Part 2 (1/2)

Does not the charge hold true of the _pleasure hunter_? As a condiment, as a relaxation, pleasure seeking, if of the right sort, is not only allowable but commendable. He who gave life intended it to be a joy. To be always seeking after pleasure, however, exercises a dissipating and debilitating influence on the mind, and prevents the acquirement of true n.o.bleness and worth of character. And would a creature, which is the highest workmans.h.i.+p of Infinite Excellence with which we are acquainted, yield himself to this, if given to the consideration of the fact the Almighty here states respecting himself?

To mention but one other cla.s.s of character, does not the charge hold true of _the fraudulent_? Would a man rob his soul to enrich his pocket, would he narrow his heart to expand his purse, would he build up a character that is to endure for ever with such ill-tempered mortar as falsehood; would he be willing to encounter all the piercing looks and accusing words with which those he wronged will one day a.s.sail him, if he had taken his relations.h.i.+p to G.o.d, and man, and eternity, into consideration?

What incalculable mischief and misery this neglect of consideration has wrought in our world! Had our first parents considered the sad consequences that would ensue to themselves and their posterity, would they have plucked the forbidden fruit? Through what a long and mournful list of events that have happened from that day to this might I easily go, all of which would have been avoided if right consideration had been given! Every day during those six thousand years a mult.i.tude of such events have happened. Is there one of you but can recal deeds respecting which you say with bitterness of heart, I wish I had given it consideration--I wish I had considered it more fully?

My young friends permit me to urge consideration upon you. Your welfare for both worlds is largely in your own keeping. You can secure it or destroy it. But to secure it, consideration is essential. If you don't addict yourselves to reflection you will be largely at the mercy of impulse, be enticed probably by evil companions, and get wrong perhaps in a thousand ways. Reluctant as you may feel at first to engage in it--uninteresting as you may deem it, do not, as rational creatures, prefer the pleasing to the right and good. The young man of reflection is more respected, more valuable, and unspeakably more happy, than the frivolous and vain. If you forget all else I say, do not forget this--it is the declaration of your loving Father in heaven, who wishes to welcome you there, but can welcome those only who yield to Him a filial love--”I remember all their wickedness.”

THE FRIEND WHOSE YEARS DO NOT FAIL.

REV. W. ARTHUR, M.A.

”And thy years shall not fail.”--HEBREWS i. 12.

You know that these words are taken from the hundred and second Psalm.

There, they are addressed to G.o.d the Creator; here, to Christ the Redeemer. In both cases they express the same truths. Man finds himself here, looks out to what he can see around him, and then in thought pa.s.ses on to what he cannot see. He knows that a very little while ago he was not here, he was not anywhere. He has an instinct within which tells him that though it is so short a time since he was not the time will never come when he will not be--an instinct that cries for a permanent foundation. He is not such foundation himself--he feels that. He stands upon the foundation of the earth: he did not lay it; it did not lay itself. Those layers of rock were not their own framers. But the foundation _was_ laid. ”Thou, Lord, in the beginning didst lay the foundation of the earth.”

He is under a covering as well as on a foundation. He did not pitch that canopy, nor fix those lights, nor hang those curtains by whose silent closing and withdrawing the light is heightened or dimmed. ”The heavens are the work of thy hand.” But will these last? Will this earth that I stand upon last? No; I see on it the marks of age and decay as on myself. Like me it will perish. And those heavens that are over me, they shall perish--will all things perish? Will everything that is go out of being? ”Thou remainest.” They shall wax old, it is true, but that is only as if a garment waxed old; ”As a vesture shalt thou fold them up and they shall be changed.” All this that the eye can see above, below, around, is to the great King but as the robe upon the Sovereign to his person, and dominion, and when he folds up that vesture and lays it aside he will command another wherewith to show his glory to his subjects. ”They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail!”

We have here a preacher, a listener, a subject: changeful nature, mortal man, immutable G.o.dhead.

Changeful nature is a perpetual preacher, evermore proclaiming to us the twofold lesson, our own mortality and G.o.d's immutable glory and power.

”Thy years shall not fail.” What strange language applied to the Divine Being--perfectly natural as applied to us--”years!” Our life is finite, our life is measured, our life is dealt out to us in parcels. For us to speak of our ”years” is natural, but when we look up to Him that is unmeasured, infinite, eternal, then this word ”years” becomes but the representative of our small transient life when trying to contrast itself with his broad and Infinite Being. We are constantly speaking of two things wherewith we find ourselves related--s.p.a.ce and time: and what are they? We hardly know. We know but something like this: s.p.a.ce is a measured distance in infinity; time a measured duration in eternity.

We are launched in the midst of a sea of eternity, and all the time that comes to us comes by solemn public measurement, measurement conducted in the most formal and stately manner by the hand of the Creator. He made that heaven from which we can never shut our regard--we must see it; and in it He set those lights ”for signs and for seasons and for days and for years.” He might easily have given us a being that would have flowed on evenly from its beginning to its close without anything to mark it off into stages. We may almost watch a sunbeam starting from the sun and racing all the way to our world, pa.s.sing over it, far on beyond it, till our eye and even our thought cannot follow it, and never anything to check or register its progress.

But not so the career that G.o.d has appointed to us. Everything is dealt to us under an economy of measure, of trust and of account. ”For signs”--He set those things above us for signs. Cannot earth be a sign to herself? Cannot man be his own directory? Cannot the seas and the mountains and the rivers and trees and houses be their own tokens? Try this. Let that s.h.i.+p at sea, on which the fog has settled, ask the waves to say where is north, south, east or west; and when the gale springs up and the clouds cover the heavens let her ask the winds to tell how far from port. No, if the heavens give no signs she has none, she cannot tell where she is or whither she is going.

Suppose you find yourself within a mile of the house in which you were born: you know, as you think, every step of the way as well as you know your own bedroom; but there is neither sun nor moon nor star, the heavens are completely shut off and you are left to earth alone. Will the trees tell you the way? Will the houses show themselves? Will the road be its own exhibitor? No, if heaven fails you you cannot even see your own hand. You are under the perpetual preaching of the sky, that all your hours and all your movements are dependent upon heaven!

”For seasons” as well as for signs. The Lord might easily have established our lifetime under a different economy; might have given us one perpetual summer, or a perpetual spring, or a uniform co-existence of all the seasons, the fruits being sown, ripening and reaped simultaneously. But not so. He has settled two things so clearly that none, even the most sordid worm that ever wriggled under the clay, showing himself above it as little as possible, can help seeing them.

First a fixed order that nothing can change and that proclaims one Lord, one will, one dominion, one plan. The seasons come in regular succession. Every man living knows when the summer is gone that winter is coming. That will not and cannot be changed. Were the whole world to conspire in one effort that spring should come next it would be unavailing. The winter is coming. But with this fixed order is established perpetual change, variety, mutability, so that although we know the season that is coming we know not what kind of a season it shall be, and all our temporal interests hang upon that question. When the merchant has got his stock, when the man of pleasure has fixed for his party, when the General has planned his campaign, when the Admiral has laid down the arrangements for the battle, when the grand politician has perfected the plot for a new crisis of the world, what must they do? Not look to what the earth but what the heaven will do. Everything depends upon that. They cannot decide the market price even of hard sovereigns, they cannot foretell the value of their wheat, they cannot determine the life and health of their soldiers or the hours and effect of movements independent of that one consideration, what will the heavens do? Three days rain will change a whole campaign or a harvest. By the arrangement of the seasons we are constantly kept at the door of Divine mercy, begging ”Give us this day our daily bread.” That eternal voice preaching through all our temporal interests is to us the solemn, never-ceasing protest against worldliness, earthliness, vanity, living for time, living for the body; and, above all, against every impure or unG.o.dly method of attempting to secure our temporal aims.

”For days” as well as for seasons. The season pa.s.ses slowly, but the day--oh what a solemn appointment is that! When the Lord made the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night it would have been very easy for Him to make two suns so that we should bask in perpetual daylight.

But no, it was his will that our life should be cut into very short lengths and that by a mark so deep, broad, black, that the dullest man could not escape its impression. The dark gulf that lies between the dead day and the day unborn is the ever recurring remembrancer--Thy days are numbered; thy life is held under law; thy time is a measured current of golden sands. Every particle as it comes may easily slip away, if unwatched _will_ slip, and once past thy hand it will be borne off by the rus.h.i.+ng river and thou shalt never see it again, but if caught, held and brought to the mint of the great King it will there be turned into precious coin to serve in perpetuity the double purpose of enriching man and recording the majesty of G.o.d. Seize upon thy days as they pa.s.s! The heavens tell thee to do it; the dark and mantled earth tells thee; thy drowsy faculties tell thee; thy weary limbs tell thee; all are saying ”numbered, numbered, numbered.” Life is running away fast.

Not only for days but ”for years.” The days, as I have said, are short; they pa.s.s rapidly, and we calculate that the days of our years are threescore years and ten. And when you come to multiply 70 by 365 it makes a very large number, and if we have lost a few handfuls of days, well, cannot we make them up? Have we not been young, and are we not in this pleasant watering place, where one must see life and have a little pleasure, and if we do throw away a few days, why, cannot we recover them? Can we say that of the years? Are the years so very plentiful--such a large number a.s.sured to you that you can afford to squander a few, to turn them not only to useless purposes but to bad ones. Can you?--the years!--oh is not it wonderful, the way in which thy Lord and my Lord, thy Creator and my Creator, marks out before our eye the progress of the years?

Perhaps you may remember in childhood watching the day as it grew and spread itself out, making conquests from the night and winning moments, minutes, hours, till you began to think the day was going to do away the night. You saw it stretching over the hours that once were dark till it seemed as if the tips of the sunset touched the tips of the sunrise, and still the light was gaining so that in a little time the darkness would be all driven away and it would be day the twenty-four hours round. But just then the night began to come back and the day grew shorter, dimmer, colder, and the darkness spread itself over the light till it seemed as if in its turn the day was going to be quenched and darkness to wrap up the whole twenty-four hours. But then the day returned.

Was it an accident this first time? Would it ever occur again? You watched it: just the same process and at the same time, and you began to feel--it is a wheel! with its regulated, measured appointed movement; steady, by rule it rises to a certain point, and then comes down to a certain point, then turns again and comes up. It is a perfectly balanced wheel, making its revolution steadily, steadily. I did not fix those revolutions: the great Architect did! He knows how many the wheel itself can perform; He knows what each revolution marks off and what it accomplishes, and He knows too how many shall measure off my thread of life. I do not know the number, you do not know; but this we do know, it is marked upon the dial, and we are tolerably sure it is not more than threescore and ten. Suppose you saw the dial of life before your eye as plain as that dial is and the hand pointing twenty, thirty, forty, fifty of the divisions gone--gone never to return! Suppose you felt that that hand was pressing forward and would point and point to successive lines till at last, without a moment's warning, the hour will strike and it is over, no recall! Man of twenty, proud of thy youth! man of fifty, proud of thy maturity! man of seventy, proud of thy years! are you prepared to meet your G.o.d? Has your time been spent with a view to eternity? Has the measure of your days been taken? Has the course of your years been run in holiness? If not, by the deep voice of the heavens above thee; that voice which evermore is speaking; by the night and the day, and the season and the year, I charge thee prepare to meet thy G.o.d. For thy time is pa.s.sing and eternity at hand.

”Thy years shall not fail.” The thought of man never feels that it can say this to nature. He sees the stones themselves have marks of age and decay--the very mountains, the very seas tell of change and limit. And in the skies too far off for us to trace decay we trace something else--measure. Everything is measured. The moon goes by measure and the sun by measure, and the way of the stars is all measured. There are clear tokens that not one of them is its own master or gives its own law.

One government moulds them all. They say ”We serve.” I take up the blade of gra.s.s and at once feel He that made that gra.s.s made the light of day, the dew of the morning, the beast that feeds upon it. One law pervades them all. I take up the corn. He that made that made the sun that ripens it and the soil that fattens it, and my blood that is my life. Everywhere is one mind, one plan, one hand, one sceptre, and all nature says ”I serve, I serve. There is a force external to myself. I am measured. I move by rule.” ”I revolve,” says every wheel in the heaven, ”I roll round by regular law.” ”Measure” always means ”beginning.” That which is measured must have begun. Beginning always suggests the possibility of end. That which once was not hereafter may not be. Nature fails to fill the mind of man in any one of the three directions--the past, the future, the outward and the infinite. It cannot fill up this thought of ours that claims an eternity before, an eternity coming, an infinity on every side; and we feel nature is like ourselves--a servant, a creature, a machine, an organ, and every part of it proclaims a mind that lived before it.

Then will all things fail? all decay? No--”Thy years shall not fail.”

We turn to Him that made the law whereby the blade of gra.s.s grows, that whereby the sun statedly comes to it, that whereby the animal feeds upon it, that whereby the man lives upon the animal, and that whereby the human mind reigns over the animal, cultivates the gra.s.s and makes use of the light. We come to that great Being whom all these things indicate and proclaim. In Him we find no external law or force compelling Him.

At his footstool all say ”We serve,” and to all He says either ”Be” or ”Do” or ”Do not.” We find in Him no internal decay. Years come, ages come, worlds arise and worlds pa.s.s away, but ”Thou art the same”--the same in strength, the same in youth, the same in beauty, the same in glory, the same in wisdom. Never old, only ”ancient of days.” ”Over all, G.o.d blessed for ever. Amen.”

The years of his divine existence shall never fail, the years of his redeeming reign shall never fail. As I said, this Scripture is quoted from the hundred and second Psalm. If you turn to it you will find in it a contrast between man's peris.h.i.+ng life and the eternal lifetime of the Lord; and especially the glorious lifetime of his Messiah and Messiah's kingdom. ”My days are like a shadow that declineth, I am withered like gra.s.s.” The Bible makes everything preach--it makes the sparrow preach and the bush preach, and the gra.s.s and the lily. It makes even the very shadows preach--”My days are like a shadow that declineth.” Perhaps sometime in the morning you have stood and seen the great tree lying on the east of the hill, throwing its shadow broad and thick over the hill-side as if it really was a substance. But as the sun went up in the sky that shadow gradually shrank down until it totally disappeared under the leaves of the tree. My days are like that shadow--perhaps not like that only. You may have seen in the very bright moonlight shadows lying across the street till they looked solid as if they were something, so much so that the young colt started from them. But a cloud pa.s.sed over the moon and where was the shadow? My days are like that. ”But thou, O Lord, shalt endure for ever; and thy remembrance unto all generations.”

The remembrance of man is calling to mind those who are no more; the remembrance of G.o.d is calling to mind Him that is unseen. ”Thy remembrance shall endure unto all generations. Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion: for the time to favour her, yea, the set time is come.