He who finds God, as every one of us may find Him, in Christ, has
found a Good that cannot change, pass, or grow stale. His blessedness
will always last, as long as he keeps fast hold of that which he has,
and lets no man take his crown.
For the Christian's good is the only one that does not intend to grow
old and pall. We can never exhaust God. We need never grow weary of
Him. Possession robs other wealth of its glamour, and other pleasures
of their poignant sweetness. We grow weary of most good things, and
those which we have long had, we generally find get somewhat faded and
stale. Habit is a fatal enemy to enjoyment. But it only adds to the
joy which springs from the possession of God in Christ. Swedenborg
said that the oldest angels look the youngest, and they who have
longest experience of the joy of fellowship with God are they who
enjoy each instance of it most. We can never drink the chalice of His
love to the dregs, and it will be fresh and sparkling as long as we
have lips that can absorb it. He keeps the good wine till the last.
The Christian's good is the only good which cannot be taken away. Loss
and change beggars the millionaire sometimes, and the possibility of
loss shadows all earthly good with pale foreboding. Everything that is
outside the substance of the soul can be withdrawn, but the possession
of God in Christ is so intimate and inward, so interwoven with the
very deepest roots of the Christian's personal being, that it cannot
be taken out from these by any shocks of time or change. There is but
one hand that can end that possession and that is his own. He can
withdraw himself from God, by giving himself over to sin and the
world. He can empty the shrine and compel the indwelling deity to say,
as the legend told was heard in the Temple the night before Roman
soldiers desecrated the Holy of Holies: Let us depart. But besides
himself, 'neither things present, nor things to come, nor height nor
depth, nor any other creature' has power to take away that faithful
God to whom a poor soul clings, and in whom whoso thus clings finds
its unchangeable good.
The Christian's good is the only one from which we cannot be taken. A
grim psalm paints for us the life and end of men 'who trust in the
multitude of their possessions,' and whose 'inward thought is that
they have founded families that will last.' It tells how 'this their
way is folly,' and yet is approved with acclamations by the crowd. It
lets us see the founder of a family, the possessor of broad acres,
going down to the grave, carrying nothing away, stripped of his glory
and with Death for his shepherd, who has driven his flock from
pleasant pastures here into the dreariness of Sheol. But that shepherd
has a double office. Some he separates from all their possessions,
hopes, and joys. Some he, stern though his aspect and harsh though his
guidance, leads up to the green pastures of God, and as the last
messenger of the love of God in Christ, unites the souls that found
God amid the distractions of earth with the God whom they will know
better and possess more fully and blessedly, amid the unending
felicities and progressive blessednesses of Heaven.