_Material Changes._
All things that touch the life of man are marked for change. As knowledge
advances, and men come nearer to the secrets of the world in which they
live, they find how true indeed it is, that man is but "a shadow dwelling
in a world of shadows." Everything is changing--everything but God. The
sun, the astronomers tell us, is burning itself away. "The mountains," say
the geologists, "are not so high as they once were; their lofty summits
are sliding down their sides year by year. The everlasting hills are only
everlasting in a figure; for they, too, are crumbling day by day. The
hardest rocks are softening into soil every season, and we are actually
eating them up in our daily bread."
The hills are shadows, and they flow
From form to form, and nothing stands;
They melt like mists, the solid lands,
Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
The great ocean-currents are changing, and vast regions of the earth's
surface are being changed with them, and Time is writing wrinkles on the
whole world and all that is therein.
But, above it all, I see One standing--my Unchanging God. "Thou, Lord, in
the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are
the works of Thine hands; they shall perish, but Thou remainest; and they
all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them
up, and they shall be changed; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall
not fail."
What a contrast there is between the Worker and His work, between the
Creator and the creature! We see it in a thousand things; but in none is
it so manifest for the wayfaring man, or written so large upon the fading
draperies of time, as in this: "_They shall perish, but Thou
remainest_."
And greater changes yet seem to lie ahead. A universal instinct points to
the time of the restitution of all things. "The whole creation groaneth
and travaileth in pain together, waiting"--and it has been a long, weary
waiting--"for deliverance." But the day of the Lord will come. "As the
lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west, so shall
the coming of the Son of Man be." In his vision John saw, as it were, a
picture of that final change. "Lo," he says, "there was a great
earthquake, and the sun became black as sack-cloth of hair"--it looks as
though the wise men who say it will burn itself out are right!--"and the
moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as
a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every
mountain and island were moved out of their places." What a combination of
astounding catastrophes is here! Earth and stars are to meet in awful
shock! Sun and moon to fail! Cloud and sky to disappear; the elements to
melt with fervent heat--a world on fire!
But, above it all, the Lamb that was slain will take His place upon the
Throne--unmoved, unchanged, amidst the tumult of dissolving worlds. My
God, my Saviour, in Thy unchanging love I put my trust:--
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
'Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.