THROUGH all the accomplishments of the human there runs the sad minor strain of continual decay. True it is that all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass decays and the winds toy with its fragile fragments. So the glory of man fades and withers, and the tireless winds of time bury it in the debris of other things. Time is busy from dawn till twilight, from twilight till dawn, finding sepulcher for the faded glories of human greatness. Not a State is reared or a king enthroned but adds to this occupation of the great leveler, Time.
The Palace of the Caesars, Rome.
THERE is an enduring substance; there is a name that will not pass away; there is a glory which shall never grow dim nor wither in the blasts of the ages. These are the things upon which God has placed the seal of righteousness, because they partake of the nature of the divine and have in them none of the disintegrating elements of the unregenerate human. Everything that partakes of sin, of selfishness, of the purely human, will be cleansed out of the imperishable eternal as the dross from the gold, and the royal seal stamps it to endure. That process makes a man more precious than the golden wedge of Ophir, for even gold is not imperishable, but a man may be. Humanity in harmony with divinity, in tune with the Infinite, by the irrevocable decree of God, must stand forever.
THAT does not mean the human race en masse; but as individuals. Each separate particle of gold must give up every particle of dross that has been clinging to it, or the product is not pure. The gold which can not be separated from the crushed ore to which it clings, goes with the worthless refuse of the grinding. So it is with man. He who can not be separated from his sin must go down with it in the wreck of Satan's conspiracy against God.
IN mercy to us God is holding before our very eyes to-day evidences of the transitory, perishable nature of the very best that man has to bequeath to his posterity. Children of to-day clamber over the crumbling ruins of the men of yesterday, ruins of the work of the greatest genius of the past, and are bound to read in them the fact that nothing visible has yet withstood the impartial test of time. All that has depended upon the human has gone down into dust at the touch of the alchemist of age. The fragments of Egypt's glory are whirling to-day in the dust-storms of the desert. The remnants of her idol temples totter and tumble in sight of the children of those who reared them. So with Babylon; so with Greece; and so with Rome. The palace of the Caesars is glorious no more. Once its polished sides were glorious to look upon; its marble halls were resplendent with ivory and bronze and gold; the wealth of a universal nation was lavished upon its splendid maintenance; in its polished niches stood vases, tripods, and statues of gold and silver; on each side of the porticus was a large library, one Latin and the other Greek; in one of its spacious halls the Roman senate met from time2to time, and there stood the bronze colossus of Augustus Cæsar himself, fifty feet high; between its marble columns were statues of the fifty Danaids and fifty bridegrooms in marble on marble steeds; here was a temple of Vesta, dedicated when this Cæsar was made pontifex maximus; and this was but one of the mighty and magnificent buildings that crowned the Palatine Hill. Where is it all to-day?—Slumbering in the same dust that binds the hands and the hearts of the men who planned and reared these time-harrowed testaments to human glory. The same Tiber, Nile, Euphrates run by these ruins to the sea, and the same God is waiting still for man to recognize his need of Him if he would have that glory which fadeth not away.
THE Lord has not only taught us this lesson in the crumbling ruins of human glory; He has taught it in His written Word as well. Christ, Himself, tells us, “Without Me ye can do nothing.” “All flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth; but the Word of the Lord abideth forever.” “The fashion of this world passeth away.” Satan offered Christ the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them if He would worship him. Christ knew that any glory outside of God was a glory that could not endure, and He brushed aside the flattering temptation. Would you know the same thing? Then imitate His choice and take the glory that brightens and widens and deepens while the ages roll on. Having made that choice, even tho you should be laid away in death, you have the assurance that you will be “raised in glory,” bearing “the image of the heavenly.” “The God of all grace, who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.” 1 Peter 5:10. That is a glory worthy the most ardent seeking, a glory as enduring as eternity, a glory to which the fleeting, evanescent glories of this world are not worthy to be compared, a glory as free to the peasant as the prince. Share in it—it is your privilege. God is holding out the gift to-day—take it and learn to know the joys of that better world.
