Yes, this is the moral of it all, “we have no abiding city.” What then? “But we seek one to come.” And St. Peter, if he talk, it might seem mournfully, of the fading and dying growth from all earth’s sowings, is not really trying to sadden, but rather to cheer us. For he has been telling but just now of incorruptible seed; and he sums up the teaching of the fading grass and its withering glory, with these words of quietness and confidence,
“But the Word of the Lord endureth for ever.”
And this is always the distinction between the Worldling’s or the Sentimentalist’s cry of the vanity of human life and of its glory of hopes and loves and ambitions; and the Inspired declarations of this vanity. In the former it is but a wind which comes with a blight and passes away with a wail. In the latter, some better thing is ever held before us, to which our heart’s yearning tendrils, gently disentangled from their withering support, may safely cling: and if the vanities and emptiness of Time are clearly set before us, we are offered instead the realities and the fulness of Eternity.
“The world passeth away, and the lust thereof”;
yes; but
“He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
I have mused away my afternoon, and the sun is near the hills, and this day is falling beneath the scythe, and will soon lie behind me in the swathe, as I advance upon the yet unmown field or strip of my life. There are in this flowers, and nettles, and thistles, no doubt, and much common undistinguishable grass. Ah, may it, in the end, be found to be, upon the whole, good and useful hay! Yes; but here the life of man outruns the analogy, for the days that are passed are not done with: they remain dried and stored, either to rise and revive their flowers in far more than their pristine beauty; or to be burnt as rubbish and waste. Nothing that God wrought of good or beautiful in us here, but will, fresher and fairer than at first, remain with us hereafter. And there is One for whose sake even the nettles and thistles that mixed with the useful grass and fair flowers, shall have vanished from those hearts that loved Him, and be counted as though they had never been.
Let me lie back for a little while, as the sun sets, and a cool air fans me, to quiet my heart with this happy trust and confidence.
