SERMON XXXIII.  THE UNCHANGEABLE ONE

Psalm cxix. 89-96.  For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.  Thy faithfulness is unto all generations:  thou hast established the earth, and it abideth.  They continue this day according to thine ordinances:  for all are thy servants.  Unless thy law had been my delight, I should then have perished in mine affliction.  I will never forget thy precepts:  for with them thou hast quickened me.  I am thine, save me; for I have sought thy precepts.  The wicked have waited for me to destroy me:  but I will consider thy testimonies.  I have seen an end of all perfection; but thy commandment is exceeding broad.

The Psalmist is in great trouble.  He does not know whom to trust, what to expect next, whom to look to.  Everything seems failing and changing round him.  His psalm was most probably written during the Babylonish captivity, at a time when all the countries and kingdoms of the east were being destroyed by the Chaldean armies.

Then, he says, Be it so.  If everything else changes, God cannot.  If everything else fails, God’s plans cannot.  He can rest on the thought of God; of his goodness, his faithfulness, order, providence.  God is governing the world righteously and orderly.  Whatever disorder there is on earth, there is none in heaven.  God’s word endures for ever there.

Then he looks on the world round him; all is well ordered—­seasons, animals, sun, and stars abide.  They continue this day according to God’s ordinances.  The unchangeableness of nature is a comfort to him; for it is a token of the unchangeablenes of God who made it.

Now, I do beg you to think carefully over this verse; because it is quite against the very common notion that, because the earth was cursed for Adam’s sake, therefore it is cursed now; that because it was said to him, Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, therefore that holds good now.  It is not so, my friends; neither is there, as far as I know, in any part whatsoever of Scripture, any mention of Adam’s curse continuing to our day.  St. John, in the Revelations, certainly says, ‘And there shall be no more curse.’  But if you will read the Revelation, you will find that what he plainly refers to is to the fearful curses, the plagues, the vials of wrath, as he calls them, which were to be poured out on the earth; and then to cease when the New Jerusalem came down from heaven.

St. Paul, again, knows nothing about any such curse upon the earth.  He says that death came into the world by Adam’s sin:  but that must be understood only of man, and the world of man; and for this simple reason, that we know, without the possibility of doubt, that animals died in this world just as they do now, not only thousands, but hundreds of thousands of years before man appeared on earth.

What St. Paul says of the creation, in one of his most glorious passages, is this—­not that it is cursed, but that it groans and travails continually in the pangs of labour, trying to bring forth; trying to bring forth something better than itself; to develop, and rise from good to better, and from that to better still; till all things become perfect in a way which we cannot conceive, but which God has ordained before the foundation of the world.