And kings must be wise, and the judges of the earth
must be learned; they must serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice before
him with reverence. They must worship the Son, lest he be angry, and
so they perish from the right way. All the nations of the world,
with their kings and their people, their war, their trade, their
politics, and their arts and sciences, are in his hands as clay in
the hands of the potter, fulfilling his will and not their own, going
his way and not their own. It is he who speaks concerning a nation
or a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it. And
it is he again who speaks concerning a nation or kingdom, to build
and to plant it. For the Lord is king, be the world never so much
moved. He sitteth between the cherubim, though the earth be never so
unquiet.
But while we recollect this--which in these days almost all forget--
that Christ the Lord is the ruler, and he alone; we must recollect
likewise that he is not only a divine, but a human ruler. We must
recollect--oh, blessed thought!--that there is a Man in the midst of
the throne of heaven; that Christ has taken for ever the manhood into
God; and that all judgment is committed to him because he is the Son
of man, who can feel for men, and with men.
Yes, Christ's humanity is no less now than when he wept over
Jerusalem; and therefore we may believe, we must believe, that while
Jesus is very God of very God, yet his sacred heart is touched with a
divine compassion for the follies of men, a divine regret for their
failures, a divine pity for the ruin which they bring so often on
themselves.
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