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'THE LORD IS GOD'

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hast chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name: then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause; and forgive thy people who have sinned against thee, and all their transgressions wherein they have transgressed against thee; and give them compassion before those who carried them captive, that they may have compassion on them for they be thy people, and thine inheritance, which thou broughtest forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the furnace of iron: that thine eyes may be open unto the supplication of thy servant, and unto the supplication of thy people Israel, to hearken unto them in all that they call for unto thee. For thou didst separate them from among all the peoples of the earth, to be thine inheritance, as thou spakest by the hand of Moses thy servant, when thou broughtest our fathers out of Egypt, O Lord God.

And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto God, he arose from before the altar, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to heaven. And he stood, and blessed all the congregation of Israel with a loud voice, saying, Blessed be God, that hath given rest unto his people Israel, according to all that he promised: there hath not failed one word of all his good promise, which he promised by the hand of Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers: let him not leave us, nor forsake us that he may incline our hearts unto him, to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and his statutes, and his judgements, which he commanded our fathers. And let these my words, wherewith I have made supplication before God, be nigh unto the Lord our God day and night, that he maintain the cause of his servant, and the cause of his people Israel, at all times, as the matter shall require: that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else. Let your heart therefore be perfect with the Lord our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day.

And the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice, and he and all the children of Israel dedicated the house of God. And Solomon held the feast of Ingathering at that time, and all Israel with him, a great congregation, from the entering in of Hamath unto the brook of Egypt, before the Lord our God,

seven days. And on the eighth day he sent the people away, and they blessed the king, and went unto their tents joyful and glad of heart for all the goodness that God had done unto David his servant, and to Israel his people.

§ 6. There are a few things I should like to speak about in this noble dedication prayer.

a strange expression.

'O Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee, in heaven above, or on earth beneath.' So the prayer opens. This seems We should say: 'There is no God but thee.' But the Hebrews were surrounded by neighbours who each had their own national gods, and although they came to understand and realize that these other gods were no gods-mere idols and nonentities— so that, as it says in this very prayer, besides the true God 'there is none else,' no other divine power at all, they had not always realized this. Some had only thought that their God was greater than any other god, and so phrases like 'No God like thee,' meant at first what they seem to mean quite simply and naturally. But in our present prayer and to our present writer, 'there is no God like thee,' meant just the same as 'there is no God but thee.' And so towards the end of the prayer it is said, 'That all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, and that there is none else.'

"The Lord is God.' What do these words mean?

Well, here again we have a survival. If you were to take up an English Bible, you would observe that in many places where my extracts have the word 'God,' the English Bible has the words 'the Lord.' In the Song of Moses, and in the hymn which, according to the Levite idealist, David appointed to be sung before the ark of God' by the hand of Asaph and his brethren,' I have kept 'the Lord' unchanged. But everywhere else almost I have substituted 'God,' because I did not wish to use the Lord' till I could find a convenient place in which to explain its origin and meaning. For us, just as for the author of Solomon's prayer, 'the Lord' and 'God' are quite the same. The Lord' is a mere synonym for

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'God.' So in the Greek translation of the Bible we find the words 'Ho Kurios,' which mean 'the Lord.' But the Hebrew word, which we translate the Lord,' does not mean 'the Lord.' The Hebrew word is a proper name. Now a proper name for God seems to us unnecessary, and it is unnecessary for all those who believe that there is only one God. A proper name is only wanted when there are more individuals than one of the same class. If you believe that there are two Gods, you want a name for each, to distinguish one from the other. If we had two suns, each would have its

THE ETERNAL NOW

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name. The Hebrew word which we translate 'the Lord' belongs to a time when all the Hebrews did not believe that their neighbours' gods were mere 'things of nought'-fictions, nonentities, and idols. At that time they had to distinguish their own God from the gods of their neighbours. And as the other false gods had proper names, so must their true God have a proper name too. How and when this name was adopted, and what it means, are not precisely known. But the Hebrews themselves supposed that it was connected with the Hebrew word Hayah, which means 'to be.' The name signified, they believed, the existence of God. He is, in a sense in which no created thing can be said to be at all. He is pure Being. He is what he is: one, eternal, changeless, incomprehensible. He was, he is, he ever will be. You will remember how, in the story of the revelation at the burning bush, Moses says unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, what is his name? what shall I say unto them?' And God replies to Moses and says, 'I AM THAT I AM. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.' The words 'I am that I am' probably mean that the best description or name of God is one which most simply and purely affirms his existence. HE IS; the one supreme reality, the condition of all things, the eternal Now, without beginning and without end.

But after having used the phrase 'I am that I am,' and immediately afterwards the shorter form 'I am,' as his true name, God says unto Moses, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.' (Memorial' is here a mere synonym for name.) Now the Hebrew word, inaccurately translated the Lord,' and here said to be God's name, is not quite the same as I am,' but it is to be also regarded as a form of the verb 'to be.' 'I am' is never used again, but always this other form, of which 'I am' was, I suppose, intended to be the explanation or paraphrase. In the Hebrew language, as you know, the vowels have no letters. Only consonants have letters. The vowel points were not devised and placed under the consonants for centuries after all the Bible had been written and finished. The consonants of the word which we translate the Lord' are these four: YHVH. But in all probability the Hebrew V was pronounced like our W, and so the letters should be YHWH.

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Now when all the Hebrews became not only worshippers of one God, but firm believers in his Aloneness-assured that there is

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none else,' like the author of Solomon's prayer and of a famous chapter in the Retrospect-a name for God presented great difficulties. He could not have, because he could not need, a distinguishing name like the gods of other nations. Yet the name was there. They were therefore convinced that, if name there were, it was wholly different in nature and meaning from all other names in the world. The only meaning they knew of, the simple and solemn meaning, 'I am '-pure Being-was sufficient to mark it off from all other names, whether of gods or men. In that I am' they believed to abide vast and inexhaustible reserves of power and significance. In some mysterious and incomprehensible way the name was supposed to contain within it the nature and essence of the Divine Being. The Jews were inclined the more readily to this belief because to the men of old the saying' what's in a name does not hold good at all. They believed that there was a great deal in a name, for there existed some strange and mysterious connexion between a man's name and his very self. Hence the Jews, partly through reverence and partly through awe (just because their national God had become to them the only God), entirely gave up using or pronouncing the once familiar name of God. It was only pronounced on one day in the year by one person, and that was by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement at the most solemn moments of the sacred ritual. And when the Temple was destroyed, nobody ever said it at all. Instead of uttering it, they said Adonai, which really does mean Lord. They still wrote the four consonants, YHVH, but they said ADONAI. Hence, when the vowel points were added under the consonants, nobody knew what the proper vowels for YHVH were. The punctuators, therefore, arbitrarily put under these consonants the same vowels as they rightly put under Adonai, which word in Hebrew also has four consonants. The vowels of one word were given to another. Now these vowels added to YHVH make the word come out thus YeHoVaH, that is, Yehovah. But as in English, J is customarily used to express the Hebrew Y, Yehovah becomes Jehovah. Hence, in Milton and other poets you often find Jehovah used as a synonym for God. What the real vowels for YHVH should be nobody knows for certain. Learned people, however, think they should be 'a' and 'e,' put thus: YaHVeH, that is Yahveh. And as the Hebrew V was pronounced W, and the accent would fall on the second syllable, the probable pronunciation was Yahweh.

Now we see the meaning of the phrase: "The Lord is God.' It means the God of the Hebrews is emphatically the true and only God there is none else.

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THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD

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We also understand better the constant reference to God's 'name' in the course of the prayer. It occurs some seven or eight times. God's 'name' means little more and little less than God's self. So we could practically substitute for it thou' and 'thy.' Thus, for thy name's sake' means 'for thy sake.' The temple which is built for thy name' means 'built for thee;' called by thy name' means 'associated with or belonging to thee.' 'Confess thy name' means ' acknowledge thee,' to confess thy kingship and Godhead and the justice of the punishment which has befallen us. 'For they shall hear of thy great name' means 'hear and realize that the God of Israel is the only true God.' Lastly, 'My name shall be there' means little more than 'I will show favour to this place.'

Next let us notice the great saying, 'Will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee: how much less this house that I have builded!'. The old idea was that in the temple which was made for him, the god of that temple resided—at all events from time to time. But though the Hebrews kept on with their temple for old forms outlast new ideas and are made to embody them—they outgrew such primitive notions. They knew that God was not a material being, and therefore could not rightly be said to 'dwell' anywhere. Heaven is, indeed, still called his dwelling-place, but it is a mere phrase. Human beings as we are— -made up of body and soulwe are bound sometimes to localize God in order to realize him. As we are here, so we think of him as there, though we all the time believe that he is, in a wonderful sense which we cannot fully understand, both there and here. We speak of him as being in heaven, but with far-seeing eyes and far-hearing ears to see and hear all that goes on upon the earth. Yet these too are metaphors, which there is no harm in using so long as we remember that they do not express the full truth, but are mere 'ways of speaking' suited to our human needs. The highest truth that we can realize about God and his everywhereness is expressed in the words: Will God in very deed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him: how much less this house that I have builded!' It is also expressed in a great psalm, which says: • Whither shall I go from thy spirit?

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there:

If I make my bed in the lower world, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning,

And descend at the uttermost parts of the sea;

Even there shall thy hand lead me,

And thy right hand shall hold me.'

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