'Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
lofty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to
know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep His
commandments, or no.'--DEUT. viii.2.
The strand of our lives usually slips away smoothly enough, but days
such as this, the last Sunday in a year, are like the knots on a
sailor's log, which, as they pass through his fingers, tell him how
fast it is being paid out from the reel, and how far it has run off.
They suggest a momentary consciousness of the swift passage of life,
and naturally lead us to a glance backwards and forwards, both of which
occupations ought to be very good for us. The dead flat upon which some
of us live may be taken as an emblem of the low present in which most
of us are content to pass our lives, affording nowhere a distant view,
and never enabling us to see more than a street's length ahead of us.
It is a good thing to get up upon some little elevation and take a
wider view, backwards and forwards.
And so now I venture to let the season preach to us, and to confine
myself simply to suggesting for you one or two very plain and obvious
thoughts which may help to make our retrospect wise and useful. And
there are two main considerations which I wish to submit. The first
is--what we ought to be chiefly occupied with as we look back; and
secondly, what the issue of such a retrospect ought to be.
I. With what we should be mainly occupied as we look back. Memory, like
all other faculties, may either help us or hinder us. As is the man, so
will be his remembrance. The tastes which rule his present will
determine the things that he likes best to think about in the past.
There are many ways of going wrong in our retrospects. Some of us, for
instance, prefer to think with pleasure about things that ought never
to have been done, and to give a wicked immortality to thoughts that
ought never to have had a being. Some men's tastes and inclinations are
so vitiated and corrupted that they find a joy in living their
badnesses over again. Some of us, looking back on the days that are
gone, select by instinctive preference for remembrance, the vanities
and frivolities and trifles which were the main things in them whilst
they lasted. Such a use of the great faculty of memory is like the
folly of the Egyptians who embalmed cats and vermin. Do not let us be
of those, who have in their memories nothing but rubbish, or something
worse, who let down the drag-net into the depths of the past and bring
it up full only of mud and foulnesses, and of ugly monsters that never
ought to have been dragged into the daylight.
Then there are some of us who abuse memory just as much by picking out,
with perverse ingenuity, every black bit that lies in the distance
behind us, all the disappointments, all the losses, all the pains, all
the sorrows. Some men look back and say, with Jacob in one of his
moods, 'Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life!' Yes!
and the same man, when he was in a better spirit, said, and a great
deal more truly, 'The God that fed me all my life long, the Angel which
redeemed me from all evil.' Do not paint like Rembrandt, even if you do
not paint like Turner. Do not dip your brush only in the blackness,
even if you cannot always dip it in molten sunshine.
And there are some of us who, in like manner, spoil all the good that
we could get out of a wise retrospect, by only looking back in such a
fashion as to feed a sentimental melancholy, which is, perhaps, the
most profitless of all the ways of looking backwards.
Now here are the two points, in this verse of my text, which would put
all these blunders and all others right, telling us what we should
chiefly think about when we look back, and from what point of view the
retrospect of the past must be taken in order that it should be
salutary. 'Thou shalt remember all the way by which the Lord thy God
hath led thee.' Let memory work under the distinct recognition of
divine guidance in every part of the past. That is the _first_
condition of making the retrospect blessed. 'To humble thee and to
prove thee, and to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest
keep His commandments, or no'; let us look back with a clear
recognition of the fact that the use of life is to test, and reveal,
and to make, character. This world, and all its outward engagements,
duties, and occupations, is but a scaffolding, on which the builders
may stand to rear the true temple, and when the building is reared you
may do what you like with the scaffolding. So we have to look back on
life from this point of view, that its joys and sorrows, its ups and
downs, its work and repose, the vicissitudes and sometimes contrariety
of its circumstances and conditions, are all for the purpose of making
_us_, and of making plain to ourselves, what we are. 'To humble thee,'
that is, to knock the self-confidence out of us, and to bring us to
say: 'I am nothing and Thou art everything; I myself am a poor weak rag
of a creature that needs Thy hand to stiffen me, or I shall not be able
to resist or to do.' That is one main lesson that life is meant to
teach us. Whoever has learnt to say by reason of the battering and
shocks of time, by reason of sorrows and failures, by reason of joys,
too, and fruition,--'Lord, I come to Thee as depending upon Thee for
everything,' has wrung its supreme good out of life, and has fulfilled
the purpose of the Father, who has led us all these years, to humble us
into the wholesome diffidence that says: 'Not in myself, but in Thee
are all my strength and my hope.'
I need not do more than remind you of the other cognate purposes which
are suggested here. Life is meant, not only to bring us to humble
self-distrust, as a step towards devout dependence on God, but also to
reveal us to ourselves; for we only know what we are by reflecting on
what we have done, and the only path by which self-knowledge can be
attained is the path of observant recollection of our conduct in daily
life.
Another purpose for which the whole panorama of life is made to pass
before us, and for which all the gymnastic of life exercises us, is
that we may be made submissive to the great Will, and may keep His
commandments.
These thoughts should be with us in our retrospect, and then our
retrospect will be blessed: First, we are to look back and see God's
guidance everywhere, and second, we are to judge of the things that we
remember by their tendency to make character, to make us humble, to
reveal us to ourselves, and to knit us in glad obedience to our Father
God.
II. And now turn to the other consideration which may help to make
remembrance a good, viz., the issues to which our retrospect must tend,
if it is to be anything more than sentimental recollection.
First, let me say: Remember and be thankful. If what I have been saying
as to the standard by which events are to be tried be true; if it be
the case that the main fact about things is their power to mould
persons and to make character, then there follows, very plainly and
clearly, that all things that come within the sweep of our memory may
equally contribute to our highest good.
Good does not mean pleasure. Bright-being may not always be well-being,
and the highest good has a very much nobler meaning than comfort and
satisfaction. And so, realising the fact that the best of things is
that they shall make us like God, then we can turn to the past and
judge it wisely, because then we shall see that all the diversity, and
even the opposition, of circumstances and events, may co-operate
towards the same end. Suppose two wheels in a great machine, one turns
from right to left and the other from left to right, but they fit into
one another, and they both produce one final result of motion. So the
moments in my life which I call blessings and gladness, and the moments
in my life which I call sorrows and tortures, may work into each other,
and they will do so if I take hold of them rightly, and use them as
they ought to be used. They will tend to the highest good whether they
be light or dark; even as night with its darkness and its dews has its
ministration and mission of mercy for the wearied eye no less than day
with its brilliancy and sunshine; even as the summer and the winter are
equally needful, and equally good for the crop. So in our lives it is
good for us, sometimes, that we be brought into the dark places; it is
good for us sometimes that the leaves be stripped from the trees, and
the ground be bound with frost.
And so for both kinds of weather, dear brethren, we have to remember
and be thankful. It is a hard lesson, I know, for some of us. There may
be some listening to me whose memory goes back to this dying year as
the year that has held the sorest sorrow of their lives; to whom it has
brought some loss that has made earth dark. And it seems hard to tell
quivering lips to be thankful, and to bid a man be grateful though his
eyes fill with tears as he looks back on such a past. But yet it is
true that it is good for us to be drawn, or to be driven, to Him; it is
good for us to have to tread even a lonely path if it makes us lean
more on the arm of our Beloved. It is good for us to have places made
empty if, as in the year when Israel's King died, we shall thereby have
our eyes purged to behold the Lord sitting on the Royal Seat.
'Take it on trust a little while,
Thou soon shalt read the mystery right,
In the full sunshine of His smile.'
And for the present let us try to remember that He dwelleth in the
darkness as in the light, and that we are to be thankful for the things
that help us to be near Him, and not only for the things that make us
outwardly glad. So I venture to say even to those of you who may be
struggling with sad remembrances, remember and be thankful.
I have no doubt there are many of us who have to look back, if not upon
a year desolated by some blow that never can be repaired, yet upon a
year in which failing resources and declining business, or diminished
health, or broken spirits, or a multitude of minute but most disturbing
cares and sorrows, do make it hard to recognise the loving Hand in all
that comes. Yet to such, too, I would say: 'All things work together
for good,' therefore all things are to be embraced in the thankfulness
of our retrospect.
The second and simple practical suggestion that I make is this:
Remember, and let the memory lead to contrition. Perhaps I am speaking
to some men or women for whom this dying year holds the memory of some
great lapse from goodness; some young man who for the first time has
been tempted to sensuous sin; some man who may have been led into
slippery places in regard to business integrity. I draw a 'bow at a
venture' when I speak of such things--perhaps some one is listening to
me who would give a great deal if he or she could forget a certain past
moment of this dying year, which makes their cheeks hot yet whilst they
think of it. To such I say: Remember, go close into the presence of the
black thing, and get the consciousness of it driven into your heart;
for such remembrance is the first step to deliverance from the load,
and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year
that lies before you.
But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially
apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days.
In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many
moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with
God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How
many, when--as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the
season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica--you can
remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, 'the mountains
that are round about' the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments
do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God
and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of
God-forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them
in the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get
a mile of it you can tell what it is--oppressive darkness. One drop of
muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful
of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back
upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if
you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a
question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude
for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren
moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.
But I dare say that some of you say: 'Oh! I look back and I do not feel
anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty,
and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of
course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need
not trouble a man.' Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you
believe that the law of a man's life is, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself'? Do you
believe that that is what you ought to do? Have you done it? If you
have not, let me beseech you not to go out of this year, across the
artificial and imaginary boundary that separates you from the next,
with the old guilt upon your back, but go to Jesus Christ, and ask Him
to forgive you, and then you may pass into the coming twelvemonth
without the intolerable burden of unremembered, unconfessed, and
therefore unforgiven, sin.
The next point that I would suggest is this: Let us remember in order
that from the retrospect we may gain practical wisdom. It is
astonishing what unteachable, untamable creatures men are. They learn
wisdom about all the little matters of daily life by experience, but
they do not seem to do so about the higher. Even a sparrow comes to
understand a scarecrow after a time or two, and any rat in a hole will
learn the trick of a trap. But you can trick men over and over again
with the same inducement, and, even whilst the hook is sticking in
their jaws, the same bait will tempt them once more. That is very
largely the case because they do not observe and remember what has
happened to them in bygone days.
There are two things that any man, who will bring his reason and
common-sense to bear upon the honest estimate and retrospect of the
facts of his life, may be fully convinced of. These are, first, his own
weakness. One main use of a wise retrospect is to teach us where we are
weakest. What an absurd thing it would be if the inhabitants of a Dutch
village were to let the sea come in at the same gap in the same dyke a
dozen times! What an absurd thing it would be if a city were captured
over and over again by assaults at the same point, and did not
strengthen its defences there! But that is exactly what you do; and all
the while, if you would only think about your own past lives wisely and
reasonably, and like men with brains in your heads, you might find out
where it was that you were most open to attack; what it was in your
character that most needed strengthening, what it was wherein the devil
caught you most quickly, and might so build yourselves up in the most
defenceless points.
Do not look back for sentimental melancholy; do not look back with
unavailing regrets; do not look back to torment yourselves with useless
self-accusation; but look back to see how good God has been, and look
back to see where you are weak, and pile the wall, higher there, and so
learn practical wisdom from retrospect.
Another phase of the practical wisdom which memory should give is
deliverance from the illusions of sense and time. Remember how little
the world has ever done for you in bygone days. Why should you let it
befool you once again? If it has proved itself a liar when it has
tempted you with gilded offers that came to nothing, and with beauty
that was no more solid than the 'Easter-eggs' that you buy in the
shops--painted sugar with nothing inside--why should you believe it
when it comes to you once more? Why not say: 'Ah! once burnt, twice
shy! You have tried that trick on me before, and I have found it out!'
Let the retrospect teach us how hollow life is without God, and so let
it draw us near to Him.
The last thing that I would say is: 'Let us remember that we may hope.
It is the prerogative of Christian remembrance, that it merges into
Christian hope. The forward look and the backward look are really but
the exercise of the same faculty in two different directions. Memory
does not always imply hope, we remember sometimes because we do not
hope, and try to gather round ourselves the vanished past because we
know it never again can be a present or a future. But when we are
occupied with an unchanging Friend, whose love is inexhaustible, and
whose arm is unwearied, it is good logic to say: 'It has been,
therefore it shall be.'
With regard to this fleeting life, it is a delusion to say 'to-morrow
shall be as this day, and much more abundant'; but with regard to the
life of the soul that lives in God, that is true, and true for ever.
The past is a specimen of the future. The future for the man who lives
in Christ is but the prolongation, and the heightening into superlative
excellence and beauty, of all that is good in the past and in the
present. As the radiance of some rising sun may cast its bright beams
into the opposite sky, even so the glowing past behind us flings its
purples and its golds and its scarlets on to the else dim curtain of
the future.
Remember that you may hope. A paradox, but a paradox that is a truth in
the case of Christians whose memory is of a God that has loved and
blessed them whose hope is in a God that changes never; whose memory is
charged with 'every good and perfect gift that came down from the
Father of Lights,' whose hope is in that same Father, 'with whom is no
variableness, neither shadow of turning.' So on every stone of
remembrance, every Ebenezer on which is graved: 'Hitherto hath the Lord
helped us,' we can mount a telescope--if I may so say--that will look
into the furthest glories of the heavens, and be sure that the past
will be magnified and perpetuated in the future. Our prayer may
legitimately be; 'Thou hast been my help, leave me not, neither forsake
me!' And His answer will be: 'I will not leave thee until I have done
that which I have spoken to thee of.' Remember that you may hope, and
hope because you remember.