What are the Clouds?

"That clouds are the dust of his feet." Nahum 1:3

</strong></em> It is possible for a man to read too many books. We will not despise learning, we will not undervalue scholarship—such acquisitions are very desirable; and, when his talents are sanctified to God, the man of learning frequently becomes in the hands of the Spirit, far more useful than the ignorant and the unlearned. But at the same time, if a man acquire his knowledge entirely from books, he will not find himself to be a very wise man. There is such a thing as heaping so many books on your brains that they cannot work—pouring such piles of type, and letters, and manuscripts, and papers, and prints, and pamphlets, and volumes, and tomes, and folios—upon your weary head, that your brains are absolutely buried and cannot move at all.

I believe that many of us, while we have sought to learn by books, have neglected those great volumes which God has given us—we have neglected to study this great book, the Bible! Moreover, perhaps, we have not been careful enough students of the great volume of nature. And we have forgotten that other great book—the human heart. For my own part, I desire to be somewhat a student of the heart; and I think I have learned far more from conversation with my fellow-men than I ever did from reading; and the examination of my own experience, and the workings of my own heart, have taught me far more of humanity than all the academic books I have ever perused. I like to read the book of my fellow creatures; nothing delights me so much as when I see a multitude of them gathered together, or when I have the opportunity of having their hearts poured into mine, and mine into theirs. He will not be a wise man who does not study the human heart, and does not seek to know something of his fellows and of himself.

But if there be one book I love to read above all others, next to the book of God, it is the volume of NATURE. I care not what letters they are that I read—whether they are the golden spellings of the name of God up yonder in the stars, or whether I read, in rougher lines, his name printed on the rolling floods, or see it hieroglyphed in the huge mountain, the dashing cataract, or the waving forest. Wherever I look abroad in nature I love to discern my Father’s name spelled out in living characters. I would do as Isaac did, go into the fields at eventide and muse and meditate upon the God of nature.

I thought in the cool of last evening—I would muse with my God, by his Holy Spirit, and see what message he would give me. There I sat and watched the clouds, and learned a lesson in the great hall of Nature’s college. The first thought that struck me was this—as I saw the white clouds rolling in the sky—soon shall I see my Savior mounted on a great white throne, riding on the clouds of heaven, to call men to judgment! My imagination could easily picture the scene, when the living and the dead would stand before his great white throne, and should hear his voice pronounce their changeless destiny!

I remembered, moreover, that text in the Proverbs, "He who observes the wind shall not sow, and he who regards the clouds shall not reap." I thought how many a time myself and my brother ministers have regarded the clouds. We have listened to the voice of prudence and of caution we have regarded the clouds. We have stopped when we ought to have been sowing, because we were afraid of the multitude, or we refused to reap and take in the people into our churches, because some good brother thought we were too hasty about the matter. I rose up and thought to myself—I will regard neither the clouds nor the winds, but when the wind blows a hurricane I will throw the seed with my hands, if perhaps the tempest may waft it further still; and when the clouds are thick, still I will reap, and rest assured that God will preserve his own wheat, whether I gather it under clouds or in the sunshine. And then, when I sat there musing upon God, thoughts struck me as the clouds swayed along the skies, thoughts which I must give to you this morning. I trust they were somewhat for my own instruction, and possibly they may be for yours. "The clouds are the dust of his feet!"

I. Well, the first remark I make upon this shall be—THE WAY OF GOD IS GENERALLY A HIDDEN ONE. This we gather from the text, by regarding the connection, "the Lord has his way in the whirlwind and in the storm—and the clouds are the dust of his feet." When God works his wonders, he always conceals himself. Even the motion of his feet causes clouds to arise; and if these clouds are but the dust of his feet—how deep must be that dense darkness which veils the brow of the Eternal. If the small dust which he causes is of equal magnitude with our clouds—if we can find no other figure to image "the dust of his feet" than the clouds of heaven, then, how obscure must be the motions of the Eternal one—how hidden and how shrouded in darkness! This great truth suggested by the text, is well borne out by facts. The ways of God are hidden ones. Cowper did not say amiss when he sang,

"He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm."

His footsteps cannot be seen, for, planted on the sea, the next wave washes them out; and placed in the storm, rioting as the air then is, every impression of his chariot wheels is soon erased. Look at God, and at whatever he has deigned to do, and you will always see him to have been a hidden God. He has concealed himself, and all his ways have been veiled in the strictest mystery.

Consider his works of SALVATION. How did he hide himself when he determined to save mankind? He did not manifestly reveal himself to our forefathers. He gave them simply one dim lamp of prophecy which shone in words like these "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head;" and for four thousand years God concealed his Son in mystery, and no one understood what the Son of God was to be. The smoking incense beclouded their eyes, and while it showed something of Jesus, it hid far more. The burning victim sent its smoke up towards the sky, and it was only through the dim mists of the sacrifice that the pious Jew could see the Savior. Angels themselves, we are told, desired to look into the mysteries of redemption, yet though they stood with their eyes intently fixed upon it. Until the hour when redemption developed itself on Cavalry, not a single angel could understand it.

The profoundest sage might have sought to find out how God could be just and yet the justifier of the ungodly; but he would have failed in his investigations. The most intensely pious man might meditate, with the help of that portion of God’s Spirit which was then given to the prophets, on this mighty subject, and he could not have discovered that the mystery of godliness was—"God manifest in the flesh." God marched in clouds, "He walked in the whirlwinds;" he did not condescend to tell the world what he was about to do; for it is his plan to gird himself in darkness, and "the clouds are the dust of his feet."

Ah! and so it always has been in PROVIDENCE as well as grace. God never condescends to make things very plain to his creatures. He always does rightly; and therefore, he wants his people always to believe that he does rightly. But if he showed them that he did so, there would be no room for their faith. Turn your eye along the page of history, and see how mysterious God’s dealings have been. Who would conceive that a Joseph sold into Egypt would be the means of redeeming a whole people from famine? Who would suppose that when an enemy should come upon the land, it should be after all but the means of bringing glory to God? Who could imagine that a harlot’s blood should mingle with the genealogy from which came the great Messiah, the Shiloh of Israel? Who could have guessed much less could have compassed, the mighty scheme of God? Providence has always been a hidden thing.

"Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will."

And yet, beloved, you and I are always wanting to know what God is doing. There is a war in the Crimea. We have had some great disasters at Sebastopol, and we are turning over the papers, and saying, "What is God doing here?" What did he do in the last war? What was the benefit of it? We see that even Napoleon was the means of doing good, for he broke down the aristocracy and made all monarchs respect the power and the rights of the people. We see what was the result even of that dread hurricane, that it swept away a pestilence which would have devoured full many more. But we ask, "What is God doing with this world?" We want to know what will be the consequences. Suppose we should humble Russia, where would it end? Can Turkey be maintained as a separate kingdom? And ten thousand other questions arise. Beloved, I always think, "let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth," and, as a good old friend of mine says—let them crack themselves, too, if they like. We will not interfere. If the potsherds will go smashing one another, why, then they must. We pray that old England may come off the safest of them all.

But we are not much concerned to know the result. We believe that this war, as well as everything else, will have a beneficial tendency. We cannot see in history that this world ever went a step backwards. God is ever moving it in its orbit; and it has always progressed even when it seemed retrograding. Or, perhaps, you are not agitated about Providence in a nation, you believe that there God hides himself; but then there are matters concerning yourself, which you long to see explained. When I was in Glasgow. I went over an immense foundry, one of the largest in Scotland, and there I saw a very powerful steam engine which worked all the machinery in the entire building. I saw in that foundry such numberless wheels running round, some one way and some another, I could not make out what on earth they were all about. But, I daresay, if my head had been a little wiser, and I had been taught a little more of mechanics, I might have understood what every wheel was doing, though really they seemed only a mass of wheels very busy running round and doing nothing. They were all, however, working at something; and if I had stopped and asked "What is that wheel doing?" A mechanic may have said, "It turns another wheel." "Well, and what is that wheel doing?" "There is another wheel dependent upon that, and that again is dependent on another." Then, at last, he would have taken me and said, "This is what the whole machinery is doing." Some ponderous bar of iron, perhaps, being grooved and cut, shaped and polished—"this is what all the wheels are effecting: but I cannot tell separately what each wheel is doing." All things are working together for good; but what the things separately are doing, it would be impossible to explain.

Yet, you child of Adam, with your finite intellect, are continually stopping to ask, "Why is this?" The child lies dead in the cradle. Therefore, was infancy snatched away? Oh, ruthless death, could you not reap ripe corn; why snatch the rosebud? Would not a chaplet of withered leaves suit you better than these tender blossoms? Or, you are demanding of Providence, why have you taken away my property? Was I not left, by my parents, a wonderful inheritance—and now it has all been swept away! It is all gone! Why this, O God? Why not punish the unjust? Why should the innocent be allowed thus to suffer? Why am I to be bereft of my all? Says another, "I launched into a business that was fair and honorable; I intended, if God had prospered me, to devote my wealth to him. I am poor, my business never prospers. Lord, why is this?" And another says, "Here I am toiling from morning until night; and no matter how hard I try, I cannot extricate myself from my business, which takes away so much of my time from religion. I would happily live on less if I had more time to serve my God."

Ah! finite one! do you ask God to explain these things to you? I tell you, God will not do it, and God cannot do it—for this reason: you are not capable of understanding it. Should the ant ask the eagle why it soars aloft in the skies? Shall leviathan be questioned by a minnow? These creatures might explain their motions to creatures; but the Omnipotent Creator, the uncreated Eternal, cannot well explain himself to mortals whom he has created. We cannot understand him. It is enough for us to know that his way always must be in darkness, and that we must never expect to see much in this world.

II. This second thought is—GREAT THINGS WITH US, ARE LITTLE THINGS WITH GOD. What great things clouds are to us! There we see them sweeping along the skies! Then they rapidly increase until the whole sky gathers blackness and a dark shadow is cast upon the world; we foresee the coming storm, and we tremble at the mountains of cloud, for they are great. Great things are they? No! they are only the dust of God’s feet! The greatest cloud that ever swept the face of the sky, was but one single particle of dust, stirred up by the feet of the Almighty Jehovah. When clouds roll over clouds and the storm is very dreadful—it is but the chariot of God, as it speeds along the heavens, raising a little dust around him! "The clouds are the dust of his feet." Oh! could you grasp this idea my friends, or had I words in which to put it into your souls, I am sure you would sit down in solemn awe of that great God who is our Father, or who will be our Judge!

Consider, that the greatest things with man, are little things with God. We call the mountains great, but what are they? They are but "the small dust of the balance." We call the nations great, and we speak of mighty empires, but the nations before him are but as "a drop in the bucket." We call the islands great and talk of England boastingly—yet God’s Word declares that "He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." We speak of great men and of mighty—yet "the inhabitants of the earth in his sight are but as grasshoppers." We talk of ponderous orbs moving millions of miles from us—yet in God’s sight they are but little atoms dancing up and down in the sunbeam of existence!

Compared with God, there is nothing great. True, there are some things which are little with man, which are great with God. Such are our sins which we call little, but which are great with him; and his mercies, which we sometimes think are little, he knows are very great mercies towards such great sinners as we are. Things which we reckon great, are very little with God. If you knew what God thought of our talk sometimes, you would be surprised at yourselves. We have some great trouble—we go burdened with it, saying, "O Lord God! what a great trouble I am burdened with!" Why, methinks, God might smile at us, as we do sometimes at a little child who takes up a load too heavy for it (but which you could hold between your fingers), and staggers, and says, "Father, what a weight I am carrying." So there are people who stagger under the great trouble which they think they are bearing. Great, beloved! There are no great troubles at all—"the clouds are the dust of his feet." If you would but so consider them, the greatest things with you are but little things with God.

Suppose, now, that you had all the troubles of all the people in the world, that they all came pouring on your devoted head—what are torrents of trouble to God? "Drops in the bucket!" What are whole mountains of grief to him? Why, "he takes up the mountains as the dust of the balance." And he can easily remove your trials. So, in your weariness, don’t sit down and say, "My troubles are too great." Hear the voice of mercy—"Cast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you, he will never allow the righteous to be moved."

You often will hear two Christians talk. One of them will say, "O my troubles, and trials, and sorrows—they are so great I can hardly sustain them! I do not know how to bear my afflictions from day to day." The other says, "Ah! my troubles and trials are not less severe, but, nevertheless, they have been less than nothing. I could laugh at impossibilities, and say they shall be done." What is the reason of the difference between these men? The secret is, that one of them carried his troubles, and the other did not. It does not matter to a porter how heavy a load may be, if he can find another to carry it all for him. But if he is to carry it all himself, of course he does not like a heavy load. So one man bears his troubles himself and gets his back nearly broken; but the other cast his troubles on the Lord.

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