He says, describing how these faint-hearted if not faithless friends had run away from him when the pinch of peril came, They all forsook me, but the Lord stood with me; and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.' He looks back to that recent instance of Christ's protecting care and delivering might, and so he changes his tenses, and brings the light of the past to flood the darkness of the present, and to flash into the obscurity of the future, and he says, I was delivered, and the Lord will deliver me, from every evil.'
He has the same collocation of thoughts, as you may remember in another place where, speaking of other kinds of deliverances, he says that the Lord delivered him from so great a death'--that was in the past--and doth deliver'--that is the thrilling consciousness that the same power is in the present as in the past; that to-day is no more prosaic and devoid of God than any yesterday; and then he adds, In whom we trust that He will deliver us.' Such is the true attitude for a Christian man. Experience is not meant only, as is too often its sole effect, to throw light upon the past, but also to flash a cheery beam on the else dim future; just as the eastern sky will sometimes throw a hint of its own glory upon the western heaven. To a Christian, every yesterday is a prophecy of a to-morrow that will be like it, and God's past is a pledge for God's future.
We, if we are truly trusting in Him, may have the prerogative which belongs to His children alone, of being absolutely certain that to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' For there is nothing in the past, nothing in the miracles of former generations, nothing in the great deeds by which God has vindicated His protecting care over His people in the days that are gone, and nothing in the mercies and blessings and deliverances and immunities which we ourselves have received that is not available for to-morrow's consumption. The psalmist said, As we have heard so have we seen, in the City of our God.' The deeds of ancient days were repeated in the prosaic present.
And that is as true about the individual life as it is about the corporate life of the community. All of us, looking back to what God has done for us, may find therein the basis of the surest confidence that all that is but a specimen and pledge of what He will do. Nobody else but a Christian has the right to say, I have had this, that, and the other good; therefore I shall have it.' Rather, alas! a man that has wrenched himself away from God has to say sadly, I have had; therefore the likelihood is that I shall nothave any more.'
Have you ever thought that the belief which we all have, and cannot get rid of, in the uniformity of nature, has no scientific basis? Everybody expects that the sun will rise to-morrow, and for a great many millions of years, perhaps the expectation is right; but there is coming a day when it will not rise. There is a last time1' positively the very last'--for everything in the world, and in the order of nature, and the expectation of permanence by which we guide our lives is, at bottom, absolutely unfounded, and yet there it is, and we have to act upon it. But you can give no rational explanation of it, and it will not always serve. There was once made a calculating machine. You turned a handle, and ground out a succession of Numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, etc., each increasing on the preceding by one. And after that had gone on for a long series the sequence was broken, and there came out a number which did not stand in the series at all. That is how God has made nature; grinding away for millions of years, and everything going in regular sequence; but then there comes a break, and the old order changeth. A day will come which is the last day. The sun will set and not rise again, and the world, and all there is in it, shall cease to be.
And as with nature, so with our little lives, and with the men that we trust to. We have no right to say,' I have been delivered, and therefore shall be delivered,' unless we have the Lord, who is the same yesterday and to-day and for ever at the back of our confidence. For men's resources fail and men's dispositions change. If I have helped a man a hundred times, that is not a reason for my helping him the hundred and first time, I may get tired, or perhaps I have not the wherewithal or circumstances alter. Continuity does not guarantee permanence. You can weary out the most patient patience, and chill the warmest love. And so we have to turn from all the limited and changeful grounds of confidence in ourselves, in others, in the order of things about us, and to acknowledge that we do not know what to-morrow is going to do for us. We have had a great many blessings, but the future may be beggared and bankrupt of them all, unless we can say, like Paul,' the Lord delivered me, and the Lord will deliver me.' For His past is the parent and the prophecy of His present, and He does not let His resources be exhausted or His patience wearied or His love disgusted. Thou hast been with me in six troubles, says Job--art Thou tired of being with me?--in the seventh Thou wilt not forsake me.' Thy past is the revelation of Thine eternal Self, and as Thou hast been so Thou wilt be. Christ, as the Incarnation of Divinity, lives, if I might use such a phrase, in a region that is high above the tenses of our verbs, in one eternal now, far below which, Past, Present, and Future, as we know them, are like the little partitions in our fields, which from the mountain-top melt away into invisibility, and do not divide the far-reaching plain.
Travellers see, in deserted, ancient cities, half-hewn statues, with one part polished and the rest rough, and the block not detached from the native rock. They were meant to be carried by the subjects of some forgotten king to build up some unfinished and never to-be-finished temple or palace. There are no half-finished works in God's workshop; no pictures begun and uncompleted in Christ's studio: and so we can go to Him with the old prayer of the psalmist: The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me. Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever; forsake not the work of Thine own hands.'
Lastly, we have here a great lesson of how--
