never
come when he will not be--an instinct that cries for a permanent
foundation. He is not such foundation himself--he feels that. He stands
upon the foundation of the earth: he did not lay it; it did not lay
itself. Those layers of rock were not their own framers. But the
foundation _was_ laid. "Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the
foundation of the earth."

He is under a covering as well as on a foundation. He did not pitch that
canopy, nor fix those lights, nor hang those curtains by whose silent
closing and withdrawing the light is heightened or dimmed. "The heavens
are the work of thy hand." But will these last? Will this earth that I
stand upon last? No; I see on it the marks of age and decay as on
myself. Like me it will perish. And those heavens that are over me,
they shall perish--will all things perish? Will everything that is go
out of being? "Thou remainest." They shall wax old, it is true, but
that is only as if a garment waxed old; "As a vesture shalt thou fold
them up and they shall be changed." All this that the eye can see above,
below, around, is to the great King but as the robe upon the Sovereign to
his person, and dominion, and when he folds up that vesture and lays it
aside he will command another wherewith to show his glory to his
subjects. "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!"

We have here a preacher, a listener, a subject: changeful nature, mortal
man, immutable Godhead.

Changeful nature is a perpetual preacher, evermore proclaiming to us the
twofold lesson, our own mortality and God's immutable glory and power.
"Thy years shall not fail." What strange language applied to the Divine
Being--perfectly natural as applied to us--"years!" Our life is finite,
our life is measured, our life is dealt out to us in parcels. For us to
speak of our "years" is natural, but when we look up to Him that is
unmeasured, infinite, eternal, then this word "years" becomes but the
representative of our small transient life when trying to contrast itself
with his broad and Infinite Being. We are constantly speaking of two
things wherewith we find ourselves related--space and time: and what are
they? We hardly know. We know but something like this: space is a
measured distance in infinity; time a measured duration in