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I. THE NEEDS OF MEN DO NOT CHANCE. No doubt there is change and progress in some respects. Each generation of the human race, like each succeeding wave when the tide is flowing, is an advance on the generation going before it. As the world grows older this advance is more marked. Our fathers traveled in stage-coaches, we by express trains; they had to wait weeks for the answer of a letter, we have the telegraph to bring the same answer in an hour. But all these changes, however impressive, are only on the surface of life. Our nature has not changed, it wants the same ministries, though they may come in a different way. Though each wave is an advance on the preceding wave, they are all composed of the same elements. We who travel in railway trains are exactly the same sort of beings as those who rode in stage-coaches. The great facts of existence are the same - birth and death, sin and sorrow, hope and fear. A picture is not altered because you put it in a different frame. Man is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

II. THE SERVICE OF CHRIST DOES NOT CHANGE. Let the words be taken as true of Christ in his relation to us, that relation arising out of his life among men in the flesh. He has come into special relations to us, and it is in those special relations that we have to consider him as "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." He came to this world to do a work for all generations. As to us, the closer we keep to the evident and pressing wants of our generation, the better work we shall do. We know not the wants of posterity, and therefore we had better leave it to look after its own wants. But Jesus in his brief life did a work for the whole world - for all who ever have lived or will live on the broad surface of the earth. Because there are sinners still, Christ is still a Savior, The world is still full of Pharisees and Sadducees, publicans and harlots, sinners of every type and shade; full of the sick and the sorrowing; full of women like the widow of Nain and the sisters of Lazarus, weeping for their departed kindred.

III. NO CHANGE IN THE THINGS TO BE SAID ABOUT CHRIST. Do not be carried away, says the writer of the Epistle, with new doctrines concerning Christ, however attractive and plausible. Let us ever remind ourselves of what Christ has been in the great yesterday. Especially let us consider that yesterday which is revealed to us in the Scriptures of the New Testament. If that day was not a dream of the imagination, then it is one of the most glorious of soul-supporting realities. Jesus justified the name he bore, for he did indeed save his people from their sins. The yesterday of which we are now able to speak is a long one. It has known many changes in the world, but none in Jesus Christ.

IV. NO CHANGE IN THE FUTURE. The world will not change in its need of him. They are certainly wrong who tell us the religion of Christ has seen its best days. Look at the future in the light of the past, and you will be assured of your Savior ever standing in the midst of the golden candlesticks, watching that their light goes not out. We may change in our faith and hope and patience, but Christ changes not. Rising to the measure of our duties and opportunities, this would become a practical truth to us. We are not straitened in him, but in ourselves. He asks to let him do for us what he has done for those going before. He asks for admission. Let the door no longer be locked with the key of unbelief and double bolted with indolence and worldliness. Let us not go from the world without leaving a testimony that shall if possible have a savoir of life unto life to those following in our steps. - Y.

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KJV: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

WEB: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.