condition of perpetual flux and change. The cloud-rack has the likeness
of bastions and towers, but they are mist, not granite, and the wind is
every moment sweeping away their outlines, till the phantom fortress
topples into red ruin while we gaze. The tiniest stream eats out its
little valley and rounds the pebble in its widening bed, rain washes
down the soil, and frost cracks the cliffs above. So silently and yet
mightily does the law of change work that to a meditative eye the solid
earth seems almost molten and fluid, and the everlasting mountains
tremble to decay.

'Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?' Are we going to be
such fools as to fix our hopes and efforts upon this fleeting order of
things, which can give no delight more lasting than itself? Even whilst
we are in it, it continueth not in one stay, and we are in it for such a
little while! Then comes what our text calls God's awaking, and where is
it all then? Gone like a ghost at cockcrow. Why! a drop of blood on your
brain or a crumb of bread in your windpipe, and as far as you are
concerned the outward heavens and earth 'pass away with a great'
silence, as the impalpable shadows that sweep over some lone hillside.

'The glories of our birth and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate,
Death lays his icy hand on kings.'

What an awaking to a worldly man that awaking of God will be! 'As when a
hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth, but he awaketh and his soul
is empty.' He has thought he fed full, and was rich and safe, but in one
moment he is dragged from it all, and finds himself a starving pauper,
in an order of things for which he has made no provision. 'When he