal and autumnal forests, the harmonist of the rush- i Psalm civ. 31. ing torrent, the enchaser of its wreaths of ever-waving jewellery;—and " the Lord shall rejoice in His works." But further, He has made them and preserves them in order that His intelligent creatures should likewise admire and rejoice. The perfect and unchangeable must have supremely rejoiced in His own perfection, even " before His works of old; when there were no created depths, no fountains abounding with water ; before th...« less