"I AM THAT I AM"

1. After the general impressions concerning God , when we begin more closely to survey the wonderful title here exhibited, one of the first ideas presented to our minds is that of the self-existence, independence, and eternity of the Divine Being.

"I AM THAT I AM." Whatever are the nature and excellencies of God, he possesses them in a manner entirely peculiar to himself. No other being shares with Him in the glory of existence underived, eternal, absolutely independent. We may, in our thoughts, anticipate the existence of all other beings; we may think of the time, when they were not; we may conceive of them as rising, in a moment, from the obscure abyss of nothing, and we may search for the powerful cause of their nature and excellencies; but all such inquiries respecting God are at once precluded by this sublime title, "I AM THAT I AM." He exists. He is, and was. But there is no superior cause, no origin, no beginning of his Being. Here, our understandings are struck down and astonished. Here is impenetrable darkness, arising from excessive glory in the very manner of God's existence. Confess thyself Atheist, thou, who rejectest mysteries in religion. Thy hell-born pride cannot pass over the very threshold of the temple of sacred truth.

How solemn is this prospect! God lives from everlasting to everlasting, without cause, or extrinsic support of his Being. The vast globe, hanging upon nothing, is, in comparison of this, but a trifling wonder. The understanding takes its flight across the immeasurable ocean of past ages, and sees itself surrounded with an eternity of unproduced being: With admiration and complacency, it reposes itself in the great, the inexplicable fact -- that Jehovah, a God of infinite glory, is, was, and is to come!   John Love