Lord, whomsoever Thou shalt send to me, Let that same be
Mine Angel predilect; Veiled or unveiled, benignant or austere, Aloof or near ;
Thine, therefore mine, elect.
So may my soul nurse patience day by day, Watch on and pray
Obedient and at peace; Living a lonely life in hope, in faith; Loving till death,
When life, not love, shall cease.
. . . Lo, thou mine Angel with transfigured face Brimful of grace,
Brimful of love for me ! Did I misdoubt thee all that weary while, Thee with a smile
For me as I for thee ? ^
iii. Time.
" Nor things present, nor things to come."
1. " Nor things present, nor things to come " is the Apostle's next class of powers impotent to disunite us from the love of God. The rhj thmical arrangement of the text deserves to be noticed,
^ Christina G. Eossetti.
ROMANS viii. 38, 39 161
not only as bearing on its music and rhetorical flow, but as affect- ing its force. We have first a pair of opposites, and then a triplet : " death, nor life " ; " angels, nor principalities, nor powers." We have again a pair of opposites: "things present, nor things to come " ; again followed by a triplet : " height, nor depth, nor any other creature." The effect of this is to divide the whole into two, and to throw the first and second classes more closely to- gether, as also the third and fourth. Time and Space, these two mysterious ideas, which work so fatally on all human love, are powerless here.
2. Men believe in the gay dawning of youth, and in the brilliant days when all things are fair, and the longest day is never too long, nor the hardest work too hard, and all things appear in the charm of life in which we began it. But how much disillusion comes, and the grey skies succeed the blue, and hopes do not fulfil themselves, and life is not what it seemed to promise ! Then shall we have to give the venture up at the last, clinging to spar after spar of our wrecked ship, until at last it is altogether water-logged and sinks, and we are like to perish. When will the day come that the love of God also will die out, and we shall be left loveless in this ghastly universe ? That day will never come.
Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours.
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours.
Which is no more than what is false and vain.
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
And last of all, thy greedy self consumed.
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood:
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love, shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of Him, t'whose happy-making sight alone,
ROMANS — II
i62 AN INSEPARABLE LOVE
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall climb, Then, all this Earthy grossuess quit, Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit. Triumphing over Death and Chance, and thee 0 Time.^
•[f The great Kevelation of God, on which the whole of Judaism was built, was that made to Moses of the name " I AM THAT I AM." And parallel to the verbal revelation was that symbol of the Bush, burning and unconsumed, which is so often misunder- stood. It appears wholly contrary to the usage of Scriptural visions, which are ever wont to express in material form the same truth which accompanies them in words, that the meaning of that vision should be, as it is frequently taken as being, the continu- ance of Israel, unharmed by the fiery furnace of persecution. Not the continuance of Israel, but the eternity of Israel's God is the teaching of that flaming wonder. The Burning Bush and the Name of the Lord proclaimed the same great truth of self- derived, self-determined, timeless, undecaying Being. And what better symbol than the bush burning, and yet not burning out, could be found of that God in whose life there is no tendency to death, whose work digs no pit of weariness into which it falls, who gives and is none the poorer, who fears no exhaustion in His spending, no extinction in His continual shining? And this eternity of Being is no mere metaphysical abstraction. It is eternity of love, for God is love. That great stream, the pouring out of His own very inmost Being, knows no pause ; nor does the deep fountain from which it flows ever sink one hair's-breadth in its pure basin.^
iv. Space.
" Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature."
1. While our Eevisers had the courage of their scholarship in dealing with verses 19-21, that courage seems to have failed them in dealing with this 39th verse, where the same Greek word is used, and where therefore it should, by their own rule, be rendered by the same English word. Instead of putting " nor any other creation " into the text, they have banished the word " creation " into the margin, and retained the word " creature " in the text, although every one must admit that between a single creature and a whole creation there is a considerable, even an enormous, difference.