'That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of
God, but keep His commandments.'--PSALM lxxviii. 7.
In its original application this verse is simply a statement of God's
purpose in giving to Israel the Law, and such a history of deliverance.
The intention was that all future generations might remember what He had
done, and be encouraged by the remembrance to hope in Him for the
future; and by both memory and hope, be impelled to the discharge of
present duty.
So, then, the words may permissibly bear the application which I purpose
to make of them in this sermon, re-echoing only (and aspiring to nothing
more) the thoughts which the season has already, I suppose, more or
less, suggested to most of us. Smooth motion is imperceptible; it is the
jolts that tell us that we are advancing. Though every day be a New
Year's Day, still the alteration in our dates and our calendars should
set us all thinking of that continual lapse of the mysterious thing--the
creature of our own minds--which we call time, and which is bearing us
all so steadily and silently onwards.
My text tells us how past, present, and future--memory, hope, and effort
may be ennobled and blessed. In brief, it is by associating them all
with God. It is as the field of His working that our past is best
remembered. It is on Him that our hopes may most wisely be set. It is
keeping His commandments which is the consecration of the present. Let
us, then, take the three thoughts of our text and cast them into New
Year's recommendations.
I. First, then, let us associate God with memory by thankful
remembrance.
Now I suppose that there are very few of the faculties of our nature
which we more seldom try to regulate by Christian principles than that
great power which we have of looking backwards. Did you ever reflect
that you are responsible for what you remember, and for how you remember
it, and that you are bound to train and educate your memory, not merely
in the sense of cultivating it as a means of carrying intellectual
treasures, but for a religious purpose? The one thing that all parts of
our nature need is God, and that is as true about our power of
remembrance as it is about any other part of our being. The past is then
hallowed, noble, and yields its highest results and most blessed fruits
for us when we link it closely with Him, and see in it not only, nor so
much, the play of our own faculties, whether we blame or approve
ourselves, as rather see in it the great field in which God has brought
Himself near to our experience, and has been regulating and shaping all
that has befallen us. The one thing which will consecrate memory,
deliver it from its errors and abuses, raise it to its highest and
noblest power, is that it should be in touch with God, and that the past
should be regarded by each of us as it is, in deed and in truth, one
long record of what God has done for us.
We can see His presence more clearly when we look back over a
long-connected stretch of days, and when the excitement of feeling the
agony or rapture have passed, than we could whilst they were hot, and
life was all hurry and bustle. The men on the deck of a ship see the
beauty of the city that they have left behind, better than when they
were pressing through its narrow streets. And though the view of the
receding houses from the far-off waters may be an illusion, our view of
the past, if we see God brooding over it all, and working in it all, is
no illusion. The meannesses are hidden, the narrow places are invisible,
all the pain and suffering is quieted, and we are able to behold more
truly than when we were in the midst of them, the bearing, the purpose,
and the blessedness alike of our sorrows and of our joys.
Not a few of us are old enough to have had a great many mysteries of our
early days cleared up. We have seen at least the beginnings of the
harvest which the ploughshare of sorrow and the winter winds were
preparing for us, and for the rest we can trust. Brethren! remember your
mercies; remember your losses; and 'for all the way by which the Lord
our God has led us these many years in the wilderness,' let us try to be
thankful, including in our praises the darkness and the storm as well as
the light and the calm. Some of us are like people who, when they get
better of their sicknesses, grudge the doctor's bill. We forget the
mercies as soon as they are past, because we only enjoyed the sensuous
sweetness of them whilst it tickled our palate, and did not think, in
the enjoyment of them, whose love it was that they spoke of to us.
Sorrows and joys, bring them all in your thanksgivings, and 'forget not
the works of God.'
Such a habit of cultivating the remembrance of God's hand as moving in
all our past, will not, in the slightest degree, interfere with lower
and yet precious exercises of that same faculty. We shall still be able
to look back, and learn our limitations, mark our weaknesses, gather
counsels of prudence from our failures, tame our ambitions by
remembering where we broke down. And such an exercise of grateful
God-recognising remembrance will deliver us from the abuses of that
great power, by which so many of us turn our memories into a cause of
weakness, if not of sin. There are people, and we are all tempted to be
of the number, who look back upon the past and see nothing there but
themselves, their own cleverness, their own success; 'burning incense to
their own net, and sacrificing to their own drag.' Another mood leads us
to look back into the past dolefully and disappointedly, to say, 'I have
broken down so often; my resolutions have all gone to water so quickly;
I have tried and failed over and over again. I may as well give it all
up, and accept the inevitable, and grope on as well as I can without
hope of self-advancement or of victory.' Never! If only we will look
back to God we shall be able to look forward to a perfect self.
To-morrow need never be determined by the failures that have been. We
may still conquer where we have often been defeated. There is no worse
use of the power of remembrance than when we use it to bind upon
ourselves, as the permanent limitations of our progress, the failures
and faults of the past. 'Forget the things that are behind.' Your old
fragmentary goodness, your old foiled aspirations, your old frequent
failures--cast them all behind you!
And there are others to whom remembrance is mainly a gloating over old
sins, and a doing again of these--ruminating upon them; bringing up the
chewed food once more to be masticated. Some of us gather only poisonous
weeds, and carry them about in the _hortus siccus_ of our memories.
Alas! for the man whose memory is but the paler portraiture of past
sins. Some of us, I am sure, have our former evils holding us so tight
in their cords that when we look back memory is defiled by the things
which defiled the unforgettable past. Brethren! you may find a refuge
from that curse of remembrance in remembering God.
And some of us, unwisely and ungratefully, live in the light of departed
blessings, so as to have no hearts either for present mercies or for
present duties. There is no more weakening and foolish misdirection of
that great gift of remembrance than when we employ it to tear down the
tender greenery with which healing time has draped the ruins; or to turn
again in the wound which is beginning to heal the sharp and poisoned
point of the sorrow which once pierced it. For all these abuses--the
memory that gloats upon sin; the memory that is proud of success; the
memory that is despondent because of failures; the memory that is
tearful and broken-hearted over losses--for all these the remedy is that
we should not forget the works of God, but see Him everywhere filling
the past.