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.