A S Patterson
We are taught that, amidst all changes, Christ “remaineth” – that, in spite of the last convulsion, at the end of the world, He abides “the same” and His “years shall not fail”. How like this is to some other descriptions which illustrate the independence and immutability of God! And how fitted they are to deceive if Christ is not indeed divine! But divine He is – “from everlasting to everlasting . . . God”; “the same yesterday, and today, and for ever”. No more can the wildest storms and convulsions of the universe destroy or alter His essence or character or throne than the fall of a sparrow to the ground can make the firm earth we tread upon to stagger, or a feather floating in the air to shake the sky.
Such is the threefold view of Christ afforded by the passage in Psalm 102 which is quoted here and applied to the Son of God. That view may suggest the truth that Christ is vastly superior to the angels.
Among the many lessons which the quotation is fitted to teach are these:
(1.) How unsatisfactory and inadequate a portion are the things of this world for a being destined to eternity! As, in the meantime, they cannot satisfy the cravings of the soul and supply its necessities, so they are doomed to per-
1An edited extract from Patterson’s remarks on Hebrews 1:10-12 in his A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Patterson (1805-1885) was a Free Church minister in Glasgow.
ish, and man is doomed to lose them long before they themselves shall utterly pass away. A child building on the shore the tiny house which the advancing tide is sure to overthrow speedily – how faint a representation it is of the moral madness of the man who makes perishable things his all!
(2.) How glorious to have a personal interest in the Eternal Son! O happy, happy is he who has that immutable and immortal One for his own immutable and immortal Friend! In life and in death, he may triumphantly exclaim, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him”. Alas that such a portion should be so often rejected and despised! Multitudes make so much of a world from which they must soon depart, and which itself must pass away, that they seek and find no other heritage. And there are some who, recognising the brevity of life and the perishable nature of earthly things, rush, as if in quest of an antidote to agitation or despair, to wild, tumultuous merriment, like sailors hastening, on the eve of shipwreck, to the casks, and going down into the waters amid the fire and fever of drunkenness.