Christ, Meditation on Overwhelming – Charles Spurgeon

THE day in which I saw most of creation’s grandeur was spent upon the Wengern Alp; my heart was near her God, and all around was majestic; the dread mountains, like pyramids of ice, the clouds like fleecy wool; I saw the avalanche, and heard the thunder of its fall; I marked the dashing waterfalls leaping into the valley of Lauterbrunnen beneath our feet, but my heart felt that creation was too scant a mirror to image all her God—his face was more terrible than the storm, his robes more pure than the virgin snow, his voice far louder than the thunder, his love far higher than the everlasting hills. I took out my pocket-book and wrote these lines.

You Alps, who lift their heads above the clouds,

And hold familiar converse with the stars,

Are dust, at which the balance trembles not,

Compared with his divine immensity.

The snow-crowned summits fail to set him forth

Who dwells in eternity and bears

Alone the name of High and Lofty One.

Depths unfathomed are too shallow to express

The wisdom and the knowledge of the Lord;

The mirror of the creatures has no space

To bear the image of the Infinite.

‘Tis true the Lord has fairly writ his name,

And set his seal upon creation’s brow;

But as the skillful potter much excels

The vessel which he fashions on the wheel,

E’en so, but in proportion greater far,

Jehovah’s self transcends his noblest works:

Earth’s ponderous wheels would break, her axles snap,

If freighted with the load of Deity:

Space is too narrow for the Eternal’s rest,

And time too short a footstool for his throne.

E’en avalanche and thunder lack a voice

To utter the full volume of his praise.

How then can I declare him? Where are words

With which my glowing tongue may speak his name?

Silent I bow, and humbly I adore.

But in musing upon the person of Jesus Christ, and the plan of salvation, a very different result has been experienced. I have been prostrate under the weight of Deity there revealed, and ready to die amid the splendor there so graciously unveiled to my soul in enrapt communion. No fear which comes of bondage, but that which is born of gratitude and bliss, has bowed me before the mercy-throne with awful wonder at divine goodness.