Nature figures of the Divine glory.
These are of peculiar interest, because they appeal to man universally; the language of nature is the common, universal language. Only when men attempt to express their ideas and feelings by the languages of the tongue do they get into confusions and misunderstandings and separations. There is hope of reuniting humanity if it can be brought to heed the voice and witness of nature. Dr. Chalmers shows the connection of this psalm with the preceding one. "It begins, as does Psalms 103:1-22; with the view of God's goodness, but on a different subject; the former psalm being addressed to God, as sitting on a throne of grace; the present psalm to God, as sitting on a throne of nature and of creation; and never have the works of God, and his sovereignty over them, been so magnificently set forth. The glory of the Divine is made palpable, in this psalm, through the medium of the senses."
I. THE LORD'S VESTURE. Observe that no attempt is made in Scripture to describe God himself. He can only be known through revelations of himself that he is pleased to make. The immaterial can only be known through the material. God must take form, because man can only apprehend the formal. Moses could only see the "back parts," the afterglow, when the sun had passed down beyond the edge. Eiders only saw a "paved work of sapphire." Isaiah only saw an incense-veiled throne. We can see God's garments, and argue from them what he must be who is clothed with such a vesture. What a glorious thing is light, sun rays, sunshine! Mysteriously pure; transcendently fine; surpassingly beautiful! It is the robe of God. Royal robes are supposed to represent, with some fitness, royalty. It is true of God that no conceivable robe can be worthy to represent him; it can do no more than suggest him. A young woman gained her sight at the age of twenty-three, by the help of a surgical operation. Looking out upon a sunlit landscape, she exclaimed, "Oh, how beautiful! I never dreamt of anything so beautiful as this." What is he "whose robe is the light"?
II. THE LORD'S TENT. By "the heavens" the psalmist means the firmament, the vast blue dome that spans the earth. No doubt the firmament was then conceived as a solid sheet spread out as are the curtains of a tent. The earth was as a tent floor, and those long lines of light which we see between heaven and earth in times of moisture, which do indeed seem to rest in or spring out of the sea, are thought of, by the psalmist, as the poles or pillars of the tent. After unfolding this figure, show that estimates of the wealth and greatness and power of a king are formed from the splendour of his palace and its appointments. Then what must he be whose "canopy is space"?
III. THE LORD'S CHARIOT. It is not the terror of tempest clouds that is in the poet's mind. It is the ever-fascinating sailing of the clouds across the sky, at the impulse of the upper winds. The moving of the vast masses of billowy clouds, ever taking fresh and more fantastic shapes, and now silvered with the midday sun, or tinted with wondrous colouring in the evening light, is a perpetual wonder and joy to all sensitive souls. We judge the status and wealth of our fellow men by their equipages. What, then, must he be who "maketh the clouds his chariot," and, in place of mere horses, is borne away on "the wings of the wind"? So the nature figures bring home to our minds the sublimity of God. These things—the heavens, the light, the clouds, the winds—are the sublimest things that come into the field of human knowledge and observation. They are not God, they are only something God has made; only something God uses; only something that may suggest what cannot be altogether conceived. Impress that rightly reverent, adoring, wondering views of God ought to be encouraged. We all need to have his glory as well as his grace ever kept before us. Professor Agassiz even points out the importance of right impressions of God to the scientific man. "I tell you that my experience in prolonged scientific investigations, convinces me that a belief in God, a God who is behind and within the chaos of vanishing points of human knowledge, adds a wonderful stimulus to the man who attempts to penetrate into the regions of the unknown."—R.T.