The Undecaying Power and Grace of God
“Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.” — ISA. lix. i.
>HpHE face of nature never seems to change. The strongest arm grows old and feeble; raven locks turn gray; wrinkles deform the finest face; the once graceful form bends tottering to the grave; and the mind itself not unfrequently seems to partake in the general decay, as if this immortal spirit were to perish with its mortal tenement. But the years which work such change on us roll over our world, like successive waves over a rock, leaving no trace behind. Each returning spring is welcomed with songs; every summer decks our meadows and gardens with the old flowers; and, as if her powers could suffer no decay, in crops of fruit and in fields of golden corn autumn year by year renews the bounties of Nature.
We revisit our birth-place after an absence, say of fifty years; and finding, with the exception of a few in whose wrinkled and withered faces we begin to recognise some features of our old, noisy, rosy, laughing companions, all our friends dead and gone, new faces in the school, a new tenant in every farm, a new peasant in every cottage, a new minister in every pulpit, and a new congregation in the pews, we might almost doubt whether we had been there before. But when we turn to look on nature, we might fancy that we had never left home, and that the last fifty years were nothing but a dream. The sun rises over the same hill, the moonbeams glitter on the same lake, the skies resound with the same songs, moorland and mountain are clad in the same flowery verdure, and the gray rocks look down as of old on the stream, that, as it winds its way, snake-like, through the valley, here brawls over the same stones, and there sweeps into the same swirling pool. And so is it everywhere with nature! The Pharaohs sleep in their stony sepulchres, and Moses in his lone mountain grave, but the Nile rolls on as in the day when the Hebrew mother committed her child to its waters, and to the providence of her God. David’s harp is broken, and his skilful hand is dust, but the snows of Salmon shine as white as when he sang their praises; Kedron runs murmuring through the valley ot Jehoshaphat as on the night our Saviour waded it to enter on his agony in the garden; Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida! the place that once knew them knows them now no more, but the moun tains of Galilee stand around her lake as they presented themselves to Jesus’ eye. There we gaze on the very scenes which were iamiliar to him j we tread the very shores along which he often walked in lone and lofty meditation; we look on the very waters that bore up his blessed feet; and yonder, where a boat battles with the storm, and men are pulling for their lives, we might almost fancy we should see his form rise, and, by a word or wave of his hand, turn that tumbling sea into a scene of calm repose.
Yet, fixed as nature seems to be, on examining the matter more closely, we find there is nothing fixed: and that it is not her prerogative to say, “I change not.” Change not! The snows of winter and the rains of summer are, however slowly, constantly altering the form and features of this great world; and by means of their ten thousand streams are carrying it off to its grave in the depths of ocean Nor is there in Alps or Andes a mountain that pierces the clouds with its snow-crowned head, which, to parody the words of Scripture, time may not thus address, What art thou, O great mountain? before my hand and power thou shalt become a plain. Change not! It is by constant, perpetual change that nature maintains that appearance of sameness which strikes us as so remarkable — just, to use a plain but expressive illustration, as it is by constant revolutions a spinning top keeps itself from falling. The fortunes of a Moses, a Joseph, an Esther, present no vicissitudes so sudden or remarkable as those which may be traced in an atom of matter. Loosed from the rock by the hand of the frost, swept by a mountain stream into the valley, and left by a flood on the bank, it enters into a blade of grass. Emblem of our mortality, the grass withers and dies, and feeding the heather by its decay, our atom next blooms in its purple bell. Cropped by the moor-cock, it is next whirring along the hill-side, when the eagle, stooping from the clouds, strikes down his prey, and our atom now rises in wings which cleave the sky. Death at length lays low this monarch of the air: falling from his cloudy realm, he dies; and, rotting on the soil, feeds the pastures where a lamb crops the flower into which our atom has passed. In time the lamb falls to the knife, and now, becoming the food of man, it enters into the hand that wields a sceptre; or curls in the tresses that lend grace to beauty; or speaks in the tongue that in the senate-house sways the councils of a nation, or from the pulpit invites sinners to the arms of the Saviour, and with proclamation of the mutability both of the heavens and earth, thus addresses the unchangeable Jehovah Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work 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.
On going forth by night, and fixing our attention on the heavenly bodies, we observe that every hour changes their position. The star that at its first ap-
42 The L/ndecay ing Power
pearance shone above our heads is now sinking in the west, while those we saw rise from the bosom of the deep, have climbed to the top of the sky — the whole host of heaven appears to be inarching on, one orb only, the pole star, excepted. Around that they seem to roll, as the pivot on which the whole firmament turns. Bright guide of the mariner on the deep, in summer and winter nights, it alone appears to remain immovable, unchangeable, and unchanged. What it appears to be, God is. Among all beings animate and inanimate, of earth or heaven, there is but one in the universe fixed, immovable, unchangeable. He alone can say, “I am the Lord, I change not;” and there fore, speaking of him, the prophet says, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.”
I. The case of the Jews, to whom these words were first addressed, does not shake our confidence in God’s willingness or power to save.
I admit that the fortunes of that people do not at first sight appear to correspond with this very confident and comforting declaration. For where is Jerusalem1? Where now is she that was once called “the’ joy of the whole earth,” “the perfection of beauty,”” the city of our God V1 Insulting their captives, and persecuting instead of pitying those whom God had smitten, the men of Babylon bade the Hebrews take their harps from the willows, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. It is base to hit a man when he is down; but were I to insult a Jew, the Bible would furnish me with keener sarcasm tllan the Babylonian’s. Jerusalem’s towers and palaces and temple have been devoured by fire; the very foundations of the city were turned up by the Roman’s ploughshare and the site of her holy sanctuary is at this day profaned by a Moslem mosque. She retains no vestige of her glory but some old colossal stones, beside which, like wall-flower clinging to a ruin, some poor Jews may be found weeping — kissing them with the affection that regards her very dust as dear. How taunting, insulting were it simply to repeat in their ears the words of that old, proud, patriotic psalm, Walk about Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following. What other answer theirs, but the touching, broken-hearted cry, Ichabod, the glory is departed! Yet on the day when the Roman legions beset her walls, the Lord’s hand was not shortened, that it could not save; neither his ear heavy, that it could not hear. He heard the din of battle, he heard the roar of fire; and it was not because he could not, that he did not save.
And if we leave the ruins of Jerusalem to seek the Jews, where are they] One of their old prophets, looking along the vista of time, exclaims, A nation scattered and peeled! And into what countries have they not been scattered, and what country has not scattered and peeled them in return1? For eighteen hundred years have they been fugitives and vagabonds; nor have their weary feet ever found a resting place on earth. Strange fate! For this they have to thank their fathers. They drank the water in which Pilate washed his hands — taking the guilt of Christ’s murder on themselves. His blood, they cried, be on us, and on our children; blood this, the only blood, whose stain years never have effaced; nor will, till the time to favour Zion, the set time is come, when God will bring back his banished ones, and make good the promise: “I will bring them again into the land that I gave unto their fathers. Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.” Till then, a church without a temple, a people without a country, a race without a home, a nation meted out and trodden down, they shall be a proverb and a by-word and a perpetual hissing.
Strange fortunes these! yet, far from proving God’s hand to be shortened, they prove the very reverse. With the regularity of a law of nature, one of two fates has befallen all other conquered nations. Like the Indians of America, who have fallen before the white man, as their forests before his axe, they have been extirpated; or the conquered have intermarried with their conquerors to breed a race like ours, in whose veins flows the mingled tide of Roman, Celtic, Saxon, and Scandinavian blood. The fate of the Jews how different and how singular! They have been oppressed, persecuted, trodden under foot; and, like the grass which grows thickest when trodden on, they have thriven under oppression — bearing a charmed life — the true sons of their fathers in the land of Egypt; of whom it was said, the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew.
The Jews are everywhere — inhabiting every country, yet belonging to none; mixed with every people, but combining with none. By the thrones of kings, in the senate-house of nations, in the mart of business, in the ranks of armies, everywhere the same, the Jew preserves his nationality; his faith; his haughty pride; his blood so pure that, whether you encounter him in the streets of London, or Paris, or Rome, or Petersburg, or Pekin, you can tell at once by his features that he is a son of Abraham. They exist among others as no other race ever did — like oil in water; and like oil, too, where their talents and ambition have free play, they usually rise to the top. They are not a holy nation, nor are they zealous of good works; yet they are a peculiar people — a standing moral miracle; their history a mystery. Living, multiplying, flourishing amid circumstances that, by all the common laws of providence, should have been fatal to their existence, they illustrate my text — pioving the unchanging and unchangeable power of God as plainly as Daniel safe among hungry lions, or the bush that burned, and, burning, was not consumed.
II. Consider the truths expressed by these words.
i. God’s power to save is neither lost nor lessened.
Where there is a will there is a way. Applicable as that saying is to many cases where people could do what they pronounce impossible if they would only try, it is absolutely, universally true of none but God. What father and mother would not wish all their children to be saved, and that all should meet, none amissing, before the throne in glory 1 What pastor, worthy of a pulpit, does not wish all his people to be savec[ — every member of his flock gathered at last into the Good Shepherd’s fold? But our power to help, to save, is not boundless. Limited by many circumstances, it often falls far short of our inclinations. So it was with that unhappy man whom the sinking wreck left in the roaring sea — with a child clinging to this arm, and its mother, his wife, to that. With his right hand free to buffet the billows, one he may bear to yon blessed shore, but not both. Encumbered, his strength fast failing, to save both is impossible; and now he must choose which to save. Dreadful alternative! He shakes off the child, and striking for the land, away from its dying cries, he leaves the creature that had clung to him to perish. It was for no such reason that Jesus bore to heaven one only of the thieves crucified by his side. True, but one was taken while the other was left; true, the wind bloweth where it listeth, and so is every one that is born of the Spirit; but that wretched man who perished by the cross, sinking into hell while he saw his fellow go soaring like a lark to heaven, was not lost because Christ’s hand was shortened that it could not save; he was not, like that unhappy child, shaken off, though clinging to the Saviour and crying, Lord, save me, I perish. No, his loss finds its explanation in the key to the perdition of thousands who sit in churches and go to hell, in these sad, solemn, awful words, “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” Those only are excluded from heaven who exclude themselves.
Again, our power to help may not only fall short of our inclination, but, such as it is, may be lessened and impaired by years. What a striking illustration of this have we in David’s history! He began and closed his battles by a personal encounter, a hand-tohand fight, with the giant sons of Anak. But how great a change had the forty years of cares and griefs, of public toils and domestic trouble, that elapsed between these two battles, wrought on him who, lithe of limb, and fleet of foot, and quick of eye, and sure of aim, ran, sling in hand, to meet the boaster; and stopped his boasting, laying his head in the dust. At the last of his conflicts the old courage is there: the fire of youth blazes up from the ashes of age, but the strength is gone; gray locks fall from beneath his helmet; his eye, dim with years, has lost its eagle glance; no bursting away now like a deer-hound from the leash, to meet this other Philistine. They meet; and when sword strikes fire with sword, before the shower of blows that ring from the giant’s arm on his casque, David is borne back; and but that Abishai threw himself before his king, one of Goliath’s race had avenged Goliath’s death, and plucked his greenest laurels from David’s brow. His hand was shortened; and, more wise than he, the men of Israel, as they bore off their aged king and received on their shields the blows aimed at his old, gray head, said, Thou shalt go no more out with us to battle, that thou quench not the light of Israel.
Ah! the time comes when the actor must leave the public stage; when the reins drop from the leader’s grasp; and the orator’s tongue falters; and the workman’s stout arm grows feeble; and the fire of wit is quenched; and the man of genius turns into a drivelling idiot; and men of understanding, without any second birth, pass into a second childhood. But the time shall never come when it can be said of Jesus, his hand is shortened, that it cannot save. No; “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever,” there is nothing he ever did, in saving, blessing, sanctifying, that he cannot do again. This gives undying value to all the offers, invitations, and promises of the gospel. What he has done in other cases he can do in yours, closing wounds deep as Job’s; healing backslidings bad as David’s; receiving penitents vile as she who bathed his feet with tears; and saving sinners near to hell as he who found salvation on the very brink of death. I promise you the same pardon, grace, and mercy as that of which there is any record in the word of God. Christ’s resources are inexhaustible; and here, therefore, one man’s gain is no other man’s loss. People fight for a place in the life-boat, because its accommodation is limited, but Christ has room for all. He is able to save to the uttermost. We cannot be too long or too great sinners to be saved; and my answer to any who, yielding to despair, say, Ah! it is impossible that we can be changed, is this, It is not impossible that you, but it is impossible that he can be changed. He cannot change or lie who said, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out”
2. The Lord’s power to hear and answer prayer is neither lost nor lessened; his ear is not heavy, that it cannot hear.
On one occasion a party of our soldiers hap pened to enter a cottage that stood on ground which had been occupied by an enemy whom they were driving before them at the point of the bayonet An infant’s cries attracted their attention, and they turned to look on a spectacle which, inured as they were to scenes of horror, woke their tenderest pity. A father’s corpse lay stretched across the threshold where he had fallen, bravely fighting to protect
D those within; on the floor, amid a pool of blood, lay the mother, dead; and on her bosom an infant, all unconscious of its loss, wailed and cried as it sought to draw nourishment from her empty breast. Time was when its feeblest cry roused her from deepest slumbers; but there it cried, and there she lay unmoved, — her ear was heavy, that it could not hear. And had not God directed thither the steps of those brave men, and had not they, touched with pity, and gilding with so bright an example of humanity war’s lurid clouds, wrapped up the creature tenderly, and borne it away through the smoke and fire of battle to be the child and care of their regiment, it had perished in a mother’s arms, on a mother’s bosom; — her hand was shortened, that it could not save. So perish none in Christ!
The saints of God are never in the circumstances of children on whose home death’s darkest shadow lies, as, standing round his bed, they gaze with mingled grief, and fear, and awe, on a father’s pallid face and lifeless form. The cause of their emotion, he lies himself unmoved; their cries pierce other ears, not his j their sorrows move others’ pity, not his; their tears wake others’ sympathy, not his; whatever betide them, now that the arm which won their bread has lost its power, they may starve, crying for food, and their mother has none to give them; — but his ear is heavy, that it cannot hear; his hand is shortened, that it cannot save. Our nearest and dearest earthly friends are but broken cisterns at the best. They are running low; day by day lower; and they one day shall be dry; but “the portion of Jacob is not like them.” He hears the cries, the sighs, not the words only, but the wishes of his people; even the unuttered and unutterable sorrows of a broken heart.
This imparts undying value to all those instances of heard, accepted, answered, prayer of which the Bible is so full; answers common and miraculous, to prayers for blessings temporal and spiritual, in all variety of imaginable circumstances — prayer by saints and sinners; prayers offered with life’s last breath and by childhood’s lisping tongue; in royal palaces, and in loathsome dungeons; in a den of lions, and in the depths of ocean; for health in sickness, and for bread in famine; for patience under the sorest trials, and deliverance in the most hopeless circumstances; for pardon of the greatest sins, and mercy to the greatest sinners. Never was the Lord’s hand shortened, that it could not save, nor his ear heavy, that it could not hear. Why, then, should you despond, far less despair? Did he save the thief when his own hands were nailed to the accursed tree? When dying himself, amid the agonies of the cross, with all God’s billows and waves roaring over his own head, did he hear and heed the cry of that poor wretch sinking at his side 1
“‘Tis finish’d — All his groans are past;
His blood, his pain, and toils.”
And now, exalted to the right hand of God, seated on his Father’s throne, with all power in earth and heaven, how confident may we be that he will hear the prayer of the destitute, and save them who are ready to perish! While the shadow of their crowns falls at our feet, the saints — among whom I see Job and Jonah, Moses and David, the man who was a thief, and the woman who was a sinner — bend from their celestial thrones to hold up the arms of prayer. Hear what they say: If we found mercy to pardon and grace to help us, if we washed away our sins in the fountain of Jesus’ blood, if we were brought up from deep pit and miry clay, to sit on thrones and wear blood-bought crowns, why not you 1 Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.
III. This truth is full of comfort and encouragement —
i. To God’s people.
One wonders in reading the early history of the Israelites how, after what they had seen of God’s power, they could ever doubt or distrust it. We think, Had I stood beside Moses on the banks of the Nile, and seen her waters at a wave of his rod change to blood; or, girded for the journey, and listening, had I heard the cry which rose over the first-born at the midnight hour; or had I seen the gates of the sea thrown back and held open, till, walking its floor between two walls of water, I reached the other strand; or had I pitched my tent where the skies dropped not dews, nor rain, nor hoar-frost, but food on the wilderness, and made barren sands more fertile than fields of corn; — recollecting how the waters had been turned into rock, would not I have waited to see the rock turned into water, nor joined the unbelieving crew in their cries to Moses, “Give us water that we may drink. Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst 1” So we judge. But may we not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think 1 for as the bravest troops have sometimes been seized with a panic, or as where an epidemic rages, killing thousands, the stout and healthy who survive may yet suffer some touch of the prevailing malady, even Moses himself on one occasion gave way to despondency, — in reply to God’s promise, I will give them flesh, asking, The people, among whom I am, are six hundred thousand footmen; shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them, to suffice them 1 or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, to suffice them 1
Is the Lord’s hand waxed short 1 was God’s answer to Moses: and it is mine to all the believer’s doubts, and difficulties, and fears. Since you were called, converted, first visited with saving grace, is the Lord’s hand waxed short? No; then let that thought in spire you, as it did David, with dauntless faith. As with a touch of gentle pity Saul looked on the stripling who offered to do battle with the Philistine, he said, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. “Thy servant,” was the bold reply, “kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: and I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God. The Lord that hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Sound logic, as well as sound theology! And if God has graciously delivered you from the curse, shall he not deliver you from the power of sin? if he has justified, shall he not also sanctify you? if he has brought you out of Egypt, shall he not guide your steps to Canaan 1 He did not pluck you from the burning to throw you again into the fire. Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you. Pray, and wait the answer. As Moses said to Israel, with Egypt’s hosts pressing on their rear, and the Red Sea roaring on their front: Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. His hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.
2. This truth is full of hope and encouragement to sinners.
In the annual Reports of hospitals we read of a certain number sent away cured, a certain number remaining under cure, and, to say nothing of the dead, of a number who have been dismissed as incurable — their cases baffling the skill of man and the power of medicine. The Great Physician knows no such class; the gospel brings glad tidings to the chief of sinners. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, says St Paul, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.
People sometimes say of the dying, they were too late in calling the doctor. With the cold sweat stand ing like beads on the brow, the features pinched, the countenance changed, the eye glazed, the death-rattle sounding in the throat, and the last struggle begun, the skill of man is hopeless. He cures disease, not death. Alas! ’tis true; too late, too late! It is never so for Christ. David had one in his flock that he had plucked out of the lion’s very jaws; but Christ has many such — many saved who were as near destruction. Tell me not, then, that you have sinned too much or too long to be saved. Is his hand shortened since the day he saved the dying thief, and set his soul free to go up to heaven, like a bird out of the fowler’s snare? Look what he has done for others, and learn what he can and will do for you. Too great sinners to be saved] Hast them with Peter looked :. Jesus in the face, and, cursing, said, “I know him not?’’ Hast thou with Saul imbrued thy hands in holy martyrs’ blood? Hast thou with the thief joined thy fellows in reviling a dying Lord 1 Hast thou stood on Calvary to shake the head and point the finger and cry, in cruel mockery of him whom the nails fastened, and his own blood glued to the tree, If thou be the Son of God, come down! No 1 Then why should the door be shut against you that opened to these 1 Who gets to heaven will find seated on its thrones, in Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Moses, greater saints than he has been, and in others, perhaps, greater sinners. God has done more marvellous works of power and mercy than saving you. Though he had not, though you were the vilest sinner that ever polluted his beautiful earth with your feet, or profaned his holy sanctuary with your presence, you have only now, and as you are, to throw yourself at the feet of Jesus, crying, Save me, I perish — and you are saved. Then in the words of the poet —
“Out of your last home dark and cold, Thou shalt pass to a city whose streets are gold; From the silence that falls upon sin and pain, To the deathless joys of the angels’ strain; Well shall be ended what ill began, Out of the shadow into the sun.”