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as the heavens are higher thau the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts, and He " is able to do exceeding abundantly above all we ask or think."
Great God ! I stood beneath the skies one night, "When all Thy stars were out, serene and clear, And tried to think of Thee, and feel Thee near, When, suddenly, a sense of all Thy might, Thy times to come, Thy wonders out of sight, Struck chill on me — my spirit reeled for fear ; Scarce certain of the ground I stand on here, I shrank abased beneath Thy awful height ; When soft as dew, a word of Holy Writ Fell on my troubled mind ; " Thy mercy, Lord, Is greater than the heavens" — then all above, ■ Around, beneath, took comfort from the word ; For 'twas as if the heavens were newly lit With their best, brightest star — the Star of Love.
2. Like the face of the summer sky, the lovingkindness of God is unalterable. The earth which the sky overshadows has seen many mutations. " Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is removed out of its place. The waters wear the stones ; thou washest away the things that grow out of the dust of the earth." Eivers have altered their courses. The sea has shifted its ancient bounds. Forests have sunk in swamps. Empires have risen and fallen. The grass rustles and the lizards bask by the broken columns of cities that pulsed with the interests and sounded with the traffic of busy men. Generation after generation has come and gone, and the place that knew them once knows them no more for ever. Beneath there is nothing but flux, restlessness, change. But the sky has looked down on it all, serene and unvarying, amidst all the overturning and mutations of the countless years. Time writes no wrinkles on its steadfast blue. Orion hangs his glittering sword, and the Pleiades weave their mystic braids, just as they did for Isaac when he went forth to the field to meditate at the eventide ; for Abraham when God took him out from his tent, and bade him look up to heaven with the promise of a seed that should be as the stars of heaven for multitude ; for Adam when the first day faded over him, and the glories of the night revealed themselves?
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amidst the balm and the silences of an unstained Eden. So with the mercy of God. All down the ages His covenant has stood, ordered in all things and sure amidst all changes, free from variableness or any shadow of turning. As the heavens that were formed of old " continue unto this day according to God's ordinance," so does the word that is settled there.
^ Miss R. having told Dr. Duncan that a young man had said at a meeting that " there was not mercy in God from everlasting — there could not be mercy till there was misery," he said, " God is unchangeable ; mercy is an attribute of God. The man is confounding mercy with the exercise of mercy. There could not be the exercise of mercy till there was misery ; but God was always a merciful God. You might as well say that there could not be justice in God till there were creatures towards whom to exercise punitive justice." ^
3. Like the canopy of heaven, the lovingkindness of God is all-embracing. " The noblest scenes of earth," it has been said, " can be seen and known but by few ; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them ; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them. But the sky is for all. Bright as it is, it is not ' too bright or good for human nature's daily food.' It is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exaltation of the heart." No rough hand can sully the clear blue vault above, as it unfolds its splendour and dispenses its blessings for a worldful at once, and that without money or price. Be your dwelling-place on the bleakest and dreariest swamp, without a tree or a hill to diversify its surface, you have still overhead a picture of loveliness and of mystery as often as you choose to look up. Thread the narrowest thoroughfare of a crowded town, and far above the filth and squalor, between the eaves of the tall and tottering tenements that enclose you, there are strips of clear blue sky, reminding you that, whatever be the restlessness, the sorrow, and the vice below, there is nothing above but beauty, purity, and peace. So again with the mercy of our God ; it is exceeding broad. It is the attribute of all attributes that is ever engirdling and over- shadowing us, making its existence known through a thousand channels, in a thousand ways. Mercy is the very sphere in which ' David Brown, Memoir of John Duncan, 422.
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we live and move ; it is .swift as the light of heaven, near to us as its circling breaths. And it is just as free. Eich and poor, high and low, all have alike a share in it. And as it is the gift of God to all, so is it the gift of God to all in all circumstances, throughout every change of their changing lives.