“Deep calls unto deep.” Psalm 42:7

A Sermon by C.H. Spurgeon, 1869 

Excerpt:

In the grandeur of nature there are amazing harmonies. When the storm agitates the ocean below, the heavens above hear the tumult, and answer to the clamor; down comes a deluge of sonorous hail or swift-descending rain, attended with peals of thunder, and flashes of flame; the great deep above stretches out its hands to the great deep below, and in voice of thunder their old relationship is recognized; it is almost as if the twin seas remembered how once they lay together in the same cradle of confusion till the decree of the eternal appointed each his bounds and place. 

 

“Deep calls unto deep”—one splendor of Creation holds fellowship with another. Amazed and overwhelmed by the spectacle of some tremendous tempest upon land, you have yet been able to observe how the clouds appear to be emptying themselves each into each, and the successive volleys of heaven’s artillery are answered by rival clamors, the whole chorus of sublimities lifting up their voices!

...where there is one deep, it calls to another, and that especially in the moral and spiritual world every vast and sublime truth has its correspondent, which, like another deep, calls to it responsively.

 

What do you and I know of infinity, omnipresence, and self-existence? We are far beyond our depth when we come to the ocean of divine purposes. We may gaze into the mystery with awe, but to profess to comprehend it is vanity itself.

What an inscrutable mystery, that the infinitely pure and holy God should have determined to allow the intrusion of sin into His universe; that He should allow evil to drag down an angel, and debase him into a devil; that the adoring hosts of heaven should be thinned by sinful desertion from a loyalty so well deserved! How came it that moral evil was allowed to come into this fair world, to spoil Eden, to pollute mankind, to fill the grave...

 

Why was it that after sin had broken out in the universe, it was permitted to remain in existence? Why should the evil one be permitted, like a roaring lion, to roam abroad seeking whom he may devour? When sin infected the race of men, why not destroy them all, and stamp out the disease, as we did lately when the disease came among our cattle? Why not purge it with fire till the last speck of the leprosy was burned out? What did the destruction of a race matter, if sin were destroyed with them? Strange decree that sin should be tolerated; first permitted to enter, and then allowed afterwards to spread its mischievous poison! 

 

What a depth, my brothers and sisters, is revealed in the divine decree of election, that there should be vessels unto honor, fitted for the Master’s use—men and women chosen to show forth the riches of His grace, not for any good thing in them—but because the Lord will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom He will have compassion! And what a still more solemn depth is revealed in those whom He passed by—that there should be vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, men permitted to continue in sin, and to harden themselves against the gospel, and so to illustrate the awful wrath of God throughout eternity! 

 

Brothers and sisters, I cannot contemplate the doctrines connected with predestination, true as they are, without a shudder of reverential awe!

Beloved friends, we need not allow ourselves to be depressed by the mystery of the doctrine of eternal decrees, for even if these decrees were not in existence, there would still remain the other deep, the mystery of fact. It is a fact that sin is in the world; it is a fact that sorrow is here; it is a fact that death is here—and how can you understand these things? 

Shut your eyes to the depth above the firmament if you will, but here is depth nearer home which will still amaze you! Remember that all men are not saved—it is a dreadful truth of God that multitudes tread the broad road, and reach eternal destruction! 

Why is this when God is good and omnipotent? Can you understand providence? Is not providence, as we see it, quite as mysterious as predestination? Are not the mysteries rather in the facts themselves, than in the purposes which ordained them? Are they not, the facts and the decrees, mysteries and equal mysteries?

But what a wonderful harmony there is between the two depths! 

And to this I call your attention. Observe how deep has called unto deep! Whatever God ordained has been accomplished! His will has been done!