'Nor things present, nor things to come,' is the Apostle's next class
of powers impotent to disunite us from the love of God. The
rhythmical arrangement of the text deserves to be noticed, as bearing
not only on its music and rhetorical flow, but as affecting its
force. We had first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet; 'death
and life: angels, principalities, and powers.' We have again a pair
of opposites; 'things present, things to come,' again followed by a
triplet, 'height nor depth, nor any other creature.' The effect of
this is to divide the whole into two, and to throw the first and
second classes more closely together, as also the third and fourth.
Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work so fatally on
all human love, are powerless here.
The great revelation of God, on which the whole of Judaism was built,
was that made to Moses of the name 'I Am that I Am.' And parallel to
the verbal revelation was the symbol of the Bush, burning and
unconsumed, which is so often misunderstood. It appears wholly
contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which are ever wont to
express in material form the same truth which accompanies them in
words, that the meaning of that vision should be, as it is frequently
taken as being, the continuance of Israel unharmed by the fiery
furnace of persecution. Not the continuance of Israel, but the
eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of that flaming wonder. The
burning Bush and the Name of the Lord proclaimed the same great truth
of self-derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying Being. And
what better symbol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out,
could be found of that God in whose life there is no tendency to
death, whose work digs no pit of weariness into which it falls, who
gives and is none the poorer, who fears no exhaustion in His
spending, no extinction in His continual shining?
And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is
eternity of love, for God is love. That great stream, the pouring out
of His own very inmost Being, knows no pause, nor does the deep
fountain from which it flows ever sink one hair's-breadth in its pure
basin.
We know of earthly loves which cannot die. They have entered so
deeply into the very fabric of the soul, that like some cloth dyed in
grain, as long as two threads hold together they will retain the
tint. We have to thank God for such instances of love stronger than
death, which make it easier for us to believe in the unchanging
duration of His. But we know, too, of love that can change, and we
know that all love must part. Few of us have reached middle life, who
do not, looking back, see our track strewed with the gaunt skeletons
of dead friendships, and dotted with 'oaks of weeping,' waving green
and mournful over graves, and saddened by footprints striking away
from the line of march, and leaving us the more solitary for their
departure.
How blessed then to know of a love which cannot change or die! The
past, the present, and the future are all the same to Him, to whom 'a
thousand years,' that can corrode so much of earthly love, are in
their power to change 'as one day,' and 'one day,' which can hold so
few of the expressions of our love, may be 'as a thousand years' in
the multitude and richness of the gifts which it can be expanded to
contain. The whole of what He has been to any past, He is to us
to-day. 'The God of Jacob is our refuge.' All these old-world stories
of loving care and guidance may be repeated in our lives.
So we may bring the blessedness of all the past into the present, and
calmly face the misty future, sure that it cannot rob us of His love.
Whatever may drop out of our vainly-clasping hands, it matters not,
if only our hearts are stayed on His love, which neither things
present nor things to come can alter or remove. Looking on all the
flow of ceaseless change, the waste and fading, the alienation and
cooling, the decrepitude and decay of earthly affection, we can lift
up with gladness, heightened by the contrast, the triumphant song of
the ancient Church: 'Give thanks unto the Lord: for He is good:
because His mercy endureth for ever!'