The Unchangeable Word
“It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.” — Luke xvi. 17.
The “law” stands here, as in some other places of Scripture, for the whole revealed will of God. The heavens where, after the lapse of many thousand years, the stars are burning as bright as the day they were kindled; and the earth, whose hoar mountains have looked down unchanged on successive generations flowing on to the grave, as the river that washes their feet flows on to the sea, stand here the symbols of perpetuity. And thus, by declaring that heaven and earth shall sooner pass, these lofty hills be sooner levelled with the plain, these stars sooner drop, or that sun be be blotted from the sky, than God’s word, or any part of it, fail of fulfilment — our Lord by the boldest figures and in the strongest manner asserts its perpetuity.
This law or will of God has been revealed to us in two ways —
First, by conscience, which works after the manner so beautifully set forth in the ring that a great magician, according to an eastern talc, presented to his prince. The gift was of inestimable value; not for the diamonds, and rubies, and pearls, that gemmed it, but for a rare and mystic property in the metal. It sat easily enough on the finger in ordinary circumstances; but so soon as its wearer formed a bad thought, designed or committed a bad action, the ring became a monitor. Suddenly contracting, it pressed painfully on his finger, warning him of sin. Such a ring, thank God, is not the peculiar property of kings; all, the poorest of us, those that wear none other, possess and wear this inestimable jewel — for the ring of the fable is just that conscience, which is the voice of God within us; which is his law, engraven by the finger of God, not on Sinai’s granite tables, but on the fleshy tablets of the heart; which, enthroned as a sovereign in every bosom, commends us when we do right, and condemns us when we do wrong. But this conscience, as an expression of the law or will and mind of God, is not now to be implicitly depended on. It is not infallible. What was true to its office in Eden, has been deranged and shattered by the Fall; and now lies, as I have seen a sun-dial in the neglected garden of an old, desolate ruin, thrown from its pedestal, prostrate on the ground, and covered by tall, rank weeds. So far from being since that fatal event an infallible directory of duty, conscience has often lent its sanction to the grossest errors, and prompted to the greatest crimes. Did not Saul of Tarsus, for instance, hale men and women to prison; compel them to blaspheme; and imbrue his hands in saintly blood, while conscience approved the deed — he judging the while that he did God service? What wild and profane imaginations has it accepted as the oracles of God! and, as if fiends had “^aken possession of a God-deserted shrine, have not the foulest crimes as well as the most shocking cruelties, been perpetrated in its name? Read the Book of Martyrs, read the sufferings of our own forefathers; and, under the cowl of a shaven monk, or the trappings of a haughty churchman, you shall see conscience persecuting the saints of God, and dragging even tender women and children to the bloody scaffold or the burning stake. With eyes swimming in tears, or flashing fire, we close the painful record, to apply to Conscience the words addressed to Liberty by the French heroine, when, passing its statue, she rose in the cart that bore her to the guillotine, and throwing up her arms, exclaimed, “0 Liberty, what crimes have been done in thy name!” And what crimes in thine, 0 Conscience! deeds from which even humanity shrinks; against which religion lifts her loudest protest; and which furnish the best explanation of these awful words, “If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
So far as doctrines and duties are concerned, not conscience, but the revealed Word of God, is our one, only sure and safe directory. “Search the Scriptures,’’ says our Lord, “for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me.” “To the law and to the testimony,” says another, “if they speak not according to these, there is no truth in them.” However honest people may be, with whatever halo piety has surrounded them, however burning the zeal that inspires them, though they walk the world in robes of light, speak with the tongues of angels, give their
THE t:nchangeable word. 89
goods to feed the poor, nay, giving their bodies to be burned, die martyrs for their principles, if they speak not according to these, there is no tnith in them. Who does not admire honesty, and zeal, and self-denial? Still, men’s willingness to suffer for their principles proves only their sincerity. It does not prove their soundness. The “law,” therefore, on which my text pronounces this high eulogium, that form of the word of God which, amidst life’s rudest tempests, and death’s swelling waters, proves an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, is the Bible — that revealed Word which holy men of old spake, or wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now let me —
I. Set forth some general observations on this word or law of God.
How many things could I say which should raise it in your esteem, and enhancing its value, win for it a larger share of your time — a closer and more prayerful study! Whitefield said that some made so little use of their Bibles, that you might write the word damnation on the dust that covered them. I do not suspect any of you of so entirely neglecting it, or treating it, as they did in the reign before Josiah’s, when the only copy of the Bible in the whole land was swept with cobwebs into a corner among old lumber of the Temple. No. Thank God, more Bibles are in circulation now than copies of any other book. To illustrate this one, precious volume, more pens have been worn, more researches made, more books written, more days and nights spent, than on all other bocks besides. It might well be so. It is the first of books; beyond all other? the most venerable for its age, and the most valuable for its matter. Apart from its divine authority, there is more glowing eloquence, more noble sentiments, more melting pathos, more beautiful poetry, within its boards than anywhere else. From its pages moralists have borrowed their noblest maxims, and poets their finest thoughts. What can be said of no other, has been well, and justly, and beautifully said of this — it has God for its author, truth without any mixture of error for its matter, and salvation for its end.
The Bible has done more to bless society, to promote brotherhood, commerce, happiness, peace, and liberty, in the world, than any other book, and all other books together. How true the poet’s glowing exclamation — ’
“He is a freeman whom the truth mates free.
And all are slaves besides,”
And if swords are ever to be beaten into ploughshares, and their shackles struck from the limbs of slaves, it is by no other inrtrumentality than this. And if, amid the shouts of yyful and emancipated nations, the form of Liberty is one day to rise on every shore, it shall find no firm pedestal to stand on but the word of God. At once the support and ornament of free countries and evangelical Churches, like the symbol of God’s presence in the desert, that word is light in the form of a pillar.
The wealth of the poor, by blessing them with that contentment which makes poverty rich, it is also tlif shield of wealth — protecting the few that are rich against the many that are poor. Wondrous book! it levels all, and yet leaves variety of ranks; it humbles the lofty, and exalts the lowliest; it condemns the best, and yet saves the worst; it engages the study of angels, and is not above the understanding of a little child; it shews us man raised to the position of a son of God, and the Son of God stooping to the condition of a man. It heals by wounding, and kills to make alive. It is an armory of heavenly weapons, a laboratory of infallible medicines, a mine of exhaustless wealth. Teaching kings how to reigm and subjects how to obey, masters how to rule and domestics how to serve, pastors how to preach and people how to hear, teachers how to instruct and pupils how to learn, husbands how to love their wives and wives how to obey their husbands, it contains rules for men in all jwssible conditions of life. It is a guide-book for every road; a chart for every sea; a medicine for every malady; a balm for every wound; and a comfort for every grief. Divinely adapted to our circumstances, whatever these may be, we can say of this book as David said of the giant’s sword, “Give me that, there is none like it.” Rob us of the Bible, and our sky has lost its sun; and in other, even in the best of other books, we have naught left but the glimmer of twinkling stars. Now, my text crowns all these eulogies; like the keystone of the arch that binds all the parts of the span together, it gives the rest their power and value; for what were all the promises and prospects of this sacred volume unless we knew that they could not fail, and were a.«’ sured by him who is the Truth, as well as the Way and the Life, that it were” easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail?’^
II. My text is true of the Bible as a Book divinely inspired.
I know a castle that, rising in old days from its rocky platform, once looked proudly down on the rolling sea. * Ichabod” stands written on its walls — the glory is departed; and all that now remains of its ancient grandeur is a shattered curtain, and some old grey towers that are nodding to their fall. The rock where it stood so long, defiant of time and man, yielded in the course of ages to a power which, retiring yet returning with every tide, kept up a ceaseless warfare; wearing away its base, and hollowing out its solid substance into sounding caverns. Then some wild, winter night, when ships were sinking, and wives were weeping, and brave men were drowning, the sea came on in the full swing of the storm, and breached its mighty walls — sweeping masonry and rock out into the foaming deep. And now I have seen the waves breaking and the fisherman’s boat sailing over the stones of that old castle’s foundations; while the billows, playing with what they had conquered, rolled them smooth and round amid the sliingle of the sounding beach.
In the Bible our religion stands on a rock — but not like that, a ruin of other days. Still, if our faith is not a ruin, though a majestic one, or if the Church of Christ does not stand in the world, like the decaying and deserted temple of a worn-out superstition, it is not because the word of God has not been doubted, denied, attacked, and vilified. It has often been reviled; but it has never been refuted. Its foundations have been examined by the most searching eyes. In Hume, and Gibbon, and Yoltaire, and La Place, to pass such coarse and vulgar assailants as Tom Paine and Carlisle, with their few living followers, the Bible has had to sustain the assaults of the greatest talent, the sharpest wit, and the acutest intellects. To make it appear a cunningly-devised fable, philosophers have sought arguments amid the mysteries of science, and travellers amid the hoar remains of antiquity; for that purpose, geologists have ransacked the bowels of the earth, and astronomers the stars of heaven; and yet, after sustaining the most cunningly-devised and ably-executed assaults of eighteen hundred years, there it stands; and shall stand, defiant of time, of men, of devils — a glorious illustration of the words of its Founder, “On this rock have I built my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it!”
Since those eighteen hundred years began to run, what revolutions time has wrought! what changes he has seen! The oldest monarchies have been overthrown; the dawn of truth has chased away the darkness of a long night; the maxims of statesmen and the theories of science have shifted like the wind; success has crowned the boldest innovator on all old established systems Jove is gone, but not Jehovah, the Hebrew’s God. On Grecian headlands and Roman hills, the temples of Jupiter stand in mouldering ruin J but temples sacred to Jesus are rising on every shore. Since John wrote in his cell at Patmos, and Paul preached in his own hired house at Rome, the world has been turned upside down; all old things have passed away; all things on earth have changed but one. Rivalling in fixedness, and more than rivalling in brightness, the stars that saw our world born and shall see it die, that rejoiced in its birth and shall be mourners at its burial, the word of our God stands for ever. Time, that weakens all things else, has but strengthened the impregnable position of the believer’s faith, and hope, and confidence. And as, year by year, the tree adds another ring to its circumference, every age has added the testimony of its events to this great truth, “The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord shall enduie for ever.”
III. For practical application of my text, I remark, —
1. It is true of the threatenings of the word that it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.
If there are more blessed there are more awful words in the Bible than in any other book, which in this respect is like the skies that hold at once the most blessed and the most baneful elements — soft dews to bathe the opening rose, and bolts that rend the oak asunder. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For example, — The wicked shall be cast into hell, — Flee from the wrath to come, — Whosoever believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him, — Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish, — Their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched, — and these awful words which I cannot think of Jesus pronouncing over any one he would have saved, and, in a sense, died to save, but with slow reluctance, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. ‘^ What a sentence! What words from him who bent looks of kindness on a weeping Magdalene! Here every word is stunning; crushing; killing. Depart from me — ye cursed — into everlasting fire — prepared for the devil and his angels. They fall like thunder-bolts, but where? I have read how a ship that rode the waters, armed with a broadside of cannon enough to sink any common craft, when in chase of another vessel, pointed her guns so as to send the shot crashing through the other’s rigging, or leaping on the deep before her bows. Her purpose not to sink the flying sail, but wing her; and compelling her to bring to, make her captive. She might have sunk the enemy; but in so thundering she sought to save her, and make a prize of her. And just so does a long-sujffering God with those that madly flee from him. Therefore the Bible threatens and thunders; not otherwise. But why flee? Yain the flight where God pursues; and worse than vain! He is willing to forgive, and what folly, what madness to fly till, divine patience at length exhausted, he ceases to follow! What then, the bolt, at first sent in love and mercy wide of the range, is shot right to the mark. Judgment, long delayed, overtakes us; and we learn, but learn too late, that whether he threatens or promises, as a God of truth, his word shall stand for ever. “Oh, that men were wise, that they would consider this in the day of their visitation I”
“The wicked,” says the Psalmist, “contemn God!’^ and why? “because he saith, he will not require.” Where, they ask, is the promise of his coming? Ah, they forget that it is as true of God’s threatenings as of his promises, that although he delays he does not deny them. A reprieve is not a pardon. It defers the execution; but does not necessarily cancel the sentence. And how many men in business, hard pressed for money, and tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, have known too well that the bill which they had got the money-lender to renew was not thereby paid? that, however often renewed, it has still to be paid? and that the oftener, indeed, it is renewed, with interest added to the capital, the debt but grows the larger, the payment grows the heavier? Just so shall it be with you if you persist in rejecting the Saviour, whom in God’s name I now press on your acceptance. Every day of mercy here will but aggravate the misery of hereafter, and the reckoning, by being long in coming, will be the more terrible when it comes — as that storm roars with the loudest thunder which has been the longest gathering.
Considered, then, in the light of my text, if the offers of the gospel are most winning, how full of warning are its threatenings! Men may play with your fears. I have seen a cunning, but foolish nurse, frighten her little charge into obedience by bugbears
—stories of fleshless spectres and hideous monsters — the creations of her fancy, but the terrible object of its fears, God, however, plays neither with oui- hopes nor with our fears; neither mocks; nor flatters; nor deceives. ^’ He is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.” “Hath he said, and shall he not do it? hath he spoken, and shall it not come to pass?” Believe me, that Paul had never wept, nor had Jesus died for sinners, except that their worm never dieth, and their fire is never quenched — except that, in regard to the thrcatenings as much as to the promises of the Bible, heaven and earth shall sooner pass, than one tittle of the law shall fail.
2. It is true of the promises of the gospel that “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail.”
The traveller in the desert has heard that, far away among its burning sands, a river rolls. He has seen, or read, or heard of those who have sat on its willowy banks, and quenched their thirst, and drank in new life, and bathed their fevered frames in its cool, crystal pools. So, though with bleeding feet, and sinking limbs, and parched throat, and dizzy brain, led on by hope, and already in imagination quenching his fiery thirst, he stoutly fights a battle for life; and at length reaches the brink. Alas! what a sight meets his fixed and stony gaze! He stands petrified. No wave, glittering in the sunbeams, ripples on the shore and invites the poor wretch to drink. The channel is full — but full of dry, white stones. The rains have failed j the river has vanished. It saved others, him it cannot save. Victim of the bitterest disappointment, he lies down to expire; losing life where others found it. Now to such an accident, to hopes at once so fair but false, none are exposed who, rising to the call, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,” seek life in Jesus — salvation in the grace of God. Have I been a wilderness unto thee, saith the Lord? No, the stream of new Covenant mercies, which has its channel in this word, had its type in those waters which, springing to the rod of Moses, gushed from the smitten rock; which the sand never drank, and the sun never dried, as, glistening in his beams, they followed Israel through the dusty desert on to the green borders of the promised land.
“He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” For example — “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters; and he that hath no money, come ye, buy and eat; buy wine and milk without money and without price — Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest — The Spirit and the bride say, Come; and let him that heareth say. Come; and let him that is athirst come, and whosoever will, let him come and take of the waters of life freely — Whosoever cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out — Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and then shalt be save I — Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth — Fear not, for I am with you, be not afraid, for I am thy God — My grace is sufficient for thee — I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” How many thousands on earth, and what a crowned, countless multitude in glory, can set to their seals that these promisee are true! Their light, how steady has it burned in the stormiest, how clear has it shone in life’s darkest, most tempestuous night! Have not the saints of God, by help of these promises, quenched the violence of the fire; and stopped the mouths of lions; and trodden the serpent in the dust; and plucked the crown from the brow of death; and raised by the grave the shout of victory; and — still greater triumph — confronted and conquered a world in arms? Joyful thought! there is not one promise of the gospel but is as good and true as on the day it was made. None of its offers are withdrawn. It is a medicine which does not grow useless by age; a well that cannot be run dry or emptied by use. The bank of heaven, fearing no panic, nor ever suspending payment, stands before the world with open doors; ready to honour its largest bills, and meet your greatest drafts. Crowding every avenue under an alarm of impending judgment, let this congregation, this whole city, every inhabitant of our land, the wide world, with death and hell close at their heels, make for the door of mercy; each man in tones of agony crying. Oh, if there is mercy to spare, be it mine! — I say, God were as happy as he is able to meet the wants of all ,• and make good the promise. Whosoever cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. You cannot come too many; too often; too urgent; too needy; too guilty; and, I will add, you cannot come too soon. Come! Roll all thy guilt on the back, and weep thy sorrows out on the bosom of the Saviour. When I look to the height of his love, lost above the stars of heaye;n; to the depth of his consolation, descending lower than the pit; to the kindness of his heart, fuller than the brimming ocean; to the crown in his hand gemmed with stars; when I see him afflicted in all our afflictions, and, while he leaves pearls to drop from royal crowns, and stars from shaking heavens, gathering his people’s “tears in his bottle,” may not I say with the great apostle, “My God shall supply all your wants out of the fullness of his glory in Jesus Christ?” Cast all your cares — cares for yourself, and for yours — cares for this world and the next, cast them on him. He careth for you!
In a nobler passage, Isaiah tells us, how all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field. And does not every week, each passing day, and fleeting hour, illustrate that solemn truth? Death lays his sharp scythe in among the grass; and to his stride and sweeping arm it falls in long, broad swathes. I have seen the reapers in the harvest-field sit down on the fallen sheaves of corn to wipe the sweat from their sun-browned brows, and, pausing from work, rest awhile; but who ever saw this grim reaper sitting on the tombstones or green hillocks of the grave, to rest himself and repair his strength? Of Death it may be said, as of God, “He sleeps not, neither is weary.” See how he advances on us — every day the nearer, as before an eye that expresses no pity, and an arm that is never weary, and a scythe that never blunts, fall the tallest grass and fairest flowers! “All flesh is grass.” A few yearg more and these sparkling eyes shall be qiienclied in death; a shroud around every form; on every lip the seal of dusty death; and all of us lying beneath the grassy sod, mouldering in the grave — saved, or unsaved — the never-dying soul in heaven or in hell. We shall be gone; but not gone with us, nor with the grass and summer flowers, the word of God. It abideth. Never shall it be said of it, “The place that now knows it shall know it no more.” That word shall endure for ever. Blessed truth! No sach balsam for a wounded heart; no such pillow for an aching head; no such brand for a battle-day; no such staff for manhood’s hand, or crutch for tottering age. And what a sure anchor for the soul amid death’s swelling waves, when storms are roaring on the shores of time, and Avearying to be gone — crying, How long, 0 Lord, how long, we wait the signal to cast loose our moorings, and enter the haven of eternal rest; to learn in crowns and thrones, the smiles of the redeemed and the Well-done and welcome of the Redeemer, that, “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than for one tittle of the law to fail.”