beautiful behind
it, our curiosity and wonder is awakened, and we long all the more to see
what is behind that curtain. So the glory of those skies ought to make
us wonder and long all the more to see the God who made the skies.

But again, the Psalmist says that God lays the beams of His chambers in
the waters, and makes the clouds His chariot, and walks upon the wings of
the wind! that He makes His angels the storms, and His ministers a
flaming fire. You must not suppose that the psalmist had such a poor
notion of the great infinite God, as to fancy that He could be in any one
_place_. God wants no chambers--even though they were built of the
clouds, arched with rainbows, as wide as the whole vault of heaven. He
wants no wind to carry Him--He carries all things and moves all things.
In Him they live, and move, and have their being. Yet Him--the heaven,
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him! He is everywhere and no
_where_--for He is a Spirit; He is in all things, and yet He is no
_thing_--for He was before all things, and in Him all things consist. He
is the Absolute, the Uncreated, the Infinite, the One and the All. And
the old Psalmist knew that as well as we do, perhaps better. What, then,
did he mean by these two last verses? He meant, that in all those things
God was present--that the world was not like a machine, a watch, which
God had wound up at the creation, and started off to go of itself; but
that His Spirit, His providence, were guiding everything, even as at the
first. That those mists and rain came from Him, and went where He sent
them; that those clouds carried _His_ blessings to mankind; that when the
thunder shower bursts on one parish, and leaves the next one dry, it is
because God will have it so; that He brings the blessed purifying winds
out of His treasures, to sweeten and fatten the earth with the fresh
breath of life, which they have drunk up from the great Atlantic seas,
and from the rich forests of America--that they blow whither He thinks
best; that clouds and rain, wind and lightning, are His fruitful
messengers and His wholesome ministers, fulfilling His word, each
according to their own laws, but also each according to His especial
providence, who has given the whole earth to the children of men. This
is the meaning of the Psalmist, that the weather is not a dead machine,
but a living, wonderful work of the Spirit of God, the Lord and giver of
life. Therefore we may dar