m His deep well, and
flows on for ever, 'the river of God' which 'is full of water.' It is
the assurance that round all the majesty and the mercy which He has
revealed for our adoration and our trust there is the consecration of
permanence, that we might have a rock on which to build and never be
confounded. Is there anywhere in the past an act of His power, a word of
His lip, a revelation of His heart which has been a strength or a joy or
a light to any man? It is valid for me, and is intended for my use. 'He
fainteth not, nor is weary.' The bush burns and is not consumed. 'I will
not alter the thing that has gone out of my lips.' 'By two immutable
things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we have strong
consolation.'

II. The unchanging God as the foundation of our changeful lives.

In the most literal sense our text is true. Because He lives we live
also. He is the same for ever, therefore we are not consumed. The
foundation of our being lies beyond and beneath all the mutable things
from which we are tempted to believe that we draw our lives, and is in
God. The true lesson to be drawn from the mutable phenomena of earth
is--heaven. The many links in the chain must have a staple. Reason
requires that behind all the fleeting shall be the permanent. There must
be a basis which does not partake of change. The lesson from all the
mutable creation is the immutable God.

Since God changes not, the life of our spirits is not at the mercy of
changing events. We look back on a lifetime of changing scenes through
which we have passed, and forward to a similar succession, and this
mutability is sad to many of us, and in some aspects sad to all, so
powerless we are to fix and arrest any of our blessings. Which we shall
keep we know not; we only know that, as certainly as buds and blossoms
of spring drop, and the fervid summer darkens to November fogs and
December frosts, so certainly we shall have to part with much in our
passage through life. But if we let God speak to us, the necessary
changes that come to us will not be harmful but blessed, for the lesson
that the mutability of the mutual is meant to impress upon us is, the
permanency of the divine, and our dependence, not on them, but on Him.
We may look upon all the world of time and chance and think that He who
Himself is unchanging changeth all. The eye of the tempest is a point of
rest. The point in the heavens towards which, according to some
astronomers, the