'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'--ISAIAH lvi.
12.
These words, as they stand, are the call of boon companions to new
revelry. They are part of the prophet's picture of a corrupt age when
the men of influence and position had thrown away their sense of duty,
and had given themselves over, as aristocracies and plutocracies are
ever tempted to do, to mere luxury and good living. They are summoning
one another to their coarse orgies. The roystering speaker says, 'Do
not be afraid to drink; the cellar will hold out. To-day's carouse will
not empty it; there will be enough for to-morrow.' He forgets
to-morrow's headaches; he forgets that on some tomorrow the wine will
be finished; he forgets that the fingers of a hand may write the doom
of the rioters on the very walls of the banqueting chamber.
What have such words, the very motto of insolent presumption and
short-sighted animalism, to do with New Year's thoughts? Only this,
that base and foolish as they are on such lips, it is possible to lift
them from the mud, and take them as the utterance of a lofty and calm
hope which will not be disappointed, and of a firm and lowly resolve
which may ennoble life. Like a great many other sayings, they may fit
the mouth either of a sot or of a saint. All depends on what the things
are which we are thinking about when we use them. There are things
about which it is absurd and worse than absurd to say this, and there
are things about which it is the soberest truth to say it. So looking
forward into the merciful darkness of another year, we may regard these
words as either the expressions of hopes which it is folly to cherish,
or of hopes that it is reasonable to entertain.
I. This expectation, if directed to any outward things, is an illusion
and a dream.
These coarse revellers into whose lips our text is put only meant by it
to brave the future and defy to-morrow in the riot of their
drunkenness. They show us the vulgarest, lowest form which the
expectation can take, a form which I need say nothing about now.
But I may just note in passing that to look forward principally as
anticipating pleasure or enjoyment is a very poor and unworthy thing.
We weaken and lower every day, if we use our faculty of hope mainly to
paint the future as a scene of delights and satisfactions. We spoil
to-day by thinking how we can turn it to the account of pleasure. We
spoil to-morrow before it comes, and hurt ourselves, if we are more
engaged with fancying how it will minister to our joy, than how we can
make it minister to our duty. It is base and foolish to be forecasting
our pleasures; the true temper is to be forecasting our work.
But, leaving that consideration, let us notice how useless such
anticipation, and how mad such confidence, as that expressed in the
text is, if directed to anything short of God.
We are so constituted as that we grow into a persuasion that what has
been will be, and yet we can give no sufficient reason to ourselves of
why we expect it. 'The uniformity of the course of nature is the
corner-stone, not only of physical science, but, in a more homely form,
of the wisdom which grows with experience, We all believe that the sun
will rise to-morrow because it rose to-day, and on all the yesterdays.
But there was a today which had no yesterday, and there will be a
to-day which will have no to-morrow. The sun will rise for the last
time. The uniformity had a beginning and will have an end.
So, even as an axiom of thought, the anticipation that things will
continue as they have been because they have been, seems to rest on an
insufficient basis. How much more so, as to our own little lives and
their surroundings! There the only thing which we may be quite sure of
about to-morrow is that it will not be 'as this day.' Even for those of
us who may have reached, for example, the level plateau of middle life,
where our position and tasks are pretty well fixed, and we have little
more to expect than the monotonous repetition of the same duties
recurring at the same hour every day--even for such each day has its
own distinctive character. Like a flock of sheep they seem all alike,
but each, on closer inspection, reveals a physiognomy of its own. There
will be so many small changes that even the same duties or enjoyments
will not be quite the same, and even if the outward things remained
absolutely unaltered, we who meet them are not the same. Little
variations in mood and tone, diminished zest here, weakened power
there, other thoughts breaking in, and over and above all the slow,
silent change wrought on us by growing years, make the perfect
reproduction of any past impossible. So, however familiar may be the
road which we have to traverse, however uneventfully the same our days
may sometimes for long spaces in our lives seem to be, though to
ourselves often our day's work may appear as a mill-horse round, yet in
deepest truth, if we take into account the whole sum of the minute
changes in it and in us, it may be said of each step of our journey,
'Ye have not passed this way heretofore.'
But, besides all this, we know that these breathing-times when 'we have
no changes,' are but pauses in the storm, landing-places in the ascent,
the interspaces between the shocks. However hope may tempt us to dream
that the future is like the present, a deeper wisdom lies in all our
souls which says 'No.' Drunken bravery may front that darkness with
such words as these of our text, but the least serious spirit, in its
most joyous moods, never quite succeeds in forgetting the solemn
probabilities, possibilities, and certainties which lodge in the
unknown future. So to a wise man it is ever a sobering exercise to look
forward, and we shall be nearest the truth if we take due account, as
we do today, of the undoubted fact that the only thing certain about
to-morrow is that it will not be as this day.
There are the great changes which come to some one every day, which may
come to any of us any day, which will come to all of us some day. Some
of us will die this year; on a day in our new diaries some of us will
make no entry, for we shall be gone. Some of us will be smitten down by
illness; some of us will lose our dearest; some of us will lose
fortune. Which of us it is to be, and where within these twelve months
the blow is to fall, are mercifully hidden. The only thing that we
certainly know is that these arrows will fly. The thing we do not know
is whose heart they will pierce. This makes the gaze into the darkness
grave and solemn. There is ever something of dread in Hope's blue eyes.
True, the ministry of change is blessed and helpful; true, the darkness
which hides the future is merciful and needful, if the present is not
to be marred. But helpful and merciful as they are, they invest the
unknown to-morrow with a solemn power which it is good, though
sobering, for us to feel, and they silence on every lip but that of
riot and foolhardy debauchery the presumptuous words, 'To-morrow shall
be as this day, and much more abundant.'
II. But yet there is a possibility of so using the words as to make
them the utterance of a sober certainty which will not be put to shame.
So long as our hope and anticipations creep along the low levels of
earth, and are concerned with external and creatural good, their
language can never rise beyond, 'To-morrow _may_ be as this day.'
Oftenest they reach only to the height of the wistful wish, 'May it be
as this day!' But there is no need for our being tortured with such
slippery possibilities. We may send out our hope like Noah's dove, not
to hover restlessly over a heaving ocean of change, but to light on
firm, solid certainty, and fold its wearied wings there. Forecasting is
ever close by foreboding. Hope is interwoven with fear, the golden
threads of the weft crossing the dark ones of the warp, and the whole
texture gleaming bright or glooming black according to the angle at
which it is seen. So is it always until we turn our hope away from
earth to God, and fill the future with the light of His presence and
the certainty of His truth. Then the mists and doubts roll away; we get
above the region of 'perhaps' into that of 'surely'; the future is as
certain as the past, hope as assured of its facts as memory, prophecy
as veracious as history.
Looking forward, then, let us not occupy ourselves with visions which
we know may or may not come true. Let us not feed ourselves with
illusions which may make the reality, when it comes to shatter them,
yet harder to bear. But let us make God in Christ our hope, and pass
from peradventures to certitudes; from 'To-morrow may be as this
day--would that it might,' to 'It shall be, it shall be, for God is my
expectation and my hope.' We have an unchanging and an inexhaustible
God, and He is the true guarantee of the future for us. The more we
accustom ourselves to think of Him as shaping all that is contingent
and changeful in the nearest and in the remotest to-morrow, and as
being Himself the immutable portion of our souls, the calmer will be
our outlook into the darkness, and the more bright will be the clear
light of certainty which burns for us in it.
To-day's wealth may be to-morrow's poverty, to-day's health to-morrow's
sickness, to-day's happy companionship of love to-morrow's aching
solitude of heart, but to-day's God will be to-morrow's God, to-day's
Christ will be to-morrow's Christ. Other fountains may dry up in heat
or freeze in winter, but this knows no change, 'in summer and winter it
shall be.' Other fountains may sink low in their basins after much
drawing, but this is ever full, and after a thousand generations have
drawn from it, its stream is broad and deep as ever. Other springs may
be left behind on the march, and the wells and palm-trees of each Elim
on our road may be succeeded by a dry and thirsty land where no water
is, but this spring follows us all through the wilderness, and makes
music and spreads freshness ever by our path. We can forecast nothing
beside; we can be sure of this, that God will be with us in all the
days that lie before us. What may be round the next headland we know
not; but this we know, that the same sunshine will make a broadening
path across the waters right to where we rock on the unknown sea, and
the same unmoving mighty star will burn for our guidance. So we may let
the waves and currents roll as they list--or rather as He wills, and be
little concerned about the incidents or the companions of our voyage,
since He is with us. We can front the unknown to-morrow, even when we
most keenly feel how solemn and sad are the things it may bring.
'It can bring with it nothing
But He will bear us through.'
If only our hearts be fixed on God and we are feeding our minds and
wills on Him, His truth and His will, then we may be quite certain
that, whatever goes, our truest riches will abide, and whoever leaves
our little company of loved ones, our best Friend will not go away.
Therefore, lifting our hopes beyond the low levels of earth, and making
our anticipations of the future the reflection of the brightness of God
thrown on that else blank curtain, we may turn into the worthy
utterance of sober and saintly faith, the folly of the riotous
sensualist when he said, 'To-morrow shall be as this day.'
The past is the mirror of the future for the Christian; we look back on
all the great deeds of old by which God has redeemed and helped souls
that cried to Him, and we find in them the eternal laws of His working.
They are all true for to-day as they were at first; they remain true
forever. The whole history of the past belongs to us, and avails for
our present and for our future. 'As we have heard, so have we seen in
the city of our God.'
To-day's experience runs on the same lines as the stories of the 'years
of old,' which are 'the years of the right hand of the Most High.'
Experience is ever the parent of hope, and the latter can only build
with the bricks which the former gives. So the Christian has to lay
hold on all that God's mercy has done in the ages that are gone by, and
because He is a 'faithful Creator' to transmute history into prophecy,
and triumph in that 'the God of Jacob is our refuge.'
Nor only does the record of what He has been to others come in to bring
material for our forecast of the future, but also the remembrance of
what He has been to ourselves. Has He been with us in six troubles? We
may be sure He will not abandon us at the seventh. He is not in the way
of beginning to build and leaving His work unfinished. Remember what He
has been to you, and rejoice that there has been one thing in your
lives which, you may be sure, will always be there. Feed your certain
hopes for to-morrow on thankful remembrances of many a yesterday.
'Forget not the works of God,' that you may 'set your hopes on God.'
Let our anticipations base themselves on memory, and utter themselves
in the prayer, 'Thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake
me, O God of my salvation.' Then the assurance that He whom we know to
be good and wise and strong will shape the future, and Himself be the
Future for us, will take all the fear out of that forward gaze, will
condense our light and unsubstantial hopes into solid realities, and
set before us an endless line of days, in each of which we may gain
more of Him whose face has brightened the past and will brighten the
future, till days shall end and time open into eternity.
III. Looked at in another aspect, these words may be taken as the vow
of a firm and lowly resolve.
There is a future which we can but very slightly influence, and the
less we look at that the better every way. But there is also a future
which we can mould as we wish--the future of our own characters, the
only future which is really ours at all--and the more clearly we set it
before ourselves and make up our minds as to whither we wish it to be
tending, the better. In that region, it is eminently true that
'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.' The law of
continuity shapes our moral and spiritual characters. What I am to-day,
I shall increasingly be to-morrow. The awful power of habit solidifies
actions into customs, and prolongs the reverberation of every note once
sounded, along the vaulted roof of the chamber where we live. To-day is
the child of yesterday and the parent of to-morrow.
That solemn certainty of the continuance and increase of moral and
spiritual characteristics works in both good and bad, but with a
difference. To secure its full blessing in the gradual development of
the germs of good, there must be constant effort and tenacious
resolution. So many foes beset the springing of the good seed in our
hearts--what with the flying flocks of light-winged fugitive thoughts
ever ready to swoop down as soon as the sower's back is turned and
snatch it away, what with the hardness of the rock which the roots soon
encounter, what with the thick-sown and quick-springing thorns--that if
we trust to the natural laws of growth and neglect careful husbandry,
we may sow much but we shall gather little. But to inherit the full
consequences of that same law working in the growth and development of
the evil in us, nothing is needed but carelessness.
Leave it alone for a year or two and the 'fruitful field will be a
forest,' a jungle of matted weeds, with a straggling blossom where
cultivation had once been.
But if humbly we resolve and earnestly toil, looking for His help, we
may venture to hope that our characters will grow in goodness and in
likeness to our dear Lord, that we shall not cast away our confidence
nor make shipwreck of our faith, that each new day shall find in us a
deeper love, a perfecter consecration, a more joyful service, and that
so, in all the beauties of the Christian soul and in all the blessings
of the Christian life, 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more
abundant.' 'To him that hath shall be given.' 'The path of the just is
as the shining light, that shineth more and more until the noontide of
the day.'
So we may look forward undismayed, and while we recognise the darkness
that wraps to-morrow in regard to all mundane affairs, may feed our
fortitude and fasten our confidence on the double certainties that we
shall have God and more of God for our treasure, that we shall have
likeness to Him and more of likeness in our characters. Fleeting
moments may come and go. The uncertain days may exercise their various
ministry of giving and taking away, but whether they plant or root up
our earthly props, whether they build or destroy our earthly houses,
they will increase our riches in the heavens, and give us fuller
possession of deeper draughts from the inexhaustible fountain of living
waters.
How dreadfully that same law of the continuity and development of
character works in some men there is no need now to dwell upon. By
slow, imperceptible, certain degrees the evil gains upon them.
Yesterday's sin smooths the path for to-day's. The temptation once
yielded to gains power. The crack in the embankment which lets a drop
or two ooze through is soon a great hole which lets in a flood. It is
easier to find a man who has never done a wrong thing than to find a
man who has done it only once. Peter denied his Lord thrice, and each
time more easily than the previous time. So, before we know it, the
thin gossamer threads of single actions are twisted into a rope of
habit, and we are 'tied with the cords of our sins.' Let no man say,
'Just for once I may venture on evil; so far I will go and no farther.'
Nay, 'to-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'
How important, then, the smallest acts become when we think of them as
thus influencing character! The microscopic creatures, thousands of
which will go into a square inch, make the great white cliffs that
beetle over the wildest sea and front the storm. So, permanent and
solid character is built up out of trivial actions, and this is the
solemn aspect of our passing days, that they are making _us_.
We might well tremble before such a thought, which would be dreadful to
the best of us, if it were not for pardoning mercy and renewing grace.
The law of reaping what we have sown, or of continuing as we have
begun, may be modified as far as our sins and failures are concerned.
The entail may be cut off, and to-morrow need not inherit to-day's
guilt, nor to-day's habits. The past may be all blotted out through the
mercy of God in Christ. No debt need be carried forward to another page
of the book of our lives, for Christ has given Himself for us, and He
speaks to us all--'Thy sins be forgiven thee.' No evil habit need
continue its dominion over us, nor are we obliged to carry on the bad
tradition of wrongdoing into a future day, for Christ lives, and 'if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away,
all things are become new.'
So then, brethren, let us humbly take the confidence which these words
may be used to express, and as we stand on the threshold of a new year
and wait for the curtain to be drawn, let us print deep on our hearts
the uncertainty of our hold of all things here, nor seek to build nor
anchor on these, but lift our thoughts to Him, who will bless the
future as He has blessed the past, and will even enlarge the gifts of
His love and the help of His right hand. Let us hope for ourselves not
the continuance or increase of outward good, but the growth of our
souls in all things lovely and of good report, the daily advance in the
love and likeness of our Lord.
So each day, each succeeding wave of the ocean of time shall cast up
treasures for us as it breaks at our feet. As we grow in years, we
shall grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ, until the day comes when we shall exchange earth for heaven.
That will be the sublimest application of this text, when, dying, we
can calmly be sure that though to-day be on this side and to-morrow on
the other bank of the black river, there will be no break in the
continuity, but only an infinite growth in our life, and heaven's
to-morrow shall be as earth's to-day, and much more abundant.