Retrospect and Prospect

tl The harvest is past, the summer is
ended, and we are not saved.” — JER. viii. 20.

ATT is in the form of one bending beneath the weight of years, and advancing with feeble steps, that Solomon paints man travelling to the grave; and, though done with a trembling hand, how graphic and true his touches? “The keepers of the house shall tremble” — the arms that held the plough, or plied the shuttle, or wielded the sword, shake with palsy; “the strong men shall bow themselves” — the limbs, those pillars of the frame, shrunk and shrivelled, totter beneath its weight; “the grinders cease” — the teeth decay, and drop from their sockets, warning man that he himself shall soon drop into his grave; “those that look out of the windows be darkened” — the eye, that window where the soul sits looking out on the world, grows dim with years, and man enters the shadow of the tomb before he enters itself; “he shall rise up at the voice of the bird” — the sleep of the cradle is calm, that of robust youth long and deep, but old age brings broken slumbers, and wakes with the birds that sing in the dawn; “the daughters of music shall be brought low” — deafness swells the train of infirmities, and amid the cheerful circle the old man, cut off while alive from communion with the living, sits with furrowed brow and snowy head in a solitude which only religion can cheer; “they shall be afraid of that which is high” — with heart enfeebled, he leaves others to breast heights and hills, and, staff in hand, creeps along the flat shore or the level sward; “the almond tree shall flourish” — his head is white as its blossoms, with the frost of age; “the grasshopper shall be a burden” — such his weakness, though as the tiny insect leaps from blade to blade, the grass hardly bends beneath its weight; and, last of all, “desire shall fail” — the very wish for pleasures dies with the power of enjoying them. A miserable existence, unless where holy desires survive the decay of nature, and the saint longs for the hour when the dissolution of his old, crazy, earthly tabernacle shall set him free for his flight to heaven!

So Solomon paints man, to use his own words, as going “to his long home.” But instead of a gray, decrepit man creeping slowly along a shadowy vista, with a grave yawning to receive him, he might have introduced a beautiful, rosy, gleesome child, bounding on over the short course between its cradle and a tomb. The journey to the long home — one which we begin with life and are all engaged in — is long to some and short to others. The infant commences it before it has learned to walk; the old man continues it when his limbs are too feeble to bear him across the floor. It is one we carry on sleeping as well as waking — on Sabbath as on other days — on which we never halt, till we stumble into the grave which is dug at the end of the road. On this journey we go swiftly — flashing through the threads of life like a weaver’s shuttle; we go incessantly — moving night and day, like the hands that circle round the hours; our heart beating on like a pendulum, till the clock, wound up to go a certain time, has run down, or accident stops its motion.

We all are on the way to the long home; and at this season of the year* our position is that of travellers who have reached the summit of a mountain range that parts two great valleys. Standing on one of Time’s lofty watersheds, we have left one year behind, and the next, into which we are about to descend, lies stretched out before us. In such circumstances it is natural to do two things: — first, to look back, taking a retrospect: and, secondly, to look forward, and try to pierce the veil which, like a gray mist spread over the valley, conceals the future from our view.

The Retrospect. — One of the strangest things we meet with is to see consummate wisdom so far as the interests of this world are concerned, and consummate folly as to everything belonging to the next, in one and the same person — just as in

* This discourse was preached on the last Sabbath of the year.

2 E the bed of the Rhone after it has received the turbulent Arve the spectator sees two volumes of water that for a while flow on side by side — the one foul, the other so beautifully blue and pure that it looks like a liquid sky. Once on a time a vessel, freighted with gold, was wrecked in circumstances which left her crew no chance of life but swimming to the distant shore. Some had committed themselves to the deep; others were stripping for the struggle; when one, turning an avaricious eye on the treasure, seized the fortune at his hand. Infatuated wretch! His fellows remonstrated, but in vain. Loaded with gold, he leaps from the ship, and strikes out bravely for the shore. But by and by his strokes grow feebler, quicker — then a short convulsive struggle — and then, borne down by the weight he carries, he sinks beneath the wave. What a fool he was! We had not been such fools! — so many say, and perhaps truly; and yet, guilty of greater folly, they allow themselves to be so engaged, and indeed engrossed with the pursuits of time, whether of business or pleasure, as to neglect their salvation, and lose their souls.

The children of this world are wise in their generation! If a man is building a house, he takes good care, in the first place, to get a sound foundation. Is it a lighthouse, to stand with its tall form and burning head a lonely pillar amid tempestuous seas? — beneath the sand and shells that storms have flung on the fatal reef he goes down to the solid rock, seeking a foundation which cannot be moved. And after having secured a good foundation, in laying one course on another, in raising story over story, the work of examination keeps pace with the work of building. By square and plummet he proves his work; teaching us, even when we are resting, in the righteousness of Christ, on the Rock of Ages — in view of events which shall try every man’s work, how we should bring ours to the test of God’s holy Word.

This retrospect should embrace the way in which we have discharged our duty to God.

It is much easier to say what God has done for us than what we have done for Him. That opens up a vast subject; His bounty presenting the aspect of a majestic river, which, never frozen by winter nor dried by summer, winds full and flowing through the past. To reckon up the blessings which we have received at His hand would prove, in fact, a task as impossible as to number the dew-drops on the glittering sward, the leaves of a forest, or the sands of ocean. No doubt, as life is at the best but a chequered scene, we may have been afflicted; yet how far have our mercies outnumbered our miseries? Besides, who has not been afflicted less than his iniquities deserved? Besides, does not faith in the assurance that all things shall work for good to them who love God, and are the called according to His purpose, fling a bright bow on life’s blackest cloud? — work such change on our trials as the branch which Moses cast in on Marah’s waters, turning bitter to sweet and evil to good?

When God has done so much for us, nothing can be more reasonable than to inquire what we have done for Him; and anticipate by a few years, or days perhaps, the hour when He shall address to each of us these solemn words, Thou shalt be no longer steward; give an account of thy stewardship.

Opportunities of serving, honouring, glorifying, speaking for Him have occurred every day of the past year; and have they been improved, or neglected? Of our whole time He claims a seventh part — fifty-two days in every year, and therefore no less than ten whole years in the threescore and ten of human life — all this for His special service; communion with Him; and preparation for a world of which this is but the vestibule. How much work for God might we have done in fifty-two busy days? — how much has been done? Required to do all for His glory — even in matters of eating and drinking, can we recall any one thing we have done for that end? — any one word we have spoken on behalf of His cause, to the praise of His honour? — any one effort we have put forth to be saved, or to save others? Alas! on reviewing the past, the holiest, the best and busiest of us have to acknowledge ourselves “unprofitable servants;” and as to others, with a whole year misspent, abused, utterly lost, they seem miracles of sparing mercy; nor does one know whether most to wonder at their ingratitude, or admire His long-suffering who even yet delays to strike, waiting to be gracious.

This retrospect should embrace the way in which we have discharged our duty to our own souls.

It were sad if, on reviewing the past year, with all its opportunities, we could come to no other conclusion than this — “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!” We may have increased our store of earthly comforts, we may have clambered up some steps higher in society, we may have added broad acres to our estate — hundreds or thousands to our wealth; but, if we are not saved, we have only increased the difficulties of our salvation and the terrors of death. Nor, should we die now, have we any other sentence to pronounce on our works than Solomon pronounced on his — I looked on all the works which my hands had made, and on all the labour which I had laboured to do; and behold all was vanity and vexation of spirit; and there was no profit under the sun. We have spent our money for that which is not bread, and our labour for that which satisfieth not: and, with more toil and care and trouble than had been required to build a bower in Paradise, we have been training up a green, dying gourd in the vain hope of finding beneath its leaves the happiness found only in Him who is as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.

Happy those who did not see the old year die with unforgiven sins on its gray head, nor dread meeting it again at God’s bar of judgment. Happy those whom it found in a state of enmity, and left at peace with God. Happy those who, on taking stock and striking a balance, if I may so speak, find themselves poorer in spirit and richer in grace — who, on examining into their position, find that though nearer the grave they are riper for heaven, nearer to glory; and that a year which, making many wives widows and children orphans, turning some hopes into fruit and blasting others in the flower, has wrought many changes, has changed them to the better — chastened and sanctified them; so that they say, “we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

This retrospect should embrace the way in which we have done our duty to others.

The Life of Jesus, the title of many good and some bad books, has filled volumes. So full was that life of gracious utterances, and so crowded with works of majesty and mercy, that the evangelist St John says, “If they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written.” Yet the Life of Jesus may be summed up in this one short sentence, He went about doing good. This brought Him from heaven and nailed Him to the cross: for this object He lived, for it He died. Fancy our Lord on one of those mountain tops, where, with the world beneath and the heavens a.bove Him, He courted solitude, taking a quiet survey of one of His years — looking back on all the works which His hands had wrought, and on all the labour that He had laboured to do. How crowded the year with miracles and mercies — sinners warned; mourners comforted; the dead rising at His word; the blind gazing on His blessed face; the deaf listening with rapture to His words; the dumb singing His praises and proclaiming His name and power; more good crowded into one short day of that life than is spread over long years of ours!

Unless the same mind be in us that was in Jesus Christ, we are none of His. So it behoves us to consider what testimony, in good attempted or done to others, the past year bears to the genuineness of our Christianity. Whom have we warned? In our family, or in the circle of our friends or neighbours, whom have we sought to bring to Jesus? What hungry ones have we fed, what naked clothed? Whose wrongs have we sought to redress, whose sorrows attempted to alleviate? Whose cup has been filled out of ours? What widow’s heart have we made to sing for joy? Of the two, a river that fed of heaven and swelling beyond its banks spreads its waters on the thirsty fields, or a whirlpool that, moving around itself, and drawing all things to its centre, swallows them up into its own greedy and devouring vortex — which does our course most resemble? In the year that is gone has the world been the better or the worse of us?

It behoves us to consider these things, nor go recklessly on with such as, during the whole past year, and indeed their whole past life, have never given one hour of self-examination to a serious review of their life. What recklessness is this? — in our circumstances, what madness? Do we sail a sea where there is neither storm, nor cross tides, nor sunken rock, nor shifting sandbanks, that wre go so merrily on with songs below, and dances on the deck; neither keeping watch, nor taking observations, nor heaving the lead for soundings? There were fewer souls, as well as ships lost, if men would use the means of safety. We shrink from examining ourselves; but if, when judging our own cause with a strong bias in our own favour, we cannot bear to examine ourselves, how shall we stand at the bar of divine judgment — how endure the searching eye of God? “If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst they weaned thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?” Here, more than anywhere else, it is well to know the worst. None are beyond the reach of redemption, whom to awaken to a sense of their condition would only be to torment before their time. Men are going to ruin; but not like the boat that was seen shooting the rapid, and had reached a point above the cataract where no power could stem the raging current. To the horror of those who watched it shooting on to destruction, a man was seen on board, and asleep. The spectators ran along the banks. They cried; they shouted; and the sleeper awoke at length to take in all his danger at one fearful glance. To spring to his feet, to throw himself on the bench, to seize the oars, to strain every nerve in superhuman efforts to turn the boat’s head to the shore, was the work of an instant. But in vain. Away went the bark to its doom, like an arrow from the bow. It hangs a moment on the edge of the gulf; and then, is gone for ever. Suppose a man to be as near hell! — if I could awaken him, I would. The dying thief was saved in the act of going over into perdition. Christ caught and saved him there. And He who is mighty to save, saving at the uttermost, can save, though all our life were wasted to its last breath, if that last breath is spent in gasping out St Peter’s cry, “Save me, Lord, I perish!”

The Prospect. — Inspired of God, men have foretold coming events; and so have others who were neither prophets, nor prophets’ sons. To Kirkcaldy of Grange, then holding out Edinburgh Castle against the Protestant Reforming party, with whom he was once associated, John Knox (as I remarked on another occasion) sent a remarkable message from his death-bed. “Warn him,” said the dying man, “not to trust in yon craggy rock, from which he shall be shamefully dragged to be hanged up in the face of the sun.” And, improbable as to many at the time it seemed, it fell out as Knox had predicted. He was dragged from his stronghold, like a ruffled eagle from her rocky nest, and ignominiously hanged in the face of day. The secret of the Lord, says the Bible, is with them that fear Him; and in regard to extraordinary communications of His will and mind, who shall limit the Holy One of Israel? But the great Reformer made no claim to the gift of prophecy; and whatever powers were attributed to him in a superstitious age, those who honour his memory regard Knox as having been nothing more than a man of more than ordinary sagacity. Penetrating through the mask of false pretences into men’s real designs, and reasoning from causes to their legitimate effects, he owed his fame, as one inspired, to the seer-like certainty with which he foresaw and foretold the natural issue of affairs.

History, in a sense, is prophecy; since, according to the words of Solomon, “that which is to be hath already been.” It is so to a large extent in the kingdom of Nature; her sequences and her seasons being fixed by unalterable laws, each running year just repeats the past. And thus, though groves are mute and fields are naked now, we can predict that spring shall come with opening buds and singing birds; and summer come, her green lap filled with flowers; and brown autumn come, armed with the reaper’s sickle and crowned with ears of corn.

Taking men in the mass, so is it in regard to their fortunes and destiny — to vary the mode but not the sense of the wise man’s adage, That which hath already been is that which is to be. This does not apply to individuals; since many who lived last year three hundred and sixty-five days, shall not live this year as many hours. Nor does it apply to individual homes and households — the cradle shall give place to the coffin; the marriage last year formed, this shall dissolve; and, on the other hand, a tide of good fortune coming with the turn of the year, many before its close taking their harp from the willow-tree, shall sit singing with Hannah, “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord; mine horn is exalted in the Lord; for the Lord killeth and maketh alive; he bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up.” But though the fortunes of individual persons, or single families, may vary much from year to year, it is otherwise with masses of men. In regard to these, the events of last year, whether they were good or evil, shall find their counterpart in this, and thus the retrospect becomes a prospect, and the past presents a magic mirror in which we can descry the future.

Thus some shall continue to neglect salvation.

A rope thrown to a drowning man, if well thrown once, does not need to be twice thrown. It needs no eloquent speaker on pier or bank to address the sinking wretch and persuade him not to “neglect so great salvation.” Let it go spinning out within clutch of his eager hands, and how he grasps it; and holds it with the grim gripe of death! But it is not once, or twice, or twenty times that salvation in these last twelve months has been offered; and to this day many have obstinately, madly, refused to accept it. By preachers and His providences, even as a father pleadeth with his children, God has pled with them; His Son has implored them; though vexed and grieved by their obstinacy, His Spirit has continued to strive with them — the year has brought them a thousand opportunities of being saved; yet it is gone, and they are not saved. Alas! in the words of Scripture, “The harvest is past, and summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Give men an opportunity of escape — do literally what Christ is figuratively said to do, “proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound,” disarm the warders, throw open the cells — and what a rush for liberty! and, after a brief space of wild shouts and tread of hurrying feet, what a profound silence and perfect solitude! Yet how often has the door of mercy been thrown open? With kindness in His looks, and love in His heart, and His hand pointing to an open door, how often has Jesus appeared to us, saying, “Behold, I have set before you an open door!” and turning over to the other side for a little more sleep, how often have we dismissed Him with this reply, “Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season I will call for thee!” Is this to go on for ever? — each year repeating the risk, the sin, and folly of the past? The prospect looks even more melancholy than the retrospect. There is less hope for us each year and day we live in sin. Every hour we are drifting out to sea — the helpless, helmless barque is leaving the lessening shore farther and farther behind. Our disease becomes incurable. Like those stones which, though soft as clay on being raised from the quarry, grow hard as flint through exposure to the weather, our hearts are growing harder day by day. Let such as have been delaying, delay no longer; dare no more. The axe is raised, gleaming, against the tree; and though it should not fall before the year expires, before that God may be provoked to withdraw His Spirit, and leave us to our fate, saying, “They are joined to their idols, let them alone.”

Some shall be converted.

Like the loftiest snow-crowned peaks that tower above the common Alps, there are periods and events in history which are peculiarly marked and memorable. Such a period in the history of the world was that of the Deluge, when all mankind were drowned but one family; and also that Christmas night when angels announced the advent and sung the birth of the new-born King. Such a period in the history of nations was that of the Hebrew exodus, when Israel burst his bonds, and left the land of Egypt; and that also when He who had delivered His people by the hand of Moses summoned a woman to the rescue, and saved them by the hand of Esther from the

cruel wrath of Haman. Such also was the era

2 F of the Reformation in our Church, and of the Revolution in our country — events whose influence, growing with time, and extending with distance, and widening out on all sides like the watery circle that leaves the middle of the lake to break in wavelets on its strands, is felt this day on the shores of America and the plains of Hindostan.

In the history of individuals also there are memorable periods — events on which turns man’s eternal, as well as his present, destiny. And of all his years and days that is worthiest of a Christian’s remembrance on which, passing from a state of nature into one of grace, he was born again — he drew the first breath, and, in an earnest prayer, uttered the first cry of a new life. Many usher in each new year with revelry, and celebrate their birth-day as it comes round with feasts, and songs, and dances, and delights, who shall regret they were ever born — saying, “Let the day perish wherein I was born — why died I not from the womb?” But the last year shall be one of everlasting and grateful remembrance to all whom it found the enemies, and left the friends of God; whom it found slaves, and left freemen; whom it found on the way to hell, but, converted, washed, and sanctified, it left on the road to heaven. That which is to be is that which hath already been. Only let us pray that if the past year has witnessed thousands, this may witness tens of thousands of souls converted, poor sinners saved; that if its fields yielded harvests of thirty, this, in a revenue of glory to God and good to men, may yield, not thirty, but sixty, even an hundred-fold. We cannot but hope that many shall be saved this year — plucked as brands from the burning. God is making up the roll of His elect; Christ is gathering the jewels of His crown; heaven is filling fast; and why should we see others enter in countless crowds, and be ourselves left out? The cry comes forth, “Yet there is room,” room to spare! While the door stands open, rush in — for that matter strive to enter in; and while a mouldering tombstone shall bear the date of your first birth, of the year on which you were born for the grave, let this happier year be engraven on your grateful and enduring memory as that on which you were born for God and glory.

Death shall summon many to judgment.

Though, as he lies a-dying, every one feels as if he were alone in the valley, none but himself on that dark road, he is not a solitary traveller — a great throng crowd the way, passing in at the gates of the eternal world. Men die in such numbers, that for every breath we draw some one breathes his last; with every beat of our hearts some heart ceases to beat. Let a knell be rung for every departing spirit, and that bell would toll on without a pause till Time’s own knell was rung, and Death itself should die.

That which hath been is that which is to be. Willing or unwilling, fit or unfit to die, converted or otherwise, voyagers to a land of bliss or bound to misery, many in this have entered on their last year. Like time and tide, death — regardless of his convenience and deaf to his prayers — will wait on no man. If in past years God has set a mark on our houses, and turned the angel of death from our door, as by the blood in Egypt, that immunity cannot last for ever. The more the years of our life, this one is the more likely to be that of our death — the farther the tide recedes, the higher at the flow it throws its foaming waves on the beach; the longer the cloud is gathering, and thickening, and darkening before it bursts, the brighter the lightning flashes, the louder the thunder peals.

Since death is gain to the Christian, and through faith in Christ may be so to all, we should familiarise our minds with that event: beginning every year, and indeed every day, as if it were to be — what it may be — our last. Joseph of Aritnathea prepared himself a tomb, probably placing it among the flowers and delights of his garden, that the sight of the “long home” where he was to lie might keep him mindful of his latter end. One whom I knew, with the same object and from no contempt of death, had his coffin made, and studied the Bible with that memorial of our mortality standing up, tall and black, beside him. One of the greatest monarchs went further still. Having resigned the sceptre and retired to a monastery, he prepared a tomb for himself, and fixed a day for the ceremonies of his burial. The funeral procession is formed; and with the bell tolling for the dead, it takes its slow way to the tomb, the king himself bringing up the rear — a ghastly form attired in a long white shroud. He is laid in his coffin; round the body the priests go, sprinkling showers of holy water, and swinging incense out of golden censers. The service for the dead is chanted over him; the last prayer is offered; the last psalm has died away in solemn echoes; the candles, types of life’s flame, are extinguished; and, closing the door, they leave the living man alone, stretched out in a coffin, enclosed within a tomb, to meditate amid its lonely and awful darkness on such subjects as this singular and terrible solemnity was oalculated to suggest. Violent and revolting as such expedients seem, better thus to be kept mindful, than live habitually forgetful, of our latter end, and leave death to break in on our fatal slumbers with the suddenness and surprise of a thief. Watch, is the word of Christ — watch, for ye know neither the day nor the hour when the Son of man cometh. To be prepared for death — so prepared that it may be the happiest event that ever befell us, so prepared that we may show how calmly a Christian can die, so prepared that we may confront this king of terrors without the shadow of a doubt or any sense of fear, so prepared that, seeing the heavens opening above our heads and angels descending to carry us to glory, we shall be better pleased to go than to stay — let us make our calling and election sure. Let us work out our salvation with fear and trembling; looking to Jesus for pardon, and to God to work in us by His Holy Spirit both to will and to do of His good pleasure.