EPC Australia

How well is it said of Christians, "Ye who sometimes were afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ." They are not only pardoned, but employed in his service. They are not only reconciled, but admitted into friendship and intimacy. Yea, they are not only friends and favourites, but they are his bride: "I will betroth thee unto me." And observe the permanency of the relation: "I will betroth thee unto me for ever."

"Permanency," says the Poet, "adds bliss to bliss." How is every possession and enjoyment without it impaired in value. Yea, the more important any acquisition be, and the more necessary we feel it to our happiness, the more alive are we to apprehension of danger, the more averse are we to absence, the more painful is separation, the more intolerable is the thought of loss.

Yet to whatever we are attached here, do we not set our "hearts on that which is not?" It is said the Jews, in their nuptial ceremony, always threw a glass upon the ground, to signify that the union then forming was as frail as the emblem was brittle. Without the figure, there is enough, if we are wise, to remind us of the fact; and well does the apostle reason, when he says, "Brethren, the time is short; it remains, therefore, that they who have wives be as though they had none."

We take each other "till death us do part." And the relation is terminated by death — not the death of both, but the death of either. What then is the tenure of the treasure? What is our life? It is even as a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. Has God given you a companion in the days of your vanity? Rejoice; but rejoice with trembling. Perhaps already the wife has been called to give up "the guide of her youth," or the husband, "the desire of his eyes," with whom they once took sweet counsel together, and walked to the house of God in company.

But Christians can never be in a widowed state. They can never lose their defence, their glory, their joy. There is nothing precarious in the transactions of God with his people. "I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever; nothing can be put to it, and nothing can be taken from it."How delightful, in a world of changes to know that He changeth not, and therefore that we shall not be consumed. Every thing seems reeling around me, and sinking beneath my feet, but I have hold of something firmer than the heavens and the earth. It is the word, the oath of eternal Faithfulness and Truth. "For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." "I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me." I have had many a persuasion which has failed me, because, though the confidence was strong, the foundation was weak. But here the full assurance of faith can never do justice to the certainty of the event. "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Morning Exercises For Everyday In The Year
By Rev. William Jay