^ Stand at the mountain's foot and look up at its high head, and remember how it has braved many a storm which hissed itself out of breath over it, and it still remains to-day scarred like a veteran, it is true, but yet proud and firm on the victorious field.
His proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides A shady mantle clothes; his curling brows Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows ; While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat, — The common fate of all that's high and great.
It was not yesterday that it was reared ; it will not fall to-morrow ; but it has seen generation after generation come and go, with all their faith and fear, their love and lust, their weal and woe ; and
128 GOD OF NATURE AND OF GRACE
to-day it looks down upon another race which trusts and trembles, sins and sorrows, loves and laughs, as though they were the first that mountain ever looked upon. Oh ! if it could only speak, it would tell us how the actors constantly change on the stage of Time ; that the play, now tragic, now comic, oftenest common- place, is always the same, and that it has seen it acted over and over again ; and yet it looks on with no tired look. Whenever you see the mountain, you see that which is very old, and that which is very young. The signs of its age are also the symbols of its youth. It transmutes the furrows of its old age into the dimples of childhood's laughter. Perpetual youth is the preroga- tive of the old mountain. It lasts, lives on —
Eternal pyramids, built not with hands,
From linked foundations that deep-hidden lie. Ye rise apart, and each a wonder stands !
Your marble peaks, which pierce the clouds so high, Seem holding up the curtain of tlie sky ;
And there, sublime and solemn, have ye stood, While crumbling Time, o'er-awed, passed reverent- by,
Since Nature's resurrection from the flood, Since earth, new born, again received God's plaudit, " Good ! "
How many races have ye seen descend
Into Time's grave, the lowly with the great ; How many kingdoms seen asunder rend.
How many empires fall, how many centuries end ? ^
(2) The righteousness of God is more permanent than the mountains. — Though the mountains seem as if they did not change, yet they do change. The atmospheric influences which play upon them do alter them, though the alteration may be imperceptible to men who can observe them only for a few brief years. But absolutely without change is the righteousness of God. How is God's righteousness shown ? Most of all in His kindness. And so Isaiah says, " For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed ; but my righteousness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." There is one thing in this universe of change which is absolutely without change, and that is the eternal righteousness: "I the Lord change not; therefore ye, 0 sons of Jacob, are not consumed." Here is a resting-place ' J. A. Davies, Seven f Fords of Love, 168.
PSALM XXXVI. 5, 6 129
for our souls. In this world nothing abides in one stage. We move from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to old age, from old age to the unseen world, but God changes not. We pass into new relationships, from being children to being parents, from having to serve to having to govern, from the active government of manhood to the quiescent stage of old age ; friends drop from our side, old bonds are broken, new bonds are formed ; but in the midst of this sea of change, where the waters are ever in movement, now receding, now ad- vancing, there is a rock which abides — the righteousness of God. There is one point on which the eye can rest. There is one spot on which the foot can be planted. There is one place of anchor- age for the soul — the rightousness of God.
U Geologists tell us that these giants of Bernese mountains are but a third now of their original height, and we know how, to quote Euskin, " The hills, which, as compared with human beings, seem everlasting, are in truth as perishing as they, their veins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart, as the common pulse does ours; the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its appointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a human old age ; and it is but the lapse of the larger years of decay which, in the sight of the Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from the moth and the worm." Yet God and His attributes, and even His relations to man, remain unchanged, and from this treasury Isaiah picks out the two jewels of kindness and peace for our thankful contemplation.^
^ Arthur Clough, whose early death prevented him from becoming the foremost poet of the age, and who passed through many spiritual vicissitudes, felt and expressed this in his noble lines:
It fortifies my soul to know That, though I perish, Truth is so: That, howsoe'er I stray and range, Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. I steadier step when I recall That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.*