The Lasting Works Of Man
Gem #60 – The Lasting Works of Man
Many men have said of their works, “They shall last forever;” but how they have been disappointed! In the age following the flood, they made the bricks and built old Babel’s tower, and they thought, “This will last forever.” But God confounded their language; they never finished it. By His sovereignty he scattered the men and left the tower a monument to their folly. Old Pharaoh and the Egyptian monarchs built their pyramids, and they said, “They shall stand forever,” and so indeed they still do stand; but the time is approaching when age shall devour even these.
So it is with all the proudest works of man, whether they have been his temples or his kingdoms, he has written “everlasting” on them; but God has ordained their end, and they have passed away. The most stable things have vanished like shadows and bubbles of the moment, speedily destroyed at God’s bidding. Where is Nina, and where is Babylon? Where are the cities of Persia? Where are the high places of Edom? Where are Mob, and the princes of Gammon? Where are the temples of the heroes of Greece? Where are the vast armies of the Roman Emperors? Have they not all passed away? And though in their pride they said, “This kingdom is an everlasting one; this queen of the seven hills (Rome) shall be called the eternal city,” its pride is dimmed; and she who sat alone, and said, “I will not be a widow, but a queen forever,” she has fallen, has fallen, and in a little while she shall sink like a millstone in the flood, her name being a curse and a byword, and her site the habitation of wild animals.
Man calls his works eternal–God calls them transitory; man conceives that they are built of rock–God says, “No sand, or worse than that–they are built of air.” Man says he erects them for eternity–God blows on them for a second, and where are they? Like the fragments of a vision, they are passed and gone forever.