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Updated: May 25, 2025
Each of you, looking forward to the certain ebbing away of creatural power, to the certain changes that will pass upon you, may say, 'I know that I shall have to leave behind me my present youthful strength, my unworn freshness, my buoyancy, my confidence, my wonder, my hope; but I shall carry my Christ; and in Him I shall possess the secret of an immortal youth.
Creatural love is limited, and too often says, 'I have forgiven so often, that I am wearied, and can do it no more. He has, therefore he will. We often come to the end of our long-suffering a good many times short of the four hundred and ninety a day which Christ prescribes. But God never does.
That guiding pillar, which moved before the moving people a cloud to shelter from the scorching heat, a fire to cheer in the blackness of night spread itself above the sanctuary of the wilderness; and 'the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the moving Tabernacle gave place to the fixed Temple, again 'the cloud filled the house of the Lord'; and there dwelling between the cherubim, the types of the whole order of creatural life, and above the mercy-seat, that spoke of pardon, and the ark that held the law, and behind the veil, in the thick darkness of the holy of holies, where no feet trod, save once a year one white-robed priest, in the garb of a penitent, and bearing the blood that made atonement shone the light of the glory of God, the visible majesty of the present Deity.
Eager desires after creatural good are common to both; and, what with the anxiety lest they lose, and the self-satisfaction because they have, and the mouths watering for the world's good, there is no force of will, nor warmth of love, nor clearness of vision, left for better things.
So we have within our reach not only the treasure of creatural affections which bring gladness into life when they come, and darkness over it when they depart; we have not only human love which, if I may so say, is always lifting its finger to its lips in the act of bidding us adieu; but we may possess a love which will abide with us for ever. Men die, Christ lives.
If, set free from creatural delights, our wills reach out towards God, as a plant growing in darkness to the light then we shall wish for nothing contrary to Him, and the wishes which run parallel to His purposes, and embrace Himself as their only good, cannot be vain.
So both images point to the unrest of worldliness, and while the unrest of care is uppermost in the one, the other includes more than simply care, and warns us that all occupation with simply creatural things, all eager seeking after 'what ye shall eat or what ye shall drink' or after more refined forms of earthly good, brings with it the penalty and misery of 'for ever tossing on the tossing wave. Whosoever launches out on to that sea is sure to be buffeted about.
That name of 'Jehovah' proclaims at once His Eternal Being and His covenant relation manifesting Him by its mysterious meaning as He who dwells above time, the tideless sea of absolute unchanging existence, from whom all the stream of creatural life flows forth many-coloured and transient, to whom it all returns, who, Himself unchanging, changeth all things, and declaring Him, by the historical associations connected with it, as having unveiled His purposes in firm words, to which men may trust, and as having entered into that solemn league with Israel which underlay their whole national life.
And the certain transiency of all creatural objects is a good reason for not fastening ourselves to them, lest we should share their fate. 'Gilgal shall go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nought, therefore let us join ourselves to the Eternal Love and we shall abide, as it abides, for ever. The exhortation is next enforced by presenting the consequences of neglecting it.
He who takes the true measure of himself cannot but sorrow over the frightful gulf between what he should and might be and what he is, for he knows that there is more than misfortune or unavoidable creatural weakness at work. The grim reality of sin has to be reckoned in. Personal responsibility and guilt are facts.
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