In a later Epistle than that from which my second text is taken, we get
one of the most lovely pictures that was ever drawn, albeit it is
unconsciously drawn, of a calm old age, very near the gate of death;
and looking back with a quiet heart over all the path of life. I am not
going to preach to you, dear friends, in the flush of your early youth,
a gospel which is only to be recommended because it is good to die by,
but it will do even you, at the beginning, no harm to realise for a
moment that the end will come, and that retrospect will take the place
in your lives which hope and anticipation fill now. And I ask you what
you expect to feel and say then?
What did Paul say? 'I have fought the good fight, I have finished my
course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness.' He was not self-righteous; but it is possible
to have lived a life which, as the world begins to fade, vindicates
itself as having been absolutely right in its main trend, and to feel
that the dawning light of Eternity confirms the choice that we made.
And I pray you to ask yourselves, 'Is my life of that sort?' How much
of it would bear the scrutiny which will have to come, and which in
Paul's case was so quiet and calm? He had had a stormy day, many a
thundercloud had darkened the sky, many a tempest had swept across the
plain; but now, as the evening draws on, the whole West is filled with
a calm amber light, and all across the plain, right away to the grey
East, he sees that he has been led by, and has been willing to walk in,
the right way to the 'City of habitation.' Would that be your
experience if the last moment came now?
There will be, for the best of us, much sense of failure and
shortcoming when we look back on our lives. But whilst some of us will
have to say, 'I have played the fool and erred exceedingly,' it is
possible for each of us to lay himself down in peace and sleep,
awaiting a glorious rising again and a crown of righteousness.
Dear young friends, it is for you to choose whether your past, when you
summon it up before you, will look like a wasted wilderness, or like a
garden of the Lord. And though, as I have said, there will always be
much sense of failure and shortcoming, yet that need not disturb the
calm retrospect; for whilst memory sees the sins, faith can grasp the
Saviour, and quietly take leave of life, saying, 'I know in whom I have
believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have committed to
Him against that day.'
So I press upon you all this one truth, that faith in Jesus Christ will
transform, will ennoble, will make joyous your lives whilst you live,
and will give you a quiet heart in the retrospect when you come to die.
Begin right, dear young friends. You will never find it so easy to take
any decisive step, and most of all this chiefest step, as you do
to-day. You will get lean and less flexible as you get older. You will
get set in your ways. Habits will twine their tendrils round you, and
hinder your free movement. The truth of the Gospel will become
commonplace by familiarity. Associations and companions will have more
and more power over you; and you will be stiffened as an old tree-trunk
is stiffened. You cannot count on to-morrow; be wise to-day. Begin this
year aright. Why should you not now see the Christ and welcome Him? I
pray that every one of us may behold Him and fall before Him with the
cry, 'Lord! what wilt Thou have me to do?'