Rubble and Roseleaves, and Things of That Kind

by Frank Boreham

'I am—what?'

'I am—the Bread of Life!' 'I am—the Light of the World!' 'I am—the Door!' 'I am—the True Vine!' 'I am—the Good Shepherd!' 'I am—the Way, the Truth, and the Life!' 'I am—the Resurrection and the Life!'

And when I come to the end of the Bible, to the last book of all, I find the series supplemented and completed.

'I am—Alpha and Omega!' 'I am—A and Z!' 'I am—the Alphabet!' The symbolism of which I have spoken can rise to no greater height than that. What, I wonder, can such symbolism symbolize? I take these birthday blocks that came to our house to-day and strew the letters on my study floor. So far as any spiritual significance is concerned, they seem as dead as the dry bones in Ezekiel's Valley. And yet—'I am the Alphabet!' 'Come,' I cry, with the prophet of the captivity, 'come from the Four Winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live!' And the prayer has scarcely escaped my lips when lo, all the letters of the alphabet shine with a wondrous lustre and glow with a profound significance.

III

For see, the North Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, and I see at once that they are symbols of the 'Inexhaustibility of Jesus!' 'I am Alpha and Omega!' 'I am the Alphabet!' I have sometimes stood in one of our great public libraries. I have surveyed with astonishment the serried ranks of English literature. I have looked up, and, in tier above tier, gallery above gallery, shelf above shelf, the books climbed to the very roof, while, looking before me and behind me, they stretched as far as I could see. The catalogue containing the bare names of the books ran into several volumes. And yet the whole of this literature consists of these twenty-six letters on the floor arranged and rearranged in kaleidoscopic variety of juxtaposition. Which, I ask myself, is the greater—the literature or the alphabet? And I see at once that the alphabet is the greater because it is so inexhaustible. Literature is in its infancy. We shall produce greater poets than Shakespeare, greater novelists than Dickens, greater philosophers, historians and humorists than any who have yet written. But they will draw upon the alphabet for every letter of every syllable of every word that they write. They may multiply our literature a million-million-fold; yet the alphabet will be as far from exhaustion when the last page is finished as it was before the first writer seized a pen.

'I am—the Alphabet!' He says. He means that He cannot be exhausted.

For the love of God is broader

Than the measure of Man's mind;

And the heart of the Eternal