As in the former clauses the idea of the transcendent greatness of the
power of God was expressed by accumulated synonyms, so here the kindred
thought of its eternity, and consequently of the ceaseless duration of
the resulting glory, is sought to be set forth by a similar aggregation.
The language creaks and labours, as it were, under the weight of the
great conception. Literally rendered, the words are--'to all
generations of the age of the ages'--a remarkable fusing together of two
expressions for unbounded duration, which are scarcely congruous. We can
understand 'to all generations' as expressive of duration as long as
birth and death shall last. We can understand 'the age of the ages' as
pointing to that endless epoch whose moments are 'ages'; but the
blending of the two is but an unconscious acknowledgment that the speech
of earth, saturated, as it is, with the colouring of time, breaks down
in the attempt to express the thought of eternity. Undoubtedly that
solemn conception is the one intended by this strange phrase.
The work is to go on for ever and ever, and with it the praise. As the
ages which are the beats of the pendulum of eternity come and go, more
and more of God's power will flow out to us, and more and more of God's
glory will be manifested in us. It must be so; for God's gift is
infinite, and man's capacity of reception is indefinitely capable of
increase. Therefore eternity will be needful in order that redeemed
souls may absorb all of God which He can give or they can take. The
process has no limits, for there is no bound to be set to the possible
approaches of the human spirit to the divine, and none to the exuberant
abundance of the beauty and glory which God will give to His child.
Therefore we shall live for ever: and for ever show forth His praise and
blaze out like the sun with the irradiation of His glory. We cannot die
till we have exhausted God. Till we comprehend all His nature in our
thoughts, and reflect all His beauty in our character; till we have
attained all the bliss that we can think, and received all the good that
we can ask; till Hope has nothing before her to reach towards, and God
is left behind: we 'shall not die, but live, and declare the works of
the Lord.'
Let His grace work on you, and yield yourselves to Him, that His fulness
may fill your emptiness. So on earth we shall be delivered from hopes
which mock and wishes that are never fulfilled. So in heaven, after
'ages of ages' of growing glory, we shall have to say, as each new wave
of the shoreless, sunlit sea bears us onward, 'It doth not yet appear
what we shall be.'