Reverence for the Past

2 Corinthians iv. 12 v. “Death worketh in us, but life in yon.”

I understand the words to depict an old man speaking to the new generation. He says: — “I have had the nut to crack; you will get the kernel. I have had the labour; you will have the joy. I have had the toil of making the fortune; you will have the ease of spending it.” It is a wonderfully true picture of the beginning and ending of things. The beginning of every new life is hard on its possessor. The first man of science is treated as a wizard; the first social reformer is called a revolutionary; the first poet is deemed mad. How many things were forbidden to our fathers which to us are the breath of common air, and as easy as its breathing! Christ is one of these. To be a Christian was, in Paul’s days, to be a weakling. It was a thing to be ashamed of; it was not the fashion. But Paul says a time is coming when it shall be the fashion, when it shall be counted a shame to be anything else. He says: —” Let the younger generation know that what I sow they shall reap. Let them know that there is a day approaching when Christ shall be an atmosjDhere. Let them learn that the precepts of the mount shall ere long be the precepts of the plain. Let them remember that the things which I speak in whispers shall be uttered aloud — taught in the schools, proclaimed in the temples, demanded in the market-place, desired in the haunts of pleasure, expected in the hearth and home. My strait gate shall be their broadway; my shadow their light; my weakness their strength; my straining their strain of music. Death worketh in me, but life in them.

My soul, art thou looking with contempt on the dead past? It deserves a monument from thee. Hast thou forgotten that the sun in which thou baskest had its rising in blood? Hast thou forgotten that thy life was death to somebody? Hast thou forgotten that thy privileges were the pain of thy fathers? Art thou contrasting thy breadth with the narrowness of the ancients? If they had not been narrow, thou wouldst not have been broad. When Herod is seeking the young child to kill it, what can men do but guard it? There is a time in which faith ought to lie in swaddling bands. In its infancy it is helpless, speechless; and it is in the midst of foes. Ought it not to be protected, isolated, fenced round and round? Yes; and the men who did so should be honoured. It could never have said, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and on earth,” if it had not begun with the bands of Bethlehem. Thou that art in the enjoyment of liberal things, build a monument to the narrowness of thy fathers. Life works in thee because death worked in them.