The Ground of Immortality
“Art Thou not from everlasting, 0 Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die.” — Hab. i. 12.
Presumptuous words these surely from the creature to the Creator: “Thou art from everlasting, therefore i” shall not die.” What right have I to measure my life with Him f He is from everlasting; I am of yesterday. He has the dew of His youth; my days decline as doth a shadow. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; my life is changed as a vesture every hour. Would it not be more becoming for me to say, “Thou art from everlasting, therefore must die.” Nay, my soul, thou hast not rightly read the ground of thine own hope. The prophet is not seeking to have his own life made equal to God’s; he is seeking to have God’s own life in him. Bethink thee what mean such words as these, “Because I live, ye shall live also;” “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me;” “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
They mean that thy immortality is God’s immortality. Thy hope of vanquishing death is thy possession in thyself of the deathless One. It is because the Everlasting is thy God that His everlastingness is anything to thee. Were He merely outside of thee it would be indeed presumption in thee to measure thy years with Him. But He is not outside of thee. He has breathed into thy nostrils the breath of His own life, and it is by that breath that even now thou livest. It is by .that breath that even now thou art victor over death from moment to moment, from hour to hour, from day to day. It is by that breath that, when flesh and heart faint and fail, thou shalt be victor over death still, shalt find the strength of thy heart and thy portion for ever. Spirit of Christ, Spirit in whose breath 1 live and move and have my being, reveal day by day the power of Thy presence within me. Reveal to me that the power of Thy presence is the power of my resurrection, the certitude of my immortality. Ofttimes I stand aghast before the gates of the great mystery; I wonder what things shall be in the state
*S MOMENTS ON THE MOUNT.
after death. Teach me that the state after death exists already before death, that I need not taste of death until I have seen the kingdom of God. Teach me that my immortality is not to come, that it is here, that it is now. Teach me that the life eternal is not merely the life beyond the grave, but the life on this side the grave. Reveal to me that I am now in eternity, that I am breathing the very air of those that have passed the gates. Let me have more than hope; give me fruition. Let me feel that I am already immortal; that death could no more destroy my life than it could destroy Thine, because mine is Thine. When my strength is weakened in the way, when the shadows of the grave seem to encompass me, help me to remember not so much that there is a life above as that there is a life within. Help me to remember, not that Thou art waiting for me across the valley, but that Thou art waiting with me in the valley; then shall the rod and staff of my comfort be, “Thou art from everlasting, therefore I shall not die.”