true God, and so break the first and second commandments, as thousands do
who fancy themselves good Protestants, and hate Popery and idolatry, and
yet worship a very different sort of god from the "I AM," who sent Moses
to the children of Israel. Remember then this at least, that God was
before all things, and all worlds, and all Time; so that there was a time
when there were no worlds, and a time when there was no Time--nothing but
God alone, absolute, eternal, neither made nor created, the same that He
is now and will be for ever.

When I say "God is," that is a very different thing from God Himself
saying, "I AM." A different thing? Oh! my friends, here is the root of
the whole Gospel, the root of all our hope for this world and for the
world to come--for ourselves, for our own future, and the future of all
the world. Do you not see how? Then I will try to explain.

Many heathen men have known that there was one eternal God, and that _God
is_. But they did not know that God Himself had said so; and that made
them anxious, puzzled, almost desperate, so that the wiser they were, the
unhappier they were. For what use is it merely knowing that "_God is_"?
The question for poor human creatures is, "But what sort of a being is
God? Is He far off? Millions of miles from this earth? Does He care
nothing about us? Does He let the world go its own way right or wrong?
Is He proud and careless? A self-glorifying Deity whose mercy is _not_
over all His works, or even over any of them? Or does He care for us?
Does He see us? Will He speak to us? Has He ever spoken to any one? Has
He ever told any one about Himself?" _There is the question_--the
question of all questions. And if a man once begins thinking about his
own soul, and this world, and God,--till he gets that question answered,
he can have no comfort about himself or the world, or anything--till in
fact he knows whether God has ever spoken to men or not.

And the glory of the Bible, the power of God revealed in the Bible, is,
that it answers the question, and says, "God _does_ care for men, God
_does_ see men, God is not far off from any one of us." Ay, God speaks
to men--God spoke to Moses and said, not "God is" but "I AM." God in
sundry times and in divers manners _spoke_ to our fathers by the Prophets
and said "I AM."

But more--Moses said, "I AM hath sent me." God does not merely love us,
and yet leave us to ourselves. He sends after us. He sen