298. A New Year’s Discourse

A New Year’92s Discourse

Jer_28:16 : ’93This year thou shalt die.’94

Jeremiah, accustomed to saying bold things, addresses Hananiah in these words. They prove true. In sixty days Hananiah had departed this life. This is the first Sabbath of the year. It is a time for review and for anticipation. A man must be a genius at stupidity who does not think now. The old year died in giving birth to the new, as the life of Jane Seymour, the English queen, departed when that of her son, Edward VI, dawned. The old year was a queen. The new shall be a king. The grave of the one and the cradle of the other are side by side. We can hardly guess what the child will be. It is only two days old, but I prophesy for it an eventful future. Year of mirth and madness! Year of pageant and conflagration! It will laugh; it will sing; it will groan; it will die.

Is it not a time for earnest thought? The congratulations have been given. The Christmas-trees have been taken down, or have wellnigh cast their fruit. The vacation ended, the children are at school. The friends who came for the holidays are gone in the rail-train. While we are looking forward to another twelve months of intense activities, the text breaks upon us like a bursting thunderbolt: ’93This year thou shalt die!’94

On the coast of England, three men entered a house of worship with stones in their pockets, intending to interrupt the services and assault the preacher. As the preacher began, one of the men said, ’93Let us throw.’94 The other said, ’93Let us wait until he has made out this point.’94 At the close of that, the first said, ’93Now, let us throw.’94 The third suggested, ’93I think we had better not throw these stones at all, but listen.’94 The first two, in disgust, left the building, and were afterward executed for great crimes. The third remained, and accepted the truth of the Gospel, and afterward proclaimed it to many thousands. So some may come to God’92s house armed with the weapons of criticism, but I think you had better drop your weapons. It makes but little difference to the preacher what you think of him, as it makes but little difference to you what he may think of you. But what think ye of Christ, of death, of the judgment, of eternity?

The text will probably prove true of some of us. ’93This year thou shalt die.’94 The probability is augmented by the fact that all of us who are over thirty-five years of age have gone beyond the average of human life. The note is more than due. It is only by sufferance that it is not collected. We are like a debtor who is taking the ’93three days’92 grace’94 of the banks. Our race started with nine hundred years for a lifetime. We read of but one antediluvian youth whose early death disappointed the hopes of his parents by his dying at seven hundred and seventy-seven years of age. The world then may have been ahead of what it is now, for men had so long a time in which to study and invent and plan. If an artist or a philosopher has forty years for work, he makes great achievements; but what must the artists and philosophers have done who had nine hundred years before them? In the nearly two thousand years before the flood, considering the longevity of the inhabitants, there may have been nearly as many people as there are now. The flood was not a freshet that washed a few people off a plank, but a disaster that may have swept away a thousand million.

At that time God started the race with a shorter allowance of life. The nine hundred years were hewn down, until, in the time of Vespasian, a census was taken, and only one hundred and twenty-four persons were found one hundred years old, and three or four persons one hundred and forty years old. Now a man who has come to one hundred years of age is a curiosity, and we go miles to see him. The vast majority of the race pass off before twenty years. To every apple there are five blossoms that never get to be apples. In the country church, the sexton rings the bell rapidly until almost through, and then tolls it. For a while the bell of our life rings right merrily; but with some of you the bell has begun to toll, and the adaptedness of the text to you is more and more probable: ’93This year thou shalt die.’94

The character of our occupations adds to the probability. Those who are in the professions are undergoing a sapping of the brain and nerve foundations. Literary men in this country are driven with whip and spur to their topmost speed. Not one brain-worker out of a hundred observes any moderation. There is something so stimulating in our climate that, if John Brown, the essayist of Edinburgh, had lived here, he would have broken down at thirty-five instead of fifty-five, and Charles Dickens would have dropped at forty. There is something in all our occupations which predisposes to disease. If we be stout, to disorders ranging from fevers to apoplexy. If we be frail, to diseases ranging from consumption to paralysis. Printers rarely reach fifty years. Watchmakers, in marking the time for others, shorten their own. Chemists breathe death in their laboratories, and potters absorb paralysis. Painters fall under their own brush. Foundrymen take death in with the filings. Shoemakers pound away their own lives on the last. Overdriven merchants measure off their own lives with the yardstick. Millers grind their own lives with the grist. Masons dig their graves with the trowel. And in all our occupations and professions there are the elements of peril. Rapid climatic changes threaten our lives. By reason of the violent fits of the thermometer, within two days we live both in the arctic and the tropic. The warm south wind finds us with our furs on. The wintry blast cuts through our thin apparel. The hoof, the wheel, the firearms, the assassin, with their chance to put upon us their quietus. I announce it as an impossibility that three hundred and sixty-five days should pass and leave us all as we now are. In what direction to shoot the arrow I know not, and so I shoot it at a venture: ’93This year thou shalt die.’94

In view of this, I advise that you have your temporal matters adjusted. Do not leave your worldly affairs at the mercy of administrators. Have your receipts properly pasted, and your letters filed, and your books balanced. If you have ’93trust-funds,’94 see that they are rightly deposited and accounted for. Let no widow or orphan scratch on your tombstone, ’93This man wronged me of my inheritance.’94 Many a man has died, leaving a competency, whose property has, through his own carelessness, afterward been divided between the administrators, the surrogate, the lawyers, and the sheriffs. I charge you, before many days have gone, as far as possible, have all your worldly matters made straight, for ’93this year thou shalt die.’94

I advise also that you be busy in Christian work. How many Sabbaths in the year? Fifty-two. If the text be true of you, it does not say at what time you may go, and therefore it is unsafe to count on all of the fifty-two Sundays. As you are as likely to go in the first half of the year as in the last half, I think we had better divide the fifty-two into halves, and calculate only twenty-six Sabbaths. Come, Christian men, Christian women, what can you do in twenty-six Sabbaths? Divide the three hundred and sixty-five days into two parts: What can you do in one hundred and eighty-two days? What, by the way of saving your family, the Church, and the world? You will not, through all the ages of eternity in heaven, get over the dishonor and the outrage of going into glory, and having helped none up to the same place. It will be found that many a Sabbath-school teacher has taken into heaven her whole class; that Daniel Baker, the evangelist, took thousands into heaven; that Doddridge has taken in hundreds of thousands; that Paul took in a hundred million. How many will you take in? If you get into heaven, and find none there that you sent, and that there are none to come through your instrumentality, I beg of you to crawl under some seat in the back corner, and never come out, lest the redeemed get their eyes on you, and some one cry out, ’93That is the man who never lifted hand or voice for the redemption of his fellows! Look at him, all heaven!’94 Better be busy. Better pick the gunlock, and bite the cartridge, and be sure the caps are good. Better put the plow in deep. Better say what you have to say quickly. Better cry the alarm. Better fall on your knees. Better lay hold with both hands. What you now leave undone for Christ will forever be undone. ’93This year thou shalt die!’94

In view of the probabilities mentioned, I advise all the men and women not ready for eternity to get ready. If the text be true, you have no time to talk about non-essentials, asking why God let sin come into the world; or whether the book of Jonah is inspired; or who Melchizedek was, or what about the eternal decrees. If you are as near eternity as some of you seem to be, there is no time for anything but the question, ’93How shall I win heaven?’94 ’93What must I do to be saved?’94 The drowning man, when a plank is thrown him, stops not to ask what saw-mill made it, or whether it is oak or cedar, or who threw it. The moment it is thrown, he clutches it. If this year you are to die, there is no time for anything but immediately laying hold on God. It is high time to get out of your sins. You say, ’93I have committed no great transgressions.’94 But are you not aware that your life has been sinful? The snow comes down on the Alps flake by flake, and it is so light that you may hold it on the tip of your finger without feeling any weight; but the flakes gather; they compact, until some day a traveler’92s foot starts the slide, and it goes down in an avalanche, crushing to death the villagers. So the sins of your youth, and the sins of your manhood, and the sins of your womanhood may have seemed only slight inaccuracies or trifling divergences from the right’97so slight that they are hardly worth mentioning, but they have been piling up and piling up, packing together and packing together, until they make a mountain of sin, and one more step of your foot in the wrong direction may slide down upon you an avalanche of ruin and condemnation.

A man crossing a desolate and lonely plateau, a hungry wolf took after him. He brought his gun to his shoulder, and took aim, and the wolf howled with pain, and the cry woke up a pack of wolves, and they came ravening out of the forest from all sides, and horribly devoured him. Thou art the man! Some one sin of thy life summoning on all the rest, they surround thy soul, and make the night of thy sin terrible with the assault of their bloody muzzles. Oh, the unpardoned, clamoring, ravening, all-devouring sins of thy lifetime! No time to lose if you want to escape your sins, for ’93this year thou shalt die.’94

Let me announce that Christ, the Lord, stands ready to save any man who wants to be saved. He waited for you all last year, and all the year before, and he has waited all your life. He has waited for you with blood on his brow, and tears in his eye, and two outstretched, mangled hands of love. You come from your store, and find that your house has been on fire, and that your neighbor put it out. You thank him. You say, ’93I shall never forget this. When you want anything, come to me.’94 But my Lord makes an attempt to put out the eternal consuming of your soul, and you give him no thanks, and wish him off the premises. You come home some night and find the mark of muddy feet on your front steps. You hasten in and find an excited group around your child. He fell into a pond, and had it not been for a brave lad, who plunged in and brought him out, and carried him home to be resuscitated, you would have been childless. You feel that you cannot do enough for the rescuer. You throw your arms around him. You offer him large compensation. You say to him, ’93Anything that you want shall be yours. I will never cease to be grateful.’94 But my Lord Jesus sees your soul drowning in waves of death, and attempts to bring it ashore, and you not only refuse him thanks, but stand on the beach and say, ’93Drop that soul! If I want it saved, I will save it myself.’94

I wish you might know what a task Jesus undertook when he carried your case to Calvary. They crowded him to the wall. They struck him. They spat at him. They kicked him. They cuffed him. They scoffed at him. They scourged him. They murdered him. Blood! blood! As he stoops down to lift you up, the crimson drops upon you from his brow, from his side, from his hands. Do you not feel the warm current on your face? For thee the hunger, the thirst, the thorn-sting, the suffocation, the darkness, the groan, the sweat, the struggle, the death!

A great plague came in Marseilles. The doctors held a consultation and decided that a corpse must be dissected, or they would never know how to stop the plague. A Dr. Guyon said, ’93To-morrow morning I will proceed to a dissection.’94 He made his will; prepared for death; went into the hospital; dissected a body; wrote out the results of the dissection, and died in twelve hours. Beautiful self-sacrifice, you say. Our Lord Jesus looked out from heaven, and saw a plague-stricken race. Sin must be dissected. He made his will, giving everything to his people. He come down into the reeking hospital of earth. He lays his hand to the work. Under our plague, he dies’97the healthy for the sick, the pure for the polluted, the innocent for the guilty. Behold the love! Behold the sacrifice! Behold the rescue! Decide, on this first Sabbath of the year, whether or not you will have Jesus. He will not stand forever begging for your love. With some here his plea ends right speedily. ’93This year thou shalt die.’94

This great salvation of the Gospel I offer to every man, woman, and child. You cannot buy it. You cannot earn it. A Scotch writer says that a poor woman, one cold winter’92s day, looked through the window of a king’92s conservatory, and saw a bunch of grapes hanging against the glass. She said, ’93Oh, if I only had that bunch of grapes for my sick child at home!’94 At her spinning-wheel she earned a few shillings, and went to buy the grapes. The king’92s gardener thrust her out very roughly, and said he had no grapes to sell. She went off and sold a blanket, and got some more shillings, and came back and tried to buy the grapes. But the gardener roughly assaulted her, and told her to be off. The king’92s daughter was walking in the garden at the time, and she heard the excitement, and, seeing the poor woman, said to her, ’93My father is not a merchant, to sell, but he is a king, and gives.’94 Then she reached up and plucked the grapes, and dropped them into the poor woman’92s apron. So Christ is a king, and all the fruits of his pardon he freely gives. They may not be bought. Without money and without price, take this sweet cluster from the vineyards of God.

When I sought for a text appropriate for the occasion, I thought of taking one in Job: ’93My days fly as a weaver’92s shuttle;’94 of a text in the Psalms: ’93So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom;’94 of the prayer of the vinedresser: ’93Lord, let it alone this year also;’94 but pressed upon my attention, first of all and last of all and above all were the words, ’93This year thou shalt die.’94 Perhaps it may mean me. Though in perfect health now, it does not take God one week to bring down the strongest physical constitution. I do not want to die this year. We have plans and projects on foot that I want to see completed; but God knows best, and he has a thousand better men than I to do the work yet undone. I have a hope that, notwithstanding all my sins and wanderings, I shall, through the infinite mercy of my Saviour, come out at the right place. I have nothing to brag of by way of Christian experience; but two things I have learned’97my utter helplessness before God, and the all-abounding grace of the Lord Jesus. If the text means some of you, my hearers, I do not want you to be caught unprepared. I would like to have you, either through money you have laid up, or a ’93life-insurance,’94 be able to leave the world feeling that your family need not become paupers. But if you have done your best, and you leave not one dollar’92s worth of estate, you may confidently trust the Lord who hath promised to care for the widow and the fatherless. I would like to have your soul fitted out for eternity, so that if, any morning or noon or evening or night of these three hundred and sixty-five days, death should look in and ask, ’93Are you ready?’94 you might, with an outburst of Christian triumph, answer, ’93Ay, ay! all ready.’94

I know not what our last words may be. Lord Chesterfield prided himself on his politeness, and said, in his last moment, ’93Give Dayrolles a chair.’94 Dr. Adam, a dying schoolmaster, said, ’93It grows dark. The boys may dismiss.’94 Lord Tenterden, supposing himself on the bench of a courtroom, said, in his last moment: ’93Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your verdict.’94 A dying play-actor said, ’93Drop the curtain. The farce is played out.’94 I would rather have, for my dying words, those of one greater than Chesterfield or Dr. Adam or Lord Tenterden: ’93I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me.’94

The sooner the last hour comes the better if we are fitted for entrance in the celestial world. There is no clock in heaven, because it is an everlasting day; yet they keep an account of the passing years, because they are all the time hearing from our world. The angels flying through heaven report how many times the earth has turned on its axis, and in that way the angels can keep a diary; and they say it is almost time now for father to come up, or for mother to come up. Some day they see a cohort leaving heaven, and they say, ’93Whither bound?’94 and the answer is, ’93To bring up a soul from earth;’94 ’93and the question is asked, ’93What soul?’94 And a family circle in heaven find that it is one of their own number that is to be brought up, and they come out to watch, as on the beach we now watch for a ship that is to bring our friends home. After a while the cohort will heave in sight, flying nearer and nearer, until with a great clang the gates hoist, and with an embrace, wild with the ecstasy of heaven, old friends meet again. Away with your stiff, formal heaven! I want none of it. Give me a place of infinite and eternal sociality. My feet free from the clods of earth, I shall bound the hills with gladness, and break forth in a laugh of triumph. Aha! aha! We weep now, but then we shall laugh. ’93Abraham’92s bosom’94 means that heaven has open arms to take us in. Now we fold our arms over our heart, and tell the world to stand back, as though our bosom was a two-barred gate to keep the world out. Heaven stands not with folded arms, but with heart open. It is ’93Abraham’92s bosom.’94 Mother and the child in heaven there meet. ’93How changed you are, my darling!’94 says the mother. ’93Yes,’94 says the child, ’93this is such a happy place; and Jesus has taken such care of me, and heaven is so kind, I got right over the fever with which I died. The skies are so fair, mother! The flowers are so sweet, mother! The temple is so beautiful, mother! Come, take me up in your arm as you used to.’94 Oh, I do not know how we shall stand the first day in heaven. Do you not think we will break down in the song from over-delight? I once gave out in church the hymn,

There is a land of pure delight,

Where saints immortal reign,

and an aged man standing in front of the pulpit sang heartily the first verse, and then he sat down weeping. I said to him afterward, ’93Father Linton, what made you cry over that hymn?’94 He said, ’93I could not stand it’97the joys that are coming.’94 When heaven rises for the doxology, I cannot see how we can rise with it if all these waves of everlasting delight come upon the soul, billow of joy after billow of joy. Methinks Jesus would be enough for the first day in heaven, yet here he approaches with all heaven at his back.

This is the last January to some of us. You have entered the year, but you will not close it. Within these twelve months your eyes will shut for the last sleep. Other hands will plant the Christmas-tree, and give the New Year’92s congratulations. As a proclamation of joy to some, and as a matter of warning to others, I leave in your ears these five words of one syllable each, ’93This year thou shalt die!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage