May I say, without seeming to be morbid or unpractical, one lesson is
that we should cultivate a sense of the transiency of this outward
life? One of our old authors says somewhere, that it is wholesome to
smell at a piece of turf from a churchyard. I know that much harm has
been done by representing Christianity as mainly a scheme which is to
secure man a peaceful death, and that many morbid forms of piety have
given far too large a place to the contemplation of skulls and
cross-bones. But for all that, the remembrance of death present in our
lives will often lay a cool hand upon a throbbing brow; and, like a
bit of ice used by a skilful physician, will bring down the
temperature, and stay the too tumultuous beating of the heart. 'So
teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.'
It will minister energy, and lead us to say, like our Lord, 'We must
work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.'
Let me say again--a very plain, practical lesson is to dig deep down
for our foundations below the rubbish that has accumulated. If a man
wishes to build a house in Rome or in Jerusalem he has to go fifty or
sixty feet down, through potsherds and broken tiles and triturated
marbles, and the dust of ancient palaces and temples. We have to drive
a shaft clear down through all the superficial strata, and to lay the
first stones on the Rock of Ages. Do not build on that which quivers
and shakes beneath you. Do not try to make your life's path across the
weeds, or as they call it in Egypt, the 'sudd,' that floats on the
surface of the Nile, compacted for many a mile, and yet only a film on
the surface of the river, to be swept away some day. Build on God.
And the last lesson is, let us see to it that our wills are in harmony
with His, and the work of our hands His work. We can do that will in
all the secularities of our daily life. The difference between the
work that shrivels up and disappears and the work that abides is not
so much in its external character, or in the materials on which it is
expended, as in the motive from which it comes. So that, if I might so
say, if two women are sitting at the same millstone face to face, and
turning round the same handle, one of them for one half the
circumference, and the other for the other, and grinding out the same
corn, the one's work may be 'gold, silver, precious stones,' which
shall abide the trying fire; and the other's may be 'wood, hay,
stubble,' which shall be burnt up. 'He that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever.'
So let us set ourselves, dear friends! to our several tasks for this
coming year. Never mind about the century, it will take care of
itself. Do your little work in your little corner, and be sure of
this, that amidst changes you will stand unchanged, amidst tumults you
may stand calm, in death you will be entering on a fuller life, and
that what to others is the end will be to you the beginning. 'If any
man's work abide, he shall receive a reward,' and he himself shall
abide with the abiding God.
The bitter cynic said half the truth when he said, 'One generation
goeth, and another cometh; but the earth abides.' The mystic Apostle
saw the truth steadily, and saw it whole when he said, 'Lo! the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever.'