I.
Material Changes.
All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge advances, and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they live, they find how true indeed it is, that man is but "a shadow dwelling in a world of shadows." Everything is changing--everything but God. The sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. "The mountains," say the geologists, "are not so high as they once were; their lofty summits are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only everlasting in a figure; for they, too, are crumbling day by day. The hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually eating them up in our daily bread."
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
The great ocean-currents are changing, and vast regions of the earth's surface are being changed with them, and Time is writing wrinkles on the whole world and all that is therein.
But, above it all, I see One standing--my Unchanging God. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail."
What a contrast there is between the Worker and His work, between the Creator and the creature! We see it in a thousand things; but in none is it so manifest for the wayfaring man, or written so large upon the fading draperies of time, as in this: "They shall perish, but Thou remainest."
And greater changes yet seem to lie ahead. A universal instinct points to the time of the restitution of all things. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiting"--and it has been a long, weary waiting--"for deliverance." But the day of the Lord will come. "As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." In his vision John saw, as it were, a picture of that final change. "Lo," he says, "there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sack-cloth of hair"--it looks as though the wise men who say it will burn itself out are right!--"and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." What a combination of astounding catastrophes is here! Earth and stars are to meet in awful shock! Sun and moon to fail! Cloud and sky to disappear; the elements to melt with fervent heat--a world on fire!
But, above it all, the Lamb that was slain will take His place upon the Throne--unmoved, unchanged, amidst the tumult of dissolving worlds. My God, my Saviour, in Thy unchanging love I put my trust:--
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.