Read Ebook: The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern Sermons Preached at the Opening Services of the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in 1866 by Punshon William Morley

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 104 lines and 40834 words, and 3 pages

THE WESLEYAN METHODIST PULPIT IN MALVERN.

LONDON: JOHN SNOW & CO., IVY LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW; WARREN HALL & CO., CAMDEN ROAD. 1866.

TO RALPH BARNES GRINDROD, OF MALVERN, M.D., LL.D., F.L.S., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., &c., &c., This Volume of Sermons IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED, IN THANKFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE LEARNED DOCTOR'S GREAT GIFT OF HEALING; BUT MORE ESPECIALLY OF HIS LARGE CHARITY, AND HIGH CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.

PREFACE

The Sermons which make up this volume were preached at Malvern, in 1866, at, and immediately after, the opening services of the Wesleyan Chapel there.

This beautiful and commodious building owes its erection to the piety and energy of the Rev. W. M. PUNSHON, who, in the year 1862, proposed by Lectures, and otherwise, to raise a fund for building Wesleyan Chapels in places of summer resort.

These Sermons are published with the consent of the several preachers, but it must be stated that they were preached without any view to publication, and now appear in print, nearly word for word, as they were delivered, extempore, from the pulpit. Some of them, indeed, have never been committed to writing by the authors; for instance, of the beautiful sermon of Mr. ARTHUR, "not a word" was written by him either before or since its delivery.

This will account for the fact that the subjects are not treated with any degree of scientific exactness, as essays might require; but in a manner intended to suggest useful thoughts to serious audiences.

Although myself of the Church of England, I have had many opportunities, during the past thirty-five years, of hearing discourses from Wesleyan ministers, and making personal acquaintance with them; and I believe the following Sermons are a fair specimen of the Wesleyan teaching in this country.

Why should not the Church of England and the great Wesleyan body be united? Circumstances are entirely altered since Wesley, and his coadjutors, were compelled to run away from the Church of England. Now, thank God, the majority of our clergy, like the Wesleyan ministers, are zealous, and energetic, and evangelical men; popular in the style of their addresses, distinguished by the vigour of their pastoral ministrations, and incessant in them; paternal in their care of the poor, of broad and social Christian sympathies, and earnestly pursuing the secular and religious education of the young. Why should not the priests of the Church of England and the ordained Wesleyan ministers be permitted to exchange pulpits as they may think fit? There is little danger that a Wesleyan minister would proclaim unsound doctrine. Such an evil is much more shortly and sharply rectified by Wesleyan discipline, which the Courts of Law uphold, than by any mere legal action to which the Church of England is bound.

May it please God, by His Holy Spirit, to make these Sermons effectual for the spreading of His truth and the quickening of His people.

KNOWLES KING.

"Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ."--1 PETER ii. 5.

There is a manifest reference in the fourth verse to the personage alluded to in Psalm cxviii. 22, 23: "The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes." And this passage is applied by Christ to himself in Matthew xxi. 42: "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." The Apostle therefore places the beginning of any connection with Christianity in coming to Christ, and assures believers that in their union with Him alone consists the fulness of their dignity and privilege. And there is no truth that will more readily be acknowledged, or receive a heartier acquiescence from the heart of a believer. What could we do without Jesus? In our every necessity He is our "refuge and strength," in our perils He compasses us about with songs of deliverance, his life is our perfect example, his death is our perfect atonement. Well might the Apostle interrupt the course of his argument with the grateful apostrophe, "Unto you, therefore, which believe, He is precious;" and exhort them "that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The text presents us with topics of meditation worthy of our prayerful study, as it reveals to us--

"In Christ the tribes of Adam boast, More blessings than their father lost."

Brethren, have you this joy? Does it pleasure you that the building rises? Do your hearts thrill with gladness as you hear of accessions to the Church and the conversion of sinners to God? Do you love the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob? Have a care if you feel not this sympathy, for ye are none of his. If it is within you a living, earnest emotion, give it play. "Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King."

"Vain in themselves their duties were, Their services could never please, Till join'd with thine, and made to share The merits of thy righteousness."

"That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."--HEBREWS ii. 14, 15.

There is a special and ordained connection between the incarnation and the death of our blessed Lord. Other men die in due course after they are born; he was born just that he might die. He came "not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give" his "life a ransom for many." It is therefore evident that the theology which magnifies the incarnation at the expense of the atonement is fundamentally, fatally defective. The brotherhood of Christ with every son of Adam is a blessed truth, but it is by no means the whole truth, nor can it be practically available and influential apart from the offering of his body upon the cross as a sacrifice for sin. This is very clearly and strongly put in the text. The incarnation of the Son of God is proved from the Old Testament, and shown to have had reference to his redeeming death. Many purposes were answered by his becoming partaker of flesh and blood. His influence as a teacher, the power of his spotless example, his identification with the needs and sorrows of humanity, and the deep sympathy resulting therefrom,--these and similar ends were contemplated and fulfilled. But the grand purpose was disclosed and accomplished on the cross, where God made his soul an offering for sin. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

The death of Jesus, then, and the end to be accomplished by it, constitute the central, vital, culminating truth of Christianity. The apostle puts the death of Christ in a striking point of view,--as a work done, rather than a calamity suffered. And it was a double work,--a work of destruction on the one hand, and of deliverance on the other,--of destruction in order to deliverance. That is the conception of his mission embodied in the first promise. The bruising of the serpent's head by the bruised heel of the Saviour, in order to repair the ruin wrought by the tempter, suggests very significantly the truth which is so explicitly announced here. And a similar combination runs through the ancient providential history. The destruction of the old world in order to the salvation of the righteous, and the fulfilment of the promise of redemption; and the destruction of the first-born of Egypt in order to the deliverance of Israel, are instances in point. But the death of Christ upon the cross in order to the emancipation of the slaves of Satan is the most glorious and perfect illustration. Let me ask your attention to the work of Christ's death,

The personality of the devil is necessarily implied in the words of the text. The theory which seeks to divest all that is said about the devil in Scripture of everything like personality, and to refine it away into figurative representation of "the principle of evil," is as unphilosophical as it is unscriptural. How can we conceive of moral evil in the abstract? How can we think of it apart from the depraved will of some intelligent being? Whatever theories may be held respecting the difficult question of the origin of evil, it is surely inconceivable that it should exist independently of some living, conscious, intellectual author. No truer or more philosophical solution can be found than that of the Bible, which attributes it to the devil,--a being originally good, who fell from his first estate, broke his allegiance to the Creator, and so became the leader of a vast and fearful rebellion against Almighty God. The case of man shows us the possibility of a being existing in a holy but mutable state, and lapsing, under certain inducements, into sin. What the inducements were in the instance of the prince of darkness we are not told; and thus the question of the origin of evil seems to be insoluble by us. But the identification of it with the personal defection of Satan is far more intelligible and reasonable than the attempt to treat it as a metaphysical abstraction. All the representations of the Bible on the subject are instinct with the awful personality of the devil. He is our "adversary;" he is "the accuser;" he is "the God of this world;" he is "the prince of the power of the air, that wicked one that now worketh in the hearts of the children of disobedience;" he that hath "blinded the minds of them that believe not;" he "leadeth" sinners "captive at his will." Surely that is a bold and unscrupulous theology which resolves all these clear and strong expressions into the mere ideal impersonation of a principle. O no! Satan is a being of subtle intelligence, with a depraved, unconquerable, malignant will; a dread living power, with whom we have continually to do, who "desireth to have us, that he may sift us as wheat," and with whom, if we wish to get to heaven, we must be prepared to fight at every step of our way.

And he is emphatically the enemy of Jesus, who came to "destroy" him. "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed." It was in pursuit of his designs against the living God that Satan persuaded our first parents to commit sin; it was by lying insinuations against God that he deceived her who was "first in the transgression." Of course, he is the enemy of man. Of course, his design is to inflict ruin and misery on men, and to bring them to his own state and place of torment. But he does this by seducing them into rebellion against the Most High. Hatred of God is the spring of all his conduct, the motive of every enterprise which he undertakes. And Jesus, the Son of God, the vindicator of the divine honour, is necessarily the sworn eternal foe of the devil; and He has come into our world as into the arena of a supreme conflict for the defeat and overthrow of Satan; has assumed the very nature which the foul fiend seduced and degraded, in order that, in that same nature, he might avenge the wrong done to the being and government of God, and put an eternal end to the usurpation and tyranny of his enemy.

We must not understand this as meaning that Satan has direct, independent, and absolute control over death, inflicting it how, and when, and where, and on whom, he will. The later Jewish writers taught the horrible doctrine that the fallen angels have power or authority generally in reference to life and death. But this never was the case. Death was the sentence pronounced by God upon man, and it could only be inflicted by his appointment and concurrence. The power of life and death is necessarily in God's hands, and his only.

But Satan had the power of death, in this sense; namely, that he tempted man to commit the sin which "brought death into the world, and all our woe." He enticed Eve to sin, partly by denying that her offence would be visited with the punishment of death. "Ye shall not surely die," was the lie by which he contradicted and defied the God of truth, and induced the woman "to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." And so, he was "a murderer from the beginning." "God made man to be immortal, an image of his own eternity; nevertheless, through envy of the devil came death into the world." In this sense, then, as the author and introducer of that sin whose "wages" is death, Satan "had the power of death."

"Mortals cry, 'A man is dead!' Angels sing, 'A child is born!'"

"Entered the grave in mortal flesh, And dwelt among the dead,"

that He might put an end to Satan's power in and over death. Some sound and excellent divines are of opinion that, in the interval between his death and resurrection He literally "descended into hell," and there, in personal conflict, grappled with and overthrew the devil. However this may be, it is certain that the bruising of his heel by Satan was the chosen means for his bruising of Satan's head. Our enemy, who brought death into the world, is entirely baffled and defeated, as to the purpose and effect of that calamity, in the case of all who believe in the death of Christ. Their last act of faith gives them "the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Then the God of peace "finally beats down Satan under their feet." Death is "swallowed up of life." What power over death has the devil in such a case? Is it not wholly counteracted? Is not death a wholly different, nay, opposite thing to what he intended, when by tempting and conquering our first parents he brought it into the world? The body of the good man "is buried in peace, and his soul is blessed for evermore." He shall never more, through the long eternity of bliss, be assailed or injured by "him that had the power of death:" nor shall he see his enemy again, unless it be to triumph openly over him, in that day when "death, and hell shall be cast into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone." Many good people are unduly afraid of the devil, and especially they are in dread of his possible power in their last moments. But we may dismiss this fear as altogether needless and unworthy. Christ has not only rendered our great enemy utterly powerless for evil, but has, by his own most precious death, compelled even Satan into the service of the sons of God. He has turned the supreme calamity brought into the world by the arch-fiend into the supreme glory and joy of all who believe in himself. To all those who are by Jesus' death "to life restored," the day of death is infinitely preferable to the day of birth, for then beginneth that new life which shall never die. "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him until that day."

"O death, how shocking must thy summons be, To him that is at ease in his possessions!"

There is a difference however, and a very great one, between the fear of death and the fear of dying. Many good people are often tormented by the latter kind of fear. It is frequently the result of a sensitive organization, or ill health, or a naturally gloomy temperament; and many who have been much troubled by it through life have found it to vanish completely when the supreme moment came. But the fear of death is founded on the consciousness of unpreparedness for it, and on the anticipation of the punishments which it will bring. Every unsaved sinner has abundant reason for the fear which, however he may laugh it off, will assuredly at times gain the mastery over him. The brooding sense of insecurity; the secret sudden pang, stabbing him in the midst of his wildest joys; the desperate effort never to think, and the resolute refusal ever to speak of death; tell their tale, and show that the slaves of Satan are always liable to the fear of death. O, if this be your case, it is high time to look to yourselves! If you cannot bear the thought of death; if the great and solemn hereafter is haunted by images that scare and threaten you; if you "put far away the evil day;" be sure there is something radically wrong. Be sure, by that token, that you are the slave of the devil. Be sure that you "are in jeopardy every hour." Never rest, never for a moment be satisfied, till you can look death calmly in the face, and discern for yourself the life to come, and your inheritance in heaven.

"And they consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness."--HOSEA vii. 2.

Is it possible for any man to conceive of truths more fitted to arrest the attention and impress the heart than are those contained in this volume? It has been said that if a blank book had been put into our hands, and every one of us had been asked to put into it the promises we should like to find there, we could not have employed language so explicit, so expressive, and so suited to all our varied wants, as is here. And may I not say that no facts and declarations and appeals could be more fitted to rouse the conscience, and to regulate the life, than those we here find. Alas! however, with what affecting appropriateness may the Almighty say of Englishmen as of Israelites--of persons living eighteen centuries after Christ's death, as of those living eight centuries before it--"They consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness."

This passage brings before us two parties. One is the speaker, the other the persons addressed. It states a fact respecting each. Let us look at these facts:--

My text says much, but like many others, it means more than it says. How much of what Scripture intends to teach us shall we fail to learn, if we do not consider what is included and involved, as well as what is affirmed! This declaration imports three things. It imports--

Can any of you still resist the strivings of his Spirit? "Turn ye, turn ye, why will ye die?"

Christ has died that you might live, live with Him in His kingdom of glory for ever. He shed for you His precious blood. For you He now intercedes at the right hand of the Majesty on high. And if you come to Him, however guilty you are, truly sorry for your sins, and believe His own gracious declaration, that He came into the world to save sinners, to seek and to save that which was lost, He will pardon and bless you. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

God remembers all our wickedness. How much of it do you remember? How little of it do any of us remember! The past is to a large extent a vague and dim expanse. Many of you have climbed these noble hills, and as you stood on the summit, you observed that distinct as were the objects near, those remote were quite indistinct. It is but a few conspicuous objects you can discern at any considerable distance. Just so it is in reviewing our past lives. We can call to mind a few things. We can remember well--ah, we cannot forget, we have often wished we could, an act of rebellion against our parents of which we were once guilty; of obstinacy toward a master; of ingratitude toward a benefactor; of dishonourableness toward a friend, or unkindness toward a neighbour. There are several sad deeds in the life of every one of us which we cannot forget, but how many which we have all forgot. The things we can remember are as the milestones to the weary traveller, far, far apart. Yes, we forget, but God does not. He remembers them all. There is not a single improper word we have ever uttered, not a wrong feeling we have cherished, not an ungodly deed we have done, not a duty we have neglected, but God knew it, will exhibit it, and if unrepented of, will punish for it. Hear it, ponder it, hide it in the depths of your heart, God remembers all our wickedness.

Having considered the import of the declaration as it regards Almighty God, we come now to consider--

What incalculable mischief and misery this neglect of consideration has wrought in our world! Had our first parents considered the sad consequences that would ensue to themselves and their posterity, would they have plucked the forbidden fruit? Through what a long and mournful list of events that have happened from that day to this might I easily go, all of which would have been avoided if right consideration had been given! Every day during those six thousand years a multitude of such events have happened. Is there one of you but can recal deeds respecting which you say with bitterness of heart, I wish I had given it consideration--I wish I had considered it more fully?

My young friends permit me to urge consideration upon you. Your welfare for both worlds is largely in your own keeping. You can secure it or destroy it. But to secure it, consideration is essential. If you don't addict yourselves to reflection you will be largely at the mercy of impulse, be enticed probably by evil companions, and get wrong perhaps in a thousand ways. Reluctant as you may feel at first to engage in it--uninteresting as you may deem it, do not, as rational creatures, prefer the pleasing to the right and good. The young man of reflection is more respected, more valuable, and unspeakably more happy, than the frivolous and vain. If you forget all else I say, do not forget this--it is the declaration of your loving Father in heaven, who wishes to welcome you there, but can welcome those only who yield to Him a filial love--"I remember all their wickedness."

"And thy years shall not fail."--HEBREWS i. 12.

He is under a covering as well as on a foundation. He did not pitch that canopy, nor fix those lights, nor hang those curtains by whose silent closing and withdrawing the light is heightened or dimmed. "The heavens are the work of thy hand." But will these last? Will this earth that I stand upon last? No; I see on it the marks of age and decay as on myself. Like me it will perish. And those heavens that are over me, they shall perish--will all things perish? Will everything that is go out of being? "Thou remainest." They shall wax old, it is true, but that is only as if a garment waxed old; "As a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed." All this that the eye can see above, below, around, is to the great King but as the robe upon the Sovereign to his person, and dominion, and when he folds up that vesture and lays it aside he will command another wherewith to show his glory to his subjects. "They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail!"

We have here a preacher, a listener, a subject: changeful nature, mortal man, immutable Godhead.

Changeful nature is a perpetual preacher, evermore proclaiming to us the twofold lesson, our own mortality and God's immutable glory and power. "Thy years shall not fail." What strange language applied to the Divine Being--perfectly natural as applied to us--"years!" Our life is finite, our life is measured, our life is dealt out to us in parcels. For us to speak of our "years" is natural, but when we look up to Him that is unmeasured, infinite, eternal, then this word "years" becomes but the representative of our small transient life when trying to contrast itself with his broad and Infinite Being. We are constantly speaking of two things wherewith we find ourselves related--space and time: and what are they? We hardly know. We know but something like this: space is a measured distance in infinity; time a measured duration in eternity.

We are launched in the midst of a sea of eternity, and all the time that comes to us comes by solemn public measurement, measurement conducted in the most formal and stately manner by the hand of the Creator. He made that heaven from which we can never shut our regard--we must see it; and in it He set those lights "for signs and for seasons and for days and for years." He might easily have given us a being that would have flowed on evenly from its beginning to its close without anything to mark it off into stages. We may almost watch a sunbeam starting from the sun and racing all the way to our world, passing over it, far on beyond it, till our eye and even our thought cannot follow it, and never anything to check or register its progress.

But not so the career that God has appointed to us. Everything is dealt to us under an economy of measure, of trust and of account. "For signs"--He set those things above us for signs. Cannot earth be a sign to herself? Cannot man be his own directory? Cannot the seas and the mountains and the rivers and trees and houses be their own tokens? Try this. Let that ship at sea, on which the fog has settled, ask the waves to say where is north, south, east or west; and when the gale springs up and the clouds cover the heavens let her ask the winds to tell how far from port. No, if the heavens give no signs she has none, she cannot tell where she is or whither she is going.

Suppose you find yourself within a mile of the house in which you were born: you know, as you think, every step of the way as well as you know your own bedroom; but there is neither sun nor moon nor star, the heavens are completely shut off and you are left to earth alone. Will the trees tell you the way? Will the houses show themselves? Will the road be its own exhibitor? No, if heaven fails you you cannot even see your own hand. You are under the perpetual preaching of the sky, that all your hours and all your movements are dependent upon heaven!

Not only for days but "for years." The days, as I have said, are short; they pass rapidly, and we calculate that the days of our years are threescore years and ten. And when you come to multiply 70 by 365 it makes a very large number, and if we have lost a few handfuls of days, well, cannot we make them up? Have we not been young, and are we not in this pleasant watering place, where one must see life and have a little pleasure, and if we do throw away a few days, why, cannot we recover them? Can we say that of the years? Are the years so very plentiful--such a large number assured to you that you can afford to squander a few, to turn them not only to useless purposes but to bad ones. Can you?--the years!--oh is not it wonderful, the way in which thy Lord and my Lord, thy Creator and my Creator, marks out before our eye the progress of the years?

Perhaps you may remember in childhood watching the day as it grew and spread itself out, making conquests from the night and winning moments, minutes, hours, till you began to think the day was going to do away the night. You saw it stretching over the hours that once were dark till it seemed as if the tips of the sunset touched the tips of the sunrise, and still the light was gaining so that in a little time the darkness would be all driven away and it would be day the twenty-four hours round. But just then the night began to come back and the day grew shorter, dimmer, colder, and the darkness spread itself over the light till it seemed as if in its turn the day was going to be quenched and darkness to wrap up the whole twenty-four hours. But then the day returned.

Was it an accident this first time? Would it ever occur again? You watched it: just the same process and at the same time, and you began to feel--it is a wheel! with its regulated, measured appointed movement; steady, by rule it rises to a certain point, and then comes down to a certain point, then turns again and comes up. It is a perfectly balanced wheel, making its revolution steadily, steadily. I did not fix those revolutions: the great Architect did! He knows how many the wheel itself can perform; He knows what each revolution marks off and what it accomplishes, and He knows too how many shall measure off my thread of life. I do not know the number, you do not know; but this we do know, it is marked upon the dial, and we are tolerably sure it is not more than threescore and ten. Suppose you saw the dial of life before your eye as plain as that dial is and the hand pointing twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of the divisions gone--gone never to return! Suppose you felt that that hand was pressing forward and would point and point to successive lines till at last, without a moment's warning, the hour will strike and it is over, no recall! Man of twenty, proud of thy youth! man of fifty, proud of thy maturity! man of seventy, proud of thy years! are you prepared to meet your God? Has your time been spent with a view to eternity? Has the measure of your days been taken? Has the course of your years been run in holiness? If not, by the deep voice of the heavens above thee; that voice which evermore is speaking; by the night and the day, and the season and the year, I charge thee prepare to meet thy God. For thy time is passing and eternity at hand.

"Thy years shall not fail." The thought of man never feels that it can say this to nature. He sees the stones themselves have marks of age and decay--the very mountains, the very seas tell of change and limit. And in the skies too far off for us to trace decay we trace something else--measure. Everything is measured. The moon goes by measure and the sun by measure, and the way of the stars is all measured. There are clear tokens that not one of them is its own master or gives its own law. One government moulds them all. They say "We serve." I take up the blade of grass and at once feel He that made that grass made the light of day, the dew of the morning, the beast that feeds upon it. One law pervades them all. I take up the corn. He that made that made the sun that ripens it and the soil that fattens it, and my blood that is my life. Everywhere is one mind, one plan, one hand, one sceptre, and all nature says "I serve, I serve. There is a force external to myself. I am measured. I move by rule." "I revolve," says every wheel in the heaven, "I roll round by regular law." "Measure" always means "beginning." That which is measured must have begun. Beginning always suggests the possibility of end. That which once was not hereafter may not be. Nature fails to fill the mind of man in any one of the three directions--the past, the future, the outward and the infinite. It cannot fill up this thought of ours that claims an eternity before, an eternity coming, an infinity on every side; and we feel nature is like ourselves--a servant, a creature, a machine, an organ, and every part of it proclaims a mind that lived before it.

Then will all things fail? all decay? No--"Thy years shall not fail." We turn to Him that made the law whereby the blade of grass grows, that whereby the sun statedly comes to it, that whereby the animal feeds upon it, that whereby the man lives upon the animal, and that whereby the human mind reigns over the animal, cultivates the grass and makes use of the light. We come to that great Being whom all these things indicate and proclaim. In Him we find no external law or force compelling Him. At his footstool all say "We serve," and to all He says either "Be" or "Do" or "Do not." We find in Him no internal decay. Years come, ages come, worlds arise and worlds pass away, but "Thou art the same"--the same in strength, the same in youth, the same in beauty, the same in glory, the same in wisdom. Never old, only "ancient of days." "Over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet