A Startling Announcement
“This year thou shalt die.” — Jeremiah xxviii., 16.-
JEREMIAH, accustomed to saying bold things, ad¬ dresses Hananiah in these words. They prove true. In sixty days Hananiah was a dead man.
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, Ed¬ ward YI., 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 seven 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 well-nigh 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 burst¬ ing thunderhead: “This year thou shalt die!”
May God help us in this service. I know not why you have come. On the coast of England, three men entered
a house of worship with stones in their pockets, intend¬ ing to interrupt the services and assault the preacher. As the preacher began, one of the men said, “Let us throw.” The other said, “Let us wait until he has made out this point.” At the close of that, the first said, “Now let us throw.” The third suggested, “I think wre had better not throw these stones at all, but listen.” The first two, in disgust, left the building, and were after¬ ward executed for great crimes. The third remained, and accepted the truth of the Gospel, and afterward proclaimed it to many thousands. You may have come here to-night, some of you, merely to pelt me with your criticisms; but I think you had better drop your weapons. It makes but little difference to me wThat you think of me, as it makes but little difference to you what I think of you. But what think ye of Christ? Of death? Of the judgment? Of heaven? Of hell?
The text will probably prove true of some of us: “This year thou shalt die.” The probability is augment¬ ed by the fact that all of us who are over thirty 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 “three days’ grace” 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 wTashed a few people off a plank, but a disaster that may have swept away a thou¬ sand million. If the Atlantic Ocean, by a lurch of the earth to-night, should drown this hemisphere, and the Pacific Ocean, by a sudden lurch of the earth, should drown the other hemisphere, leaving about as many beings as could be got in one or two Cunard steamers, it would give you an idea of what the ancient flood was.
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 wTas 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 Jhe 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: “This year thou shalt die.”
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-wTorker out of a P hundred observes any moderation. There is something so stimulating in our climate that, if John Brown, the es¬ sayist of Edinburg, had lived here, he would have broken down at thirty-five instead of fifty-five, and Charles Dick¬ ens would have dropped at forty.
There is something in all our occupations which pre¬ disposes to disease. If we be stout, to disorders ranging from fevers to apoplexy. If we be frail, to diseases rang¬ ing 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. Founderymen take death in with the filings. Shoemakers pound away their own lives on the last. Overdriven merchants measure off their own lives with the yard-stick. 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.
Bajnd climatic changes threaten our lives. By rea¬ son 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 win¬ try blast cuts through our thin apparel. The hoof, the wheel, the fire-arms, the assassin, await 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: “This year thou shalt die”
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 “trust -funds,” see that they are rightly deposited and accounted for. Let no widow or orphan scratch on your tombstone, “This man wronged me of my inheritance,” Many a man has died, leaving a competency, whose property has, through his own care¬ lessness, 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 “this year thou shalt die”
I advise also that you be busy in Christian work. IIow 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 hundreds into heaven; that Dodd¬ ridge took in many thousands; that Paul took in a him-A STARTLING ANNOUNCEMENT.
dred 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, “That is the man who never lifted hand or voice for the redemption of his fellows! Look at him, all heaven!” 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. “This year thou shalt die /”
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 Melchisedec 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 any thing but the question, “How shall I escape wrath and win heaven?” 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 any thing but immediately laying hold on God.
It is high time to get out of your sins. You say, “I have committed no great transgressions.” 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 ’ 341
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’s 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 — so 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 your 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! Kepent of them, or perish!
A maniac was found pacing along the road with a torch in one hand and a pail of water in the other, and some one asked him what he meant to do with them. He answered, “With this torch I mean to burn down heaven, and with this water I mean to put out. the fires of hell.” He was a maniac. He could do the one thing just as well as he could do the other. There is no such thing as putting out the sorrows of the self-destroyed.
They bum on forever. Fly for your life, while flight is possible. No time to lose if you want to escape your sins, for “this year thou shalt die.”
Let me announce that Christ, the Lord, stands ready to save any man who wrants to be saved. He waited for you all last year, and all the year before, and 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, “I shall never forget this. When you wTant any thing, come to me.” 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 can not do enough for the rescuer. You throw your arms around him. You offer him any compensation. You say to him, “Any thing that you want shall be yours. I will never cease to be grateful.” But my Lord Jesus sees your soul drowning in wrathful waves of death, and attempts to bring it ashore, and you not only refuse him thanks, but stand on the beach and say, “Drop that soul! If I want it saved, I will save it myself.”
I wish you might know what a job Jesus undertook when he carried your case to Calvary. They crowded him to the wall. They struck him. They spit on 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? Oh dying sinner, 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 he dissected, or they would never know how to stop the plague. A Dr. Guyon said, “To-morrow morning I will proceed to a dissection.” 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 every thing to his people. He comes down into the reeking hospital of earth. He lays his hand to the work. Under our plague, he dies — the healthy for the sick, the pure for the polluted, the innocent for the guilty. Behold the love! Be¬ hold 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. “This year thou. shalt die”
This great salvation of the Gospel I now offer to every man, woman, and child. You can not buy it. You can not earn it. A Scotch writer says that a poor woman, one cold winter’s day, looked through the window* of a
king’s conservatory, and saw a bunch of grapes hanging against the glass. She said, “Oh, if I only had that bunch of grapes for my sick child at home!” At her spinning-wheel she earned a few shillings, and went to buy the grapes. The king’s 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’s daughter was walking in the garden at the time, and she heard the excitement, and, seeing the poor wom¬ an, said to her, “My father is not a merchant, to sell, but he is a king, and gives.” Then she reached up and, plucked the grapes, and dropped them into the poor wom¬ an’s apron. So Christ is a king, and all the fruits of his pardon he freely gives. They may not be bought. With¬ out money and without price, take this sweet cluster from the vineyards of God.
I am coming to the close of my sermon. I sought for a text appropriate for the occasion. I thought of taking one in Job: “My days fly as a weaver’s shuttle of a text in the Psalms: “So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom of the prayer of the vine-dresser: “Lord, let it alone this year also but pressed upon my attention, first of all, and last of all, and above all, were the words, “This year thou shalt die”
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 of the Tabernacle and of the Free College; and if he takes me, it will be well with both these institutions. I have a hope that, notwithstanding all my sins and wanderings, I shall, through the infinite mercy of my Savior, come out at the right place. I have nothing to brag of by way of Christian experience; but two things I have learned — my 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 “life insurance,” be able to leave the world feeling that your family need not become paupers. 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, “Are you ready?” you might, with an outburst of Christian triumph, answer, “Ay, ay! all ready.”
I know not what our last words may be. Lord Chesterfield prided himself on his politeness, and said, in his last moment, “Give Dayroles a chair.” Dr. Adam, a dying schoolmaster, said, “It grows dark. The boys may dismiss.” Lord Tenterden, supposing himself on the bench of a court-room, said, in his last moment, “Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider your ver¬ dict.” A dying playactor said,“Drop the curtain. The farce is played out.” I would rather have, for my dying words, those of one greater than Chesterfield, or Dr. Adam, or Lord Tenterden: “lam 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 P 2 kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me.”
This is the last January to some who are present. 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 giv’e the New-Year’s congratulations. As a proclamation of joy to some, and as a matter of alarm to others, I leave in your ears these five short words of one syllable each, “This yeah thou shalt die!”