_A New Year's Sermon_
'It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father
hath put in His own power.'--ACTS i. 7.
The New Testament gives little encouragement to a sentimental view of
life. Its writers had too much to do, and too much besides to think
about, for undue occupation with pensive remembrances or imaginative
forecastings. They bid us remember as a stimulus to thanksgiving and a
ground of hope. They bid us look forward, but not along the low levels
of earth and its changes. One great future is to draw all our longings
and to fix our eyes, as the tender hues of the dawn kindle infinite
yearnings in the soul of the gazer. What may come is all hidden; we can
make vague guesses, but reach nothing more certain. Mist and cloud
conceal the path in front of the portion which we are actually
traversing, but when it climbs, it comes out clear from the fogs that
hang about the flats. We can track it winding up to the throne of
Christ. Nothing is certain, but the coming of the Lord and 'our
gathering together to Him.'
The words of this text in their original meaning point only to the
ignorance of the time of the end which Christ had been foretelling. But
they may allow of a much wider application, and their lessons are in
entire consonance with the whole tone of Scripture in regard to the
future. We are standing now at the beginning of a New Year, and the
influence of the season is felt in some degree by us all. Not for the
sake of repressing any wise forecasting which has for its object our
preparation for probable duties and exigencies; not for the purpose of
repressing that trustful anticipation which, building on our past time
and on God's eternity, fronts the future with calm confidence; not for
the sake of discouraging that pensive and softened mood which if it
does nothing more, at least delivers us for a moment from the tyrannous
power of the present, do we turn to these words now; but that we may
together consider how much they contain of cheer and encouragement, of
stimulus to our duty, and of calming for our hearts in the prospect of
a New Year. They teach us the limits of our care for the future, as
they give us the limits of our knowledge of it. They teach us the best
remedies for all anxiety, the great thoughts that tranquillise us in
our ignorance, viz. that all is in God's merciful hand, and that
whatever may come, we have a divine power which will fit us for it; and
they bid us anticipate our work and do it, as the best counterpoise for
all vain curiosity about what may be coming on the earth.