news" written everywhere over the Word of God. His messages are
of the "everlasting arm"—nay, the "everlasting arms." That holy arm is for eternity. That mighty arm is for eternity. That glorious arm is for eternity. That high arm is for eternity. That stretched-out arm is for eternity. All is everlasting! It is with everlasting arms that we have to do. "His right hand doth embrace us; his left hand is under our head" (Song 2:6); and that embrace—that clasping—that upholding—is for ever. To have these flung around us is all the assurance that we need for our security in the ages to come. For who shall untwine that eternal embrace, or unclasp those arms, or make them grow weary of enfolding us? It is the pressure of these arms that we feel about us when first we "taste that the Lord is gracious," and understand the meaning of the free love which the cross exhibits. Then the divine graciousness comes gently round us, like a mother's arm, and as receivers of the Father's testimony to his good-will in Christ, we are "compassed about with his favour as with a shield" (Ps. 5:12). And then it is that we learn to reprove our own unbelief in Jehovah's strength and grace—"Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth hot, neither is weary?" (Is. 40:27, 28.)
4. It thinks of the EVERLASTING gospel (Rev. 14:9).—It finds "good news" written everywhere over the Word of God. His messages are "tidings of good;" for the free love which is in his infinite bosom he has embodied in these tidings; and we have found that in listening to them we are listening to what makes us glad. These good news are the very light of our earthly path, and by means of their bright shining, these desert tents of ours are lighted up even in the darkest night. But these good news run on into eternity; for the "good things to come," of which they brought us the report, are for ever. What we have heard and believed, is not the gospel of one age, but of all ages— the "everlasting gospel"—the gospel of the long ages to come, as truly as of the brief ages that are past.