The cynic never sees the depths; that is reserved for the mystical eye
of the lover. So John says: 'No, no; that is not all. Here is the true
state of affairs: "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but
he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."' The doctrine of the
passing generations and the abiding earth is fronted squarely in my
second text by the not contradictory, but complementary doctrine of
the passing world and the abiding men. I do not suppose that John had
this verse of Ecclesiastes in his mind, for the word 'abide' is one of
his favourite expressions, and is always cropping up. But even though
he had not, we find in his utterance the necessary correction to the
first text. As I have said, and now need not do more than repeat in a
sentence, the antithesis is not so complete as it seems. John's
'world' is not the Preacher's 'earth,' but he means thereby, as we all
know, the aggregate of created things, including men, considered apart
from God, and in so far as it includes voluntary agents set in
opposition to God and the will of God. He means the earth rent away
from God, and turned to be what it was not meant to be, a minister of
evil, and he means men, in so far as they have parted themselves from
God and make up an alien, if not a positively antagonistic company.
Perhaps he was referring, in the words of our text, to the break-up of
the existing order of things which he discerned as impending and
already begun to take effect in consequence of the coming of Jesus
Christ, the shining of the true Light. For you may remember that in a
previous part of the epistle he uses precisely the same expression,
with a significant variation. Here, in our text, he says, 'The world
passeth away'; there he says, 'The darkness has passed and the true
light now shineth.' He sees a process installed and going on, in which
the whole solid-seeming fabric of a godless society is being dissolved
and melted away. And says he, in the midst of all this change there is
one who stands unchanged, the man that does God's will.
But just for a moment we may take the lower point of view, and see
here a flat contradiction of the Preacher. He said, 'Men go, and the
world abides.' 'No,' says John; 'your own psalmists might have taught
you better: "As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be
changed."' The world, the earth, which seems so solid and permanent,
is all the while in perpetual flux, as our later science has taught
us, in a sense of which neither Preacher nor Apostle could dream. For
just as from the beginning forces were at work which out of the
fire-mist shaped sun and planets, so the same forces, continuing in
operation, are tending towards the end of the system which they began;
and a contracting sun and a diminished light and a lowered temperature
and the narrower orbits in which the planets shall revolve, prophesy
that 'the elements shall melt with fervent heat,' and that all things
which have been made must one day cease to be. Nature is the true
Penelope's web, ever being woven and ever being unravelled, and in the
most purely physical and scientific sense the world is passing away.
But then, because you and I belong, in a segment of our being, to that
which thus is passing away, we come under the same laws, and all that
has been born must die. So the generations come, and in their very
coming bear the prophecy of their going. But, on the other hand, there
is an inner nucleus of our being, of which the material is but the
transient envelope and periphery, which holds nought of the material,
but of the spiritual, and that 'abides for ever.'
But let us lift the thought rather into the region of the true
antithesis which John was contemplating, which is not so much the
crumbling away of the material, and the endurance of the spiritual, as
the essential transiency of everything that is antagonism to the will
of God, and the essential eternity of everything which is in
conformity with that will. And so, says he, 'The world is passing, and
the lust thereof.' The desires that grasp it perish with it, or
perhaps, more truly still, the object of the desire perishes, and with
it the possibility of their gratification ceases, but the desire
itself remains. But what of the man whose life has been devoted to the
things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of
being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his
lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books
if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or
dictionaries if he be a mere student. Nothing of his vocations if he
lived for 'the world.' But yet the appetite is abiding. Will that not
be a thirst that cannot be slaked?
'The world is passing and the lust thereof,' and all that is
antagonistic to God, or separated from Him, is essentially as 'a
vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away,'
whereas the man who does the will of God abideth for ever, in that he
is steadfast in the midst of change.
'His hand the good man fastens on the skies,
And lets earth roll, nor heeds its idle whirl.'
He shall 'abide for ever,' in the sense that his work is perpetual. In
one very deep and solemn sense, nothing human ever dies, but in
another all that is not running in the same direction as, and borne
along by the impulse of, the will of God, is destined to be
neutralised and brought to nothing at last. There may be a row of
figures as long as to reach from here to the fixed stars, but if there
is not in front of them the significant digit, which comes from
obedience to the will of God, all is but a string of ciphers, and
their net result is nothing. And he 'abideth for ever,' in the most
blessed and profound sense, in that through his faith, which has
kindled his love, and his love which has set in motion his practical
obedience, he becomes participant of the very eternity of the living
God. 'This is eternal life,' not merely to know, but 'to do the will'
of our Father. Nothing else will last, and nothing else will prosper,
any more than a bit of driftwood can stem Niagara. Unite yourself with
the will of God, and you abide.