It is only a
temporary contrivance, a mere scaffolding for a special purpose. When
that purpose is fulfilled it is natural that it should pass away. The
time then comes when the voice that shook the earth should signify the
removal of "those things that are shaken, as of things that are made,
that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." We already have
a kingdom that cannot be moved. "The things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
It should not be supposed that the space away from the world is an
empty desert. God is everywhere, and creative energy is omnipresent.
Not merely is a millionth of space occupied where the worlds are, but
all space is full of God and his manifestations of wisdom and power.
David could think of no place of hiding from that presence. The first
word of revelation is, "In the beginning God created the heaven." And
the great angel, standing on sea and land when time is to be no longer,
swears by Him who "created heaven, and the things that therein are," in
distinction from the earth and its things that are to be removed. What
God created with things that are therein is not empty. Poets, the true
seers, recognize this. When Longfellow died one of them, remembering
the heartbreaking hunt of Gabriel for Evangeline, and their passing
each other on opposite sides of an island in the Mississippi, makes him
say of his wife long since gone before:
And now I shall seek her once more,
On some Mississippi's vast tide
That flows the whole universe through,
Than earth's widest rivers more wide.
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