Last Things

“It is the last time.” — 1 John ii., 18.

JOHN is here enforcing certain truths by the consideration that the people to whom he writes have come to the closing dispensation of the world, and says, “It is the last time.”

I am standing in the last service of the last Sabbath of the last month of the year. Four more ringings of the city clock, and the year, with all its joys, griefs, and achievements, will be done. It is the last time, and so I shall speak to you of last things.

I. My hearers are coming nearer their last business day. You move in routine. You rise at seven o’clock, breakfast, start for the store, enter your counting-room, read your letters, and give consequent orders. You look at the prices current, and talk with customers. You sell and you buy. You run over to the bank or insurance company. You come back and look into the cash-draw¬ er, and see by the book how much money your partner has drawn out. You run out to lunch. You come back. You drive out the street-peddlers, wdio have razors, or apples, or books to sell. At five or six o’clock you start for Fulton, Wall, or South Ferry. That order goes on day after day, and year after year. Yet a day is not far distant which may seem to be like all the others, but shall be entirely different. It will have two twilights — that of the morning and that of the evening. There will be a meridian. You will go to business — you will come back. Yet it will be, in the calendar of eternity, as marked a day as though it had no twilight; as though every hour the sky rang a fire -bell; as though faces * looked out from all the clouds; as though the wind had voices; as though every hour an angel shot past your store door. It will be your last business day. Unknown and unexpected by yourself, you will terminate all your business engagements. You will shut your cash-drawer, will close your portfolio, will slam shut the money-safe, will take your hat and go out. Nothing that ever happens in the store can take you back again. A burglar might blow open the safe; you would not go in to examine. A fire might consume half the goods; you would not see the damage. Gold might go up to 150, or drop to 105; it would not* disturb you. After ten, twenty, or thirty years being seen in business places, or the ex¬ change, or at the broker’s, you will not appear. Men will ask about you, and say, “Where is so-and-so?” and your friend will say, “Have you not heard the news?” and will take a paper from his pocket, and point to your name on the death-list. If things are wrong, they will always stay wrong. No chance of correcting a false en¬ try, or repairing the loss done a customer by a dishonest sample, or handing back the five dollars overpaid you by the cashier at the bank, or apologizing for the imposition you inflicted upon one of your clerks. The seal has been set to all your business life. Good-by to the store! Good-by to the stock exchange! Good-by to all your business friends! Good-by to New York! It is the last time!

You who have been in business for twenty-five years

in New York, to-morrow, as you walk down the street to your store, see how all the signs on the store doors are changed. The names are all different from what they were when you started in business; or, if they are the same, it is because the boys of the family have found it an advantage to keep the name of the father on the sign. Quietly, unobservedly, yet inevitably, most of your contemporaries came to their last time.

II. I remark that men are coming nearer to their last sinful amusement. A dissipated life soon stops. The machinery of life is so delicate that it will not endure much trifling. As the herdsman throws a peck of corn under the swine’s snout to be crunched and devoured, so dissipation is throwing the bodies and souls of men, by the scores, into the maw of death. They think they can stand night carousal; are as well satisfied to retire at one o’clock in the morning as at ten at night; feel as safe in drinking wine as water; walk without compunction with the unclean. But they will soon be through. The time comes when, with flushed countenances, they will turn back from the gaming-table, or come reeling from the midnight debauch, and, wrapping themselves about with sin as a garment, will stagger on, and, striking their foot against the corner of their own tombstone, will fall flat into hell.

Look into that door! It is not safe to go farther. There they sit — the debauchees flinging the dice; bloats emptying the decanters; flaunting daughters of death whirling about in the dance. With some of them it is the last night on earth. Twist up the gaslights full head, for eternal darkness is dropping! Fill the glass to the brim, for inextinguishable thirst is about to strike its fangs! Drink deep and long, and all the hiccough¬ ing, jeering, blaspheming crew rise up and click the rim of their glasses! and spirits lost, with fiery fingers clutch¬ ing the cups, give wild huzza of death, as, all together, they break through the rotten and crackling floor into the smoking, screaming horrors of the damned; and all the demons of darkness clap their hands and shout, “Ha! ha! It was their last time /”

III. Again I remark that men are coming nearer to their last Sabbath. The week seems to me like a Bed Sea, tossing, tossing; the Sabbath like a path cut through it, where we may walk dry shod. God lifting his hand again above the waters, all our cares and annoyances are whelmed in the flood.

Where did you pass your boyhood Sabbaths? You sjay in a New -England village. You remember the church, and the green in front; and the cry of the swallows in the tower as the tap of the bell scattered them; and the quiet grave-yard beside it, some of the stones leaning over, and the moss almost covering the letters; the long line of horses at the hitching-post; the group at the church door; the minister, plain, and earnest, and affectionate; the children, with whom you exchanged mischievous glances, and the aged men and women, to whom you looked up with veneration, though they were sometimes asleep at the head of the pew — all of them sound asleep now in the shadow of the church that once they frequented. With some of you it was the Scotch kirk, or the English chapel, or the city church. Some¬ how, ever since then you loved Sunday to come. Its sunrise seems more golden; its noonday more bright; its evening more suggestive; and although you feel, be-LAST THINGS.

fore God, that many of your Sundays have been wasted, you still say, “Sweet Sabbath! Messenger from God! Pillow on which to put the aching head! Day fragrant of all sweet memories! How I love thee!”

If you are forty years of age, two thousand and eighty of your Sabbaths are gone. Indeed, the whole flock of them is started, and the last of them will soon spread wing. It will break from the east. The bells will ring. There will be the shuffle of young feet and old on the way to church. The baptismal waters will be shed, the sacramental wine poured, the evening service will pass, the Amen will finish the benediction, the lights will be lowered, the gates will jar shut, and the sexton will turn the key in the lock. Nothing peculiar in the looks of the wall that night, or in the sound of the music. Put that will be the ending of your Sabbaths. Can you not have one more? Not one more. It will come for others, but not for us. The last hymn. The last sermon. The last benediction. The last Sabbath. The last time! This very Sabbath may be your closing day of rest. If so, you had better take a good look at all these sacred places, and say, “Farewell, pew and pulpit, and all ye worshipers! Farewell, song and sermon! I make my exit! Farewell, thou Christian Sabbath! To all these scenes, where I have rejoiced, and prayed, and wept, farewell forever! It is the last time /”

IY. Again, we come near the last year of our life. The world is at least six thousand years old. Sixty thousand years may yet come, and the procession may seem interminable, but our own closing earthly year is not far off. Fifteen hundred and forty-six was a memorable year, because in it Luther died. Eighteen hum dred and fifty-two was a marked year, because in it Lord Wellington died. Eighteen hundred and fifty-six was a marked year, because in it Hugh Miller died. But there is a year near at hand more tremendous to us, and that is the year in which we will die. Seventeen .hundred and seventy-five was a memorable year, because in it the battle of Lexington was fought. Eighteen hundred and fifteen was a memorable year, for in it Waterloo was fought. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine was a memorable year, because in it Solferino was fought. But there will be a more memorable year to us, and that will be the year in which we fight our battle with our last ene¬ my. That year will open with the usual Hew Year congratulations. It will revel in the same orchard-blossom¬ ing; it will roar with the same Fourth of July rejoicings; it will close with the same Christmas festivals; and yet it will be unlike all others in the fact that it will be our closing year. The spring grass may be cleft of the spade to let us down to our resting-place; or, while the summer grain is falling to the sickle, we may be har¬ vested for another world; or, while the autumnal leaves are flying in the November gale, we may fade and fall; or the driving sleet may cut the faces of the black-tasseled horses that pull us out in our last ride. But it will be the year in which our body and soul part; the year in which for us time ends and eternity begins. All other years are as nothing. The year in which you ‘were born, the year in which you were married, the year in which you began business for yourself, the year in which your father died — all of them are of less importance than this last year of your life.

During the year which expires to-night, in three hours

and twenty -five minutes from this time by that clock, how many have gone into the next world? About five million five hundred thousand souls. It was their last year. Some of them may have expected it, but the great majority of them, if foretold that this would be their closing year, would have laughed outright and said, “Is not my arm strong? Is not my eye clear? Is not my lung sound? Who can skip, or climb, or lift, or run better than I? The doctor of the ‘ Life Insurance Company’ pronounced me sound. All my friends congratulate me on my healthy appearance. Begone with your evil prophecy! I shall see my threescore and ten!” Yet those five million five hundred thousand have gone. Ko more motion in their heart than if it had never pul¬ sated. Yo more brightness in their eye than if it had always been blind. The earth sails on — a great hearse containing thousands, millions, billions, trillions, quadril¬ lions of the dead. But the record of the year is not yet made up. In the three hours and twenty minutes that remain, at least ten thousand nine hundred spirits will swing out of this life. The gate of eternity has opened and shut to let in six or seven souls since I began that last sentence. I beat the seconds with my hand! At every stroke a spirit flies. There goes one — another — and another. It was the last time!

What is that winged creature flying through the air? It is the Present Year. It is flying from eternity to eternity. I say, “Stop, oh flying Year!” It stops not, but cries as it passes, “With my torch I kindled the mornings. From my cup I poured the blackness of the night. 1 strewed the marriage-altar and dug the grave. I set on fire the cities and the forest. I palsied the eloquent

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tongue, and spread the sick-bed, and delivered the captive, and awoke the song, and garnered the harvest. Out of my bosom flew the white dove of peace, and from my hand were flung the arrows of war. I brought message of mercy to one, and from another I took away the last chance. I pulled on the chariot of the King. Between the eternities I fly. One stroke more of my wing and I shall be at rest. The time is short. Prepare! Prepare!

Y. Again I remark that we are coming nearer the last moment of our life. That is often the most cheer¬ ful moment. John Howard talked of it with exhilaration, and selected his own burial-place, saying to his friend, “A spot near the village of Dauphiny would suit me nicely.” When John Doule was dying in the triumph of the Gospel, some one said, “Let us pray.” “Ho,” said another Christian, “let us sing him over the Jordan!” But it will be a dark moment if we are un¬ fitted for it. When we get in the last two minutes of our lives, there will be no time left for any thing. You might as wrell try to strike a match and get a light on a ship’s deck in the midst of a hurricane as to prepare for eternity when the winds of death are in full blast. It is a poor time to start to get your house insured when the flames are bursting out of all the windows, and it is a poor time to attempt to prepare for death when the realities of eternity are taking hold of us. Fortunately for those who stay behind, the remorse of those who leave the wrorld unprepared is not usually observed. In the exhausted physical condition nothing is especially evident. But I suppose the soul flies around terribly, and tries to hold back, and flutters its wings like a cap-

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tured eagle, and writhes, and turns, and tries to batter itself loose from its pursuers. If you come to a precipice, and look a thousand feet down, you get dizzy and want to hold fast. How then must the unprepared soul feel when it comes to the brink of this life and looks down — further than a stone could drop in a thousand years, and irresistible forces are pushing it to the verge, and it knows that there is nothing to clutch, nothing to brace itself against! The soul says, “The last minute has come. Ho time to pray, or to rehearse the past, or to cry for mercy. Every thing done, and irrevocably done. Here I stand on the dividing line between two worlds. Shall I jump? Which way shall I jump? Shall I fly? Which way shall I fly?”

‘A California stage-driver, after having been engaged in that business for many years, was dying, and in his last moment he put his foot out of the bed and swung it back and forth. Some one said to him, “Why do you make that motion with your foot?” He replied, “I am on the down grade, and I can not get my foot on the brake.” When our last moment comes, we can not stop. Our going will be inevitable, and we will not be able to put our foot on the brake.

“Lo! on a narrow neck of land,

’Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,

Yet how insensible!

A point of time, a moment’s space,

Removes me to yon heavenly place,

Or shuts me up in hell!”

I congratulate all Christian people on the fact that they have come to the last Sabbath of the last month of the year, for the reason that they are nearer the end of all their sorrows. Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains I was walking with some of the passengers to relieve the overladen stage, and one of them gave me his history. He said, “With my wife I came to California twenty years ago. We suffered every hardship. I went to the mines, hut had no luck. I afterward worked at a trade, but had no luck. Then I went to farming, but had no luck. We suffered almost starvation. Every thing seemed to go against us. While we were in complete poverty, my wife died. After her death I went again to the mines. I struck a vein of gold which yielded me forty thousand dollars. I am now on my way to San Francisco to transfer the mine, for which I am to receive one hundred thousand dollars.” “Then,” said I, “you are worth one hundred and forty thousand dollars.” He said, “Yes; but it comes too late. My wife is gone. The money is nothing to me now.”

So there are those whose entire life is made up of poverty and misfortune. When success comes it comes too late, and they can not enjoy it. But, glory to God! the path of tears has a terminus. The storm will not blow on forever. Child of God, you are not far off from the last disappointment and the last groan. The Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall lead you to living fountains of water, and God shall wipe away all tears from your eyes.

To others my subject brings arousal. In three hours and ten minutes more the volume of your year’s opportunity and behavior will be closed, clasped, sealed, and laid away on the shelf of history. No prayer can be added; no privilege inscribed; no sin erased. Just as the Book closes to-night at twelve o’clock, it will be un-LAST THINGS.

til the archangel wrenches it open. The recording angel is this moment writing the last sentence of the tremendous volume. He either, writes “December 31st, 1871,” your name under it, and the words “Accepted Christ, and all is well” or, in the other case, he writes “December 31st, 1871,” your name under it, and the words “Would not turn. The year and the day of grace are ended. He must perish /” and the lids of the great book come shut with a strong hand; and as the angel lays it down at the foot of the throne, I hear him say with the solemnity of the judgment day, “Ho more mercy for that man. It is the last time. Holy Spirit, fly away! Angels, cease to hover! Sword of truth, be sheathed! Gate of heaven, clang shut! Done! Done! It is the last time /”

Shall not these closing moments of the year witness your repentance? Shall not this hour record your flight from sin?

I have read that when the Declaration of Independence was being made in Philadelphia in 1776, the people were so anxious to know the exact moment when the document was completed that they placed a man at the door of the hall where the delegates wTere assembled, and another man on the stairs leading to the tower, and another man with his hand on the rope of the bell; and then, when the last signer of the Declaration had affixed his name, the man at the door shouted upward filing!” and the man on the stairs heard it, and shouted upward, “Ring!” and the man with his hand on the bell of the rope heard it, and sounded the tidings over the city.

If to-night, in the strength of Christ, you would make your declaration of independence from the power of sin, there would be great rejoicing on earth and in heaven. I would cry upward to the angels poising in mid air, Ring! and they to those standing on the battlements of heaven, Ring / and those on the battlements to the dwellers in the temples and in the mansions, Ring! and all heaven would ring, and ring, at the news of a soul redeemed.