y.

But what do I mean by that? That ought to depend on what Moses meant by
it. Moses meant what God meant, and unless I mean the same thing I must
mean something wrong. And this is what I think it does mean:

First. I AM--the Lord Jesus Christ told Moses that his name was I AM.
Now you perhaps think that this is but a very common place name, for
every one can say of himself--I am--and it may seem strange that God
should have chosen for His own especial name, words which you and I might
have chosen for ourselves just as well. I daresay you think that you may
fairly say "_you are_," and that I can say fairly that "I am."

And yet it is not so. If I say "I am," I say what is not true of me. I
must say "I am something--I am a man, I am bad, or I am good, or I am an
Englishman, I am a soldier, I am a sailor, I am a clergyman"--and then I
shall say what is true of me. But God alone can say "I AM" without
saying anything more.

And why? Because God alone _is_. Everybody and everything else in the
world _becomes_: but God _is_. We are all becoming something from our
birth to our death--changing continually and becoming something different
from what we were a minute before; first of all we were created and made,
_and so became men_; and since that we have been every moment changing,
becoming older, becoming wiser, or alas! foolisher; becoming stronger or
weaker; becoming better or worse. Even our bodies are changing and
becoming different day by day.

But God never changes or becomes anything different from what He is now.
What He is, that He was, and ever will be. God does not even become
older. This may seem very strange, but it is true: for God made Time,
God made the years; and once there were no years to count by, no years at
all. Remember how long had God Himself been, before He made Time, when
there was no Time to pass over? Remember always that God must have
created Time. If God did not create Time, no one else did; for there is,
as the Athanasian Creed says, "One uncreated and One eternal," even God
who made Time as well as all things else.

Am I puzzling you? What I want to do is to make you understand that
God's life is quite utterly different from our life, or any way of living
and being which we can fancy or think of; lest you make to yourselves the
likeness of anything in heaven above or of the earth beneath, and think
that God is like that and so worship it, and have other gods beside the