The Permanent Thing
“He hath set eternity in their heart.”
Eccl. Hi. II (R. V.)
THERE is something in us which is independent of the years. It is eternal — changeless.^ It does not grow; it does not fade; it is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever. We speak much of the changes which the years bring. And truly they bring changes to many things. They change manners, customs, modes of life. The culture of the modern Briton is quite different from the culture of the ancient Jew. If the Judges of old Israel were to awake in modern London, they would find an intellectual world which they would not recognise. But they would also find a world which they zvould recognise. There is a region which the years touch not, which the centuries change not; it is the heart; God has set eternity there. The instincts of the heart are timeless. You enter a modern drawing-room to bid a friend good-bye, and your friend insists on going with you. You deem it a beautiful tribute of love; and so it is. But I can take you back three millenniums to an age, comparatively barbarous, and there I can show you the very same tribute. I can show you in the land of the Judges of Israel one woman bidding another good-bye, and that other refusing to accept her farewell, ‘’ where thou goest I will go, and where thou dwellest I will dwell; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” There has been in all these three millenniums no improvement in love. There are changes in the leaf, changes in the fashion, changes in the theory; but God has set eternity in the heart.
Speak not, my soul, of the things that vanish with the years! There are things that vanish; but there is something which remains; and the thing which remains is the greatest thing. Why rests thine eye ever on the blank places, the vacant places! Why art thou ever joining in the dirge of the hymnist, ‘’ Change and decay in all around I see “! It may be ‘’ in all around;” but it is not “in all within.” The marks of time may be on the leaf; but eternity is in thy heart. Thy heart is neither older nor younger than it was in the primitive days. Thy love is like a rock in the sea of time; the waters have not washed it away. Keep thine eye on the rock, O my soul, for that rock is Christ! Wring not thy hands over the desolating wave; love laughs at the wave! Love is independent of the years; it makes equal fourscore and seventeen. Love can retain its romance in old age. Love can be a primrose amid the withered autumn flowers. Love can sing in the night the joys of morning. Love can plant the spring at the gates of December. Love can put a child in the midst of the temple’s grey sages. Dry the tears thou hast shed over thy fleetingness, for thou hast eternity in thy heart!