SERMON V – William Elbert Munsey
THE MUTABILITY AND PERISHABLENESS OF ALL EARTHLY THINGS, AND THE IMMUTABILITY AND ETERNITY OF GOD.
” Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth : and the heavens are the work of thy hands.
” They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:
” But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.
” The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.” — Psalm 102:25-28.
WHATEVER exists, exists necessarily one of two ways : either from the innate and constitutionally inherent principles of its own nature, or is supported in being by power independent of itself. This is an axiom. Whatever exists from the innate and constitutionally inher- ent principles of its own nature, is self-existent. Whatever is self-existent exists necessarily and eternally, hence, has always been and always will be unchangeably the same. To assume this position with reference to the heavens and the earth contradicts Revelation, our experience, and many of the known laws of nature. The evidences of a dependent existence which they exhibit in the mutations to which they are subject, make such a position untenable and preposterous.
In fact, everything throughout the immensity of being, possessing life or destitute of it, depends for its existence upon the constant application of the conserving power of some cause whose existence is independent of itself. If the existence of the heavens and the earth is a dependent exist- ence, it follows they are not eternal ; if not eternal, there was a period when they were not ; if there was a period when they were not, they had a beginning ; if they had a beginning, they were created, hence the text : “Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth : and the heavens are the work of thy hands.”
I. ” Old” in the text is a relative term. Every historic age has its “good old times.” David, twenty-eight centuries ago, wrote of old times. Homer, before the first Olym- piad, which was seven hundred and seventy-six years before Christ, wrote of ancient days. ” Of old ” has reference to the time of creation. When all things were created, how- ever, the Scriptures do not inform us. The account given by Moses, the most authentic as well as the most ancient, says nothing about the date.
There is no difficulty apparent or real between Geology and the Bible, with reference to the time all things were created ; and such a thing would never have been thought of had it not been for the dogmatical and unwarrantable postulations superinduced upon Revelation by incompetent ex- pounders of it — mankind going upon the reasonable assumption that the professed teachers of Scripture ought certainly to understand what they profess to teach, therefore accepting without personal investigation their postulations as embodying the true sense of Scripture. Mankind so identified these postulations with the teachings of the Bible, that in their minds they constituted a part and parcel of their ideas of Bible doctrine; and when they discovered these postulations were false, they confidently believed that the Bible must be false too. If there is a difficulty in the matter, that difficulty is not between Geology and the Bible, but between Geology and some clerical assumptions having their origin in ignorance of science and sacred philology, and in an effort to accommodate Revelation by convenient interpretations to adventitious circumstances.
The statement of the creation of all things by God was a necessity in Revelation. Without such a statement the Bible would not have been complete, and it would not havo met all the requirements and necessities of man’s nature. Yet the statement when all things were created, though not inconsistent with its character as a revelation, was a super- fluity, and was by no means necessary to accomplish thai- which it was intended to effectuate — the salvation of man kind. Therefore it revealed the fact, and not the date The fact is a Bible truth, the date a matter of scientific inquiry. The Bible was not given to teach men science. It does not therefore anticipate the advancement of mind in science by revelations of such scientific accurateness and completeness as to preclude its acceptance as a revelation by all generations of mankind.
Suppose it had revealed a stationary sun and a revolving world, or that the sun was the centre of the solar system and not the world, the early families would not have received it as a revelation from God. It would have contradicted the appearance of tkings, and men from the very necessity of their nature accept the appearance of things as true, unless a well accredited and thoroughly understood science cor- rects them. A scientific revelation in advance of the intel- ligent appreciation of mind in the scale of ascension and progression, will necessarily be pronounced chimerical and fabulous. Galileo, the inventor of the telescope, believed and taught the astronomical dogma in question, and though now it is well established and a fundamental principle in Astronomy, yet, then, he was arraigned, tried, condemned, and punished as a heretic. It ought not to be otherwise : for if the mind discredits the appearances of things and renounces them as false before it is able to receive a correct philosophy, it would be like a ship torn away from its moorings and without rudder or sail to be drifted upon the sea of incertitude, till finally it is grounded in the quicksand’s of speculation, or stranded a pitiless wreck upon the rock of unreasonable doubt. The mind must have some ultimate upon which to repose, and better a doubtful one than none at all.
The Bible, therefore, did not contradict the popular scientific ideas of the ages in which it was given. And though it is unambiguous and unequivocal on all subjects necessary to be known to accomplish the salvation of man from sin and death, yet by no revelation of this kind did it preclude its acceptance by the advocates of any scientific hypothesis, however monstrous and untrue that hypothesis may have been. Indeed were the Bible otherwise it would not have been adapted as a revelation to all people in their various stages of knowledge, graduating from the shallow ignorance of antiquity to the comparatively profound erudition of the present day. Indeed it would not be adapted to all men now, and probably to none at all. A Book whose teachings with reference to God and salvation are so clearly inter- preted according to their original intent in every age, irre- spective of the mental attainments of the age, must be of Divine origin.
One thing according to science seems certain ; and the Bible does not contradict it, but properly interpreted seems to corroborate it : the earth existed prior to the creation of man. Thrown rough-cast from the hand of its Creator, crude and rugged, it was prepared as the residence of the present creation by numerous agencies working under the authority of God, through the lapse of many — many ages, before God made mammals and made man king of the class and crowned him the masterpiece of His visible terraqueous workmanship. That the earth should have been prepared as the probationary home of the human race by a process so gradual, and in relation to our ideas of the length of time so slow, fully harmonizes with God’s present administration of things.
Agencies, electrical, chemical, mechanical, caloric, vol- canic, atmospheric, and aqueous, are still at work upon the physical structure of the earth, and according to our ideas of speed, with no more rapidity than formerly, yet gradually and slowly preparing it for its final change by fire, when it shall probably emerge into the perfect, in which state only can the will of God with reference to it be realized. The leaven of Christianity is also only slowly and gradually permeating the masses of human society, and only by degrees elevating it from the depths of ignorance and depravity to the supernal heights of intellectual excellency and moral purity. It can work no faster when the object of its restorative and enervative power is fallen so low, and as a moral agent is content with his fall. Both systems of agencies, physical and moral, were formerly more violent in their action. They were adapted in kind and force to the more ponderous labor they were called upon to perform, in the ruder ages of the earth, and the ruder stages of Society.
This mighty globe once trembled upon its axis as subterranean fires ran hissing hot through its bowels, and volcanic power with the noise of bellowing thunder upheaved its continents, ruptured its strata, overturned its mountains, filled up its gorges, and reduced the asperities of its surface. Christianity was introduced, authenticated, and carried on of old by miracles, and extraordinary exhibitions of the Divine presence and power, not necessary now. Rivers and seas were parted, storms were raised or allayed, and even the dead burst their cerements and came forth alive. This was necessary then to break down the defences of superstition and darkness, and upon the strongholds of infr delity rear the ramparts of revealed religion. Such exhibi- tions of power in nature and grace are not necessary now. As earth and man approximate perfection milder agencies and milder actions are sufficient.
But to return more directly to the point primarily designed to be illustrated — the earth was prepared as a place of hu- man residence by a progression and development apparently slow. I have already shown you that such a mode of proce- dure is not an anomaly in the Divine administration. It may be further illustrated by a single reference to Providence : Generations are frequently born and buried during the de- velopment, elimination, and establishment of one principle of Christian civilization. The intelligence of this audience will receive this statement as truth without an eduction of confirmatory instances with which the volume of the past is replete. Indeed, my hearers, everything approaches ma- turity by consecutive steps every one of which requires a cognizable length of time. First the helpless babe, the plas- tic youth, then the vigorous man ; first the blade, the ear, then full corn in the ear ; molecules of rock, minims of water, and particles of light, chemically combining, form first the bud, then the bloom, then the fruit.
God could have created things otherwise; but in the exercise of His own prerogative, He chose simply to give existence in a moment, and to lead to perfection by degrees. To ask why God chose what seems to us so slow a process for Him who is Omnipotent, in the place of the more rapid one, is about as sensible as to ask why God did not make the mountains an inch higher, or upon making them an inch higher why He did not make them an inch lower. Any man who would ask such a question would not be satisfied unless God had made the same mountain of all imaginable heights ever varying with his capricious spirit of senseless inquiry. As long as there are two or more ways of doing the same thing, and doing the thing implies the choice of one of the ways necessarily to the exclusion of all the others, so long such a spirit would always find objections, and render him- self contemptible in the eyes of universal being. Length and shortness of time, rapidity and slowness of motion, are relative terms ; and our ideas of them need not enter into the Divine counsels.
II. But there was a period when there was nothing but God. There was something, and that something was God, and it filled all space. There never was such an inconceiv- able unsubstantiality as Nothing. Yet there was a time when there was no material thing as such — when all space was an absolute vacuum — when with reference to material existence illimitable space was an illimitable inanity, an in- appreciable nihilism, when not a breath of air or ripple of ether waved its subtile banners, and not a particle of matter or minim of water floated in their aerial and ethereal seas — when all was an eternity of darkness, boundless, pathless, infinite, and unilluminated by a solitary star and unrelieved by a single spark. That there was a period when God only existed follows from His eternity, and the non-eternity of all created things.
If it is a reflection upon the benevolence of God that He should have existed in the absence of any other thing, there was a time then when God was not benevolent; for He was compelled to have existed an eternity by Himself before all other existences began to be, unless those existences are co- eternal with Him. If all other existences are co-eternal with Him, then they were not created, and the doctrine of the creation of the heavens and the earth by God as taught in the text is false. The matter is not mended by giving to the origin of these things an incalculable and immemorial antiquity, for if they had an origin at all, that origin cannot be placed so far back in the past as possibly to shorten the eternity preceding it, and during which God was. However great the antiquity given ‘to the origin of anything it cannot render the eternity before it any shorter than to bring down the date to yesterday or to-day. Nothing that is infinite can be added to or subtracted from.
Then after interminable ages had passed on, countless in their eternal flight, God willed the existence of material things and exerted His power to produce them ; and immediately the throne of Night rocked upon its dingy foundations, and the terrified monarch who up to this hour had swayed a universal and unchallenged scepter, was blinded by the excessive glory of worlds, suns and systems flashing into being be- low, above and around him, and took up his long retreat probably never to find a resting-place, but to be eternally chased by similar creations, aggressive, magnificent, and ever multiplying. Such is the cosmogony of the universe, and the text is the official record: ” Thou hast laid the foundations of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands.”
God surveyed the whole. His great eye shone throughout the immensity of being, taking within its Omniscient sweep everything He had made, great and small, animate and inanimate, sentient and insentient, as they commenced, altogether to the music of their attuned relations, their grand march along the circle of their destiny ascending with every circumvolution in its approximation to the perfect — and said, “It is good, and very goody Creation’s work was done. Its things, its agencies, its laws, its forces, its powers, were so adjusted to each other that the whole was the grandest of unities, the unity of Deity excepted, the mightiest of equilibriums, the equilibrium of Deity’s powers excepted. — In fact, in constitutional Deity creation had its commanding Arche- type. Creation’s work was done, and the whole hung in prop less equiponderance in space.
Creation’s unity is complete, its balance perfect. Let the Vater’s level be disturbed by evaporation, and immediately atmospheric and electric currents are exerted to restore the equilibrium, and rills go percolating down rocky ravines, and torrents go thundering down mountain gorges, and creeks go meandering through mossy glades and flowery meadows, their every little eddy spinning coronals of foam around the willow branches which bathe in their laughing ripples, and rivers go rolling through plains and mountains, and plunging down awful cataracts, to seek their ocean balance. Let the beams of a tropical sun falling upon leagues of blistering sand disturb by rarefication the atmos- pheric balance, and howling simoons and whirling hurricanes, whose dusty tails darken heaven, rush like an army of winged fiends to establish the equilibrium.
But disturb the electrical equipoise, and clouds instantly marshal their black squadrons, and bifurcated lightnings flash and gleam and their fiery edges go smiting through the condensing vapor, — pluvial floods pouring from every horrid gash, and deafening thunders hurtle and tear through the shivering air, — every mountain peak bellowing in echo, and the grand old woods nodding and weeping, and swollen torrents go rushing, leaping and screaming down rocky steeps, and ocean maddened with fright spouts her cataracts into the face of the storm and flings her surges mountain high, continents trembling — till the equilibrium is restored. Impede or increase the motion of a solitary sphere, proportioned as it is to the quantity of matter it contains, its distance from its Centre, and the gravity and motion of universal being, and the equilibrium of the universe would be destroyed ; and suns and worlds disrobed and confusedly dashing and colliding with confounded uproar would beat each other to fragments, and the shores of oblivion’s dread sea would be encumbered with the chaotic rubbish.
Let the fiery comet, as it blazes along the circle of its mighty ellipse, its degrees of velocity ever varying in the ratio of its ever-changing distance from the sun, but untimely slack its speed and it would come in collision with other orbs whose tracks it crosses and decussates, and would unbalance and destroy all creation ; or upon reaching its aphelion let it refuse to repeat its circuit, and dash madly on, and the final result would still be the same : the universe would lose its equilibrium, and anarchy overtaking anarchy would strew the fields of space with universal ruin. Creation’s unity is complete, and its balance perfect, and its calculated motion shows Geometry to be the first of studies, and God the first of Geometers.
The earth and heavens spoken of in the text comprehend only this globe and the circumambient atmosphere, but not the whole universe. Let us, therefore, confine ourselves within their limits. Around us and above us is an invisible elastic fluid surrounding the earth to a height variously estimated from forty to one hundred miles, and abounding with the most wonderful and interesting phenomena. In its fields are the birth chambers of the tempest and the caravansaries of the travelling storm. In its aerial pavilions is the home of the lightning, the chariots of the hurricane, the steeds of the wind, the palace of Iris and the pleasure-grounds of her attendant nymphs.
We walk upon the rough surface of a vast globe filled with internal fires, and whose superficial crust, rugged with mountains, indented with valleys, and ornamented with cities, foliage and flowers, is propped upon pillars of slate and foundations of granite. Threading the rocks beneath our feet are veins of gold and silver beyond the miser’s reach. Probably under our very dwellings are vaulted caverns richer in gems than cabalistic story, where the fabulous gnome reared his tiny temples of architectural silver, spangled with jewels and fretted with gold. The earth with its mountains, rocks and seas, its trees, plants and flowers, clothed in the aerial drapery of its spacious atmosphere, replete with imponder- able elements, subtile gases, and floating vapors, is a museum of instructive and attractive wonders.
III. But the text says that the earth and the heavens ” shall perish ” — ” yea, all of them shall wax old like a gar- ment : as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed.” Here we have the relation between God and material things. They are represented as a garment which God wears, and which is liable to grow old and be changed. ” They …. shall wax old like a garment : as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed.” We have already shown you that the earth and heavens do not exist from the innate and constitutionally inherent principles of their own nature, and that therefore they are supported in their being by another power whose abstract existence is so independent of their own that were they not it would be.
Nature, or the universe, in its totality, cannot be identified with God — it is not God ; yet, He is the Primeval and Sub- stratum essence upon which the existence of all material things rests. So essential is this relation God sustains to all material things that take God out of them, and they cease at once to be. This, and not any exertion of Divine power, is all that is necessary to affect the annihilation of the mate- rial universe. The learned world has been exercised for twenty-four centuries in the endeavor to discover some single constituent substance, some primitive element, common to. all material things, and out of which the material universe was originally produced, and in which all creation’s parts would find their ultimate analysis. The inquiry was first made in the sixth century before Christ. It was the prime and controlling question with the philosophers of that philosophic epoch. Some of them said that this primordial and fundamental something was water ; others, that it was air; others, that it was an abstraction they called the Indeterminate; others, abstract Number; others, Nous or mind. Xenophanes said that this primal substance was an immutable, indivisible, and eternal One, which he identified God — here was the beginning of Pantheism; others adopted Xenophanes’ theory but denied its identity with God. The form of the inquiry is now seen in the efforts of modern philosophers to discover the monads, the ultimate atoms of the material universe; and the recent invention of an improved microscope has awakened expectations in that direction.
If material monads are ever discovered, it will establish presumptively the self-existence and eternity of matter, and its consequent co-eternity with God — if indeed it does not end in the coarse materialism of Spinoza, the identification of the universe with God involving the denial of God’s personality : — or worse, that the mind upon the discovery of such monads will fall into the old heathen error, and persuade itself that it has found a sufficient cause for all cognizable existence, and having necessarily to assume the eternity of that cause, be it spirit or matter, will substitute these ultimate atoms for a spiritual First Cause, and rest itself in Atheism. In fact, the inquiry was first instituted by the Grecian philosophers to explain nature upon a basis, ” to the exclusion of the gods ; ” hence, when they discovered what they thought to be the primitive and constituent sub- stance of all material things, they invested that substance with an inherent generative power sufficient to produce the existence of the universe. The atomic philosophy of the ancient Epicureans thought that atoms possessed gravity and motion per se, by which all things were formed without God.
The mind must have an ultimate upon which to repose. It sees matter, naturally inert matter, in motion. It inquires for the cause. It is not sufficient to tell it that it is a law of nature. This it regards as no cause, for law is only a mode of action, and is therefore of itself nothing. It sees a stone when cast up naturally fall to the earth. It is not sufficient to tell it that it is the attraction of gravitation. This may satisfy a school-boy for a time, but a philosophic mind very thoughtfully regards the assignment of the cause as but a restatement of the phenomena in question. It knows that matter of itself possesses no such power. It sees in nature that effect follows cause, and that like causes produce like effects ; and it knows that there is no inherent power in any physical cause to produce any effect, much less an inherent power to produce an effect like itself. It cannot regard the mere fact as the end of all philosophic inquiry, neither can it rest in an eternal succession of causes — it demands a First Cause.
It sees that material things exist, and it demands their origin, and a recognitory basis for their being. It is not worth while for clerical dogmatists, ecclesiastical charlatans, enshrined ignorance, and a bigoted sciolism to interpose, the aspirations of mind will lead mind on, and mind in obey- ing them will but obey God, and it will trample down all oppo- sition, storm the citadel, and discover the secret — it will know the First Cause. And furthermore, it knows that something cannot be built upon nothing, and that if matter does not exist from the innate and constitutionally inherent principles of its own nature it can have no abstract existence and the First Cause is not material. Mechanical skill has never reached the indivisible monad, hence the philosophical axiom that there is no limit to the divisibility of matter. Chemical skill has reached what it denominates elements, because they appear to be simple and uncompounded and lie at the end of its analysis, but it has never discovered an elementary principle which is fundamental to the existence of all things, and which is of itself mechanically indivisible — in other words it has never discovered those elemental monads.
The question ” What is substance ? ” — if the answer is expected to reveal an uncompounded, indiscerptible, and universal something, existing in all material things as the essence of their existence and the basis of their tangibility and form — will never be answered by the discovery of a material element.
he Great First Cause upon whose existence the mind can repose in perfect satisfaction and confidence as having found an ultimate, must be a self-existent and intelligent Spirituality. The text presents God as this First Cause. If naturally inert matter is in motion, it is the God that is in it. If a stone when thrown up falls back to the earth, it is the God that is in nature holding all of its parts together, and preventing the world He has made from destruction by dis- integration. If effect uniformly and universally follows cause, if effect is like its cause, the reason is that God is in the consecution, and is the vital and sustaining and executive Cause which interlocks every link and section in the mighty chain. If material things exist, the text presents God as their origin, as the simple, primal and all-pervading essence from which their being, including their multifarious and mul- tiform phenomena, is reared — and that while God is not the universe, and a rock is not a part of God, yet He is in them and wears them as a ” garment.”
God is the First Cause, absolutely and universally. Trace back science and we arrive at God’s mind. Trace back moral principles and we arrive at God’s character. Trace back existence and we arrive at God’s existence. Such is the doctrine of the text with reference to existence, and con- sequentially with reference to every other thing we have enumerated. Such a revelation of Deity invests Him with commanding and infinite grandeur. In place of atheistically putting God out of nature, or so far back that we cannot see Him, the text brings Him right into our houses, and fills immensity with Him, and writes ” Dei plena sunt omnia ” upon every wave, and wind, and cloud, and rock, and world, and star, and sun in the universe. God is the First Cause of all beings, and His glory the Final Cause, and to be like Him is perfection diademed. God is first, and God is last, and God is all in all, and blessed for evermore. “
They shall perish …. yea all of them shall wax old like a garment ; as a vesture thou shalt change them and they shall be changed.” Another and a prominent truth enunciated in these words is the changeability of all material things. Mutation is characteristic of the world. Its physi- cal structure is continually changing. Rocks are forming and disintegrating ; escarpments are being converted into simple declivities ; valleys are widening and extending ; polyps are laying the foundations of continents, to be elevated when finished by volcanic, power ; rivers are continually shifting their channels ; oceans encroach upon one land and deposit their alluvium upon another. Particles and masses are coalescing and separating. Simples are compounding, and compounds are dissolving, till the world of yesterday is not the world of to-day. Change omnipotent writes its name upon every rock and mountain brow of this vast earth. Change not only affects the earth, but it shivers through all of nature’s kingdoms ; rocks, trees, and races are whirled like lightning through the winged epochs, and even govern- ments and institutions perish under its tread. Our very hopes, honors and home-altars in virtue of their connection with the earth have the contagion and fly before us like phantoms. How often we can truly sing, ” There is nothing true but heaven.”
Time, time, the father of change, high and lifted up upon his rolling throne, with glass and scythe in hand, and the un- folded scroll of human deeds streaming like a pennon from his helmet’s crest, outrides the tempest, and leaves the light- ning’s flash and the sunbeam’s flight glimmering far in his rear. Whither away, fearful spirit ? If away you must, why scatter the hoar frost upon manhood’s locks ? Why cut your rude and ugly channels upon our cheeks ? Why drink up the energies of life and stoop age with infirmities ? Why dash the beauty of youth, and obliterate the tints of health ? Why empty flagons of chilly dew upon our hopes, affections and remembrances ? Why mar our monuments and statu- ary ? Why efface our family records, and gnaw with your iron tooth the epitaphs from our tombstones ? Surely the grave ought to be sacred to your touch. But his goal is the Judgment throne, away he hies to make his report of human errors, and exhibit the thousand stabs, each tongued and cry- ing for vengeance, he has received from human murderers. The track of his chariot wheel is seen in the cracked walls and mossy turrets of castles old, with the aged ivy still cling- ing in its death with withered fibres in the crevices. It is seen in the dismembered fragments of empires and kingdoms drifting down the stream of human history, solemnly sublime in their utter desolation. The inexorable rims of its wheels plow the earth, rip up its bowels of aggregated rock, grind the mountains to dust, and roll in awful grandeur above the stars. Flashing with every revolution from straik and axle is the talismanic word mutation, whose fiery blaze burns and blasts the world. The next sweep may roll us into the Judgment — are you ready!
But these changes will culminate in one fiery epoch which will involve the total destruction ot the present constitution of the earth, the surrounding heavens, and all things related to them, expressed in the text by the word ” perish ” — ” They shall perish.” The instrument which will effect this change is revealed in the Bible to be fire. This element is latent in all nature, or it is a result of friction consequent upon motion. Furthermore it is scientifically demonstrated that the -earth is but a globe of melted matter, enclosed in a crust or cyst, at most but sixty miles thick. Let God but speak, and let His awful breath but blow, and every rose, and wind and wave will kindle into a blaze, and earth’s primordial fires, raging and agitated, will rend the feeble crust, rivers and oceans will fly away, mountain-ranges and continents, grand with art, will fall in with a crashing noise and dissolve into one fused mass ; and the old earth, not annihilated, but its constitution changing, will roll away red and fervid from the Judgment seat — probably afterwards when cooled and puri- fied to be the basis for the uprearing of a more splendid creation.
IV. Amid this scene of material mutability and destruction, God’s eternity and immutability remain, I. His eternity: “They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. . . . and thy years shall have no end.” God is eternal in the ab- solute sense of the term, and to the widest compass and the utmost boundaries of its application. He is eternal with reference to His existence. This includes two ideas, that He is without beginning and without end. He is without beginning. He existed before all things; therefore, there was no existence prior to Him to make Him. And He could not make Himself; for this would imply that He existed be- fore He existed, in order to originate His existence. And being cannot originate without a cause ; therefore, if God is not eternal there is no God. He is without beginning from necessity. He is without end. He exists from the innate and constitutionally inherent principles of His own nature — this is self-existence. If He is self-existent, it could not be otherwise than that He should exist — this is necessary existence. If His existence is necessary it follows that it could not cease to be ; hence God is without end. The several predicates affirmed of God the subject — self-exist- ence, necessary existence, and eternal existence, — form a logica1 chain of three inseverable links, any one of which im- plies both the others. The Psalmist expresses the whole idea in the words: ” From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” Let the mind travel back beyond the flood, beyond the tombs of multitudinous ages, and still beyond — and He is God ” From everlasting.” Then let it turn its flight and rush at once beyond the Judgment, and on over the wreck of future creative fabric, and still on — and He is God “To everlasting.”
He is eternal with reference to space. In every point, however infinitesimal in the limitless and trackless regions of immensity, He is present in all the perfections of His being. Not in a state of division or diffusion, but in the aggregated capabilities and powers of His indiscerptible essence and nature. If a circle is infinite, it is easily perceived that its centre is anywhere and everywhere within the circle, and we have a ubiquitous centre. Likewise, within the infinitude of the Divine existence a ubiquitous central and centralized mind, a God everywhere, yet all of Him at any one given point in space. Every intelligent creature, whether he inhabits hell or heaven, the misty orbs of the nebulae, or this material globe, may truthfully say every moment, ” Thou God, seest me.” Every thrill of their thoughts, every volition of their wills, trembles with awful distinctness in the light of His presence.
His eye kindled to a blaze reveals the erratic track of every wandering atom, and the trodden pathway of every roiling sphere. Universal space is filled with the universal glories of His ubiquitous presence. My hearers, God is here ! He is here in the full measure of all that constitutes Him. He is here in as absolute a sense as if He was no- where else. All His power, all His knowledge, all His wis dom, all His holiness, all His justice, all His mercy, and all His goodness are in this room — totalized and unified— till every inch of air from floor to roof is instinct with God. He is beneath our feet, above our heads, behind us, beside us, and before us, within us and without ; He is in the aisles, He is in the chancel, He is in the pulpit, He is in the galleries — God fills the church ! And His great eye is flashing right in our faces, and shining along every fibre and vein, and kindling in the brain — our souls are naked to His gaze. Hush ! O, hush every thought ! the Awful God is in His Sanctuary — we feel His presence — God is here!
He is eternal with reference to duration. He is abso- lutely present in all the potency and force of His nature and attributes, at every cycle, period, or point, whether present, past, or future, at one and the same time. Therefore, every event, however remote in the future, is present to Him.
2. His Immutability : ” They shall perish, yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same.” God’s existence is uncaused and independent of everything, because it was prior to everything — or, there is no God. He, therefore, has all the elements of existence within and of Himself. If so, His existence is a perfect existence. If His existence is a perfect existence nothing can be added to it or taken from it, and in the absence of one or the other of these processes there can be no change affected in any nature. God is therefore essentially immutable. His essence, His laws, His government, and Christianity assert so much. If God is immutable, why is He represented in the Bible as changing His purpose, as in the case of Nin- eveh for instance ? The change is not in God, but in man. It is not the sun standing still over Gibeon, but the earth ceasing to revolve upon its axis. The creature has simply changed his aspect to God’s government, and become a sub- ject of a different administration of it. God has not changed — He is unchangeable.
V. Upon the immutability and eternity of God the Psalmist in the text relies for the immutability and perpetuity of the church : ” Thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end,” this is his premise, now hear the conclusion : “The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.” The doctrine of the Psalmist is, that an immutable and eternal God having established a church, that church will descend constitutionally the same from His servants to their children, and to their children’s seed, while time endures with man. The great reason of the church’s institution was the salvation of man. And God’s wisdom, holiness, and goodness ; His knowledge of Himself, His system, His law, His government, and the entire future ; His perfect acquaintance with man, man’s fall, man’s con- dition ; all forbid that He should institute a church whose constitutional principles and provisions did not involve all the facts and exigencies of the case, therefore not adapted to the purpose of its original institution to the end of time. From the institution of the church to the Judgment there could arise no possible reason for changing its constitution, and winding up its gracious dispensation, which God did not know from all eternity, and which would not have been true during the entire history of man as a fallen being. The church, therefore came from the hands of God at first as it will remain while time lasts ; and God’s love for man having undergone no diminution, and the necessities of man continuing the same, the church will live till human probation expires.
God’s immutability and eternity stand pledged for the immutability and perpetuity of the church. Originally built upon Christ it has never shifted from its foundation, and never can, or will. From the deepest and wisest reasons, it has been characterized by different dispensations, yet the same Saviour and hope of personal salvation which were presented to Adam were presented to the Patriarchs, to the Jews, to the Gentiles, to us, and will be presented to our children. With the immutability and eternity of God pledged for its immutability and perpetuity, the church is more durable than the solid granite. See that huge granitic boulder heaved by volcanic power from some mountain’s side, lying upon the ocean shore amid the accumulated debris of centuries, exhibiting the abrasions of tides and drifts, worn by winds and driving rains, and scarred and cracked by the heavy tramp of ages; even its indurated structure has not been able to resist the power of change. But the church, uncorroded by the teeth of flying years, unmarked by the fragments of thrones and republics continually drifting by on the roaring current of time, and unbattered by the infringement and concussion of hell’s infernal thunderbolts; lifts its walls and turrets in unscathed and imperishable strength to heaven, as unchangeable and impregnable as the throne of God.
The same banner of lily-white decussated by its red cross, which waved over Adam’s family altar, and under which Abel enlisted, fought, and fell ; and flaunted in sight of the tree of life and its guardian sword of ever-turning and ever- circling flame, and which in the light of God’s favor breaking through the darkness of man’s dispelling night flashed defiance into the very teeth of the serpent, and was the symbol of an inaugurated, organized opposition to hell, which would result in hell’s defeat, and the everlasting consignment of its legions to Erebus, still floats at the head of the church’s columns. It is a banner which never has been lowered — but high and lifted up, unfolded upon the air above every embattled field and scene of contest which has marked the progress of the church, in sunshine and in darkness it has ever streamed in triumph, while the ensigns of human am bition have trailed in the dust- It will never be foldec around its standard till the gates of Paradise are rolled wide open, and man is redeemed and saved.
The church has withstood the revolutions of time, and the mutations of fortune ; the desolating tread of ages, and the dis- integration and downfall of dynasties ; the ravages of famine, and the wasting scourge of the pestilence. It outlived the flood, the confusion of languages, the brickyards of Goshen ; it outlived the temple, outlived the Jews, outlived the astro- logical lore of the Chaldeans, the mythology of Greece and Rome ; it outlived the oppositions, the ecclesiastical and po- litical convulsions of the dark ages. In the very hour of its extremest discouragement when weeping piety thought all was lost and laughing iniquity thought all was gained, the sun of the Reformation shone from its sanctuary and illu- mined the world. It has been attacked by Devil and de- mons, physics and metaphysics, learning and ignorance, genius and talent, stratagem and chicanery, intrigue and diplomacy, irony and ridicule, sarcasm and invective, books and presses, mails and rostrums, sabres and cannons, prisons and inquisitions ; in fact, all that the human mind has been able to invent, human skill execute, and the human wisdom employ, have been arrayed against it ; but irresistible and plenipotent, it has pressed its foes from field to field, and driven its conquering chariot over their fallen armies.
It is advancing and placing itself in sublimer attitudes every day. It wrll extend wider, rise higher, and shine brighter, till deception and error will vanish from the horizon of man’s night, and leave it ablaze with effulgent day. It will extend its triumphs till human pride and human obstinacy shall meekly kneel and kiss its sceptre ; till creeds and theories shall lay their crowns at its feet ; and all the governments shall be swallowed up and lost in an all-absorbing, overshadowing, and universal Theocracy ; till the Hindoo with his Shaster and Veda, the Parsee with Zendavesta, the Buddhist with his Bedagat, the Jewish Rabbin with his Tal- mud, the Mohammedan with his Koran, shall all come trooping up and pile the volumes of their faith in one grand pyre at its threshold — angels will kindle it, and the curling flames wreathing away into heaven will announce to the universe the completion of its victories and the perfection of its glories.
Married to the Lamb, with the moon, emblem of mutation, under her feet, the Church is travelling to her coronation. She is attired like a queen : her robe woven of sunbeams, and twelve lustrous stars shine in her crown. And by and by, while heaven’s orchestras thunder, and antiphonies harmo- nious and grand go pealing from bank to bank of the river of life, and every breath of celestial ether is tremulous with music paeans and praise, she will ascend the hill of God, ap- proach the Father’s throne and present all her children there, born in travail below, receive the Father’s blessing and welcome, and escorted by angels, her jewelled hand resting in the crucified hand of the Son of God and of Mary, will mount the throne by His side and be a queen forever. Glorious Alma Mater ! Beautiful, beautiful and blessed Mother ! She fed us on the milk of the Word when babes, on meat when stronger. Who does not love her? Can we forget her ? No, never, never, never. ” If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” ” Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth : and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure : yea, all of them shall wax old like a gar- ment ; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. The children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be everlasting before thee.’