After all, memory and hope are meant to fit us for work in the flying
moment. Both should impel us to this keeping of the commandments of God;
for both yield motives which should incline us thereto. A past full of
blessing demands the sacrifice of loving hearts and of earnest hands. A
future so fair, so far, so certain, so sovereign, and a hope that grasps
it, and brings some of its sweet fragrance into the else scentless air
of the poor present, ought to impel to service, vigorous and continual.
Both should yield motives which make such service a delight.
If my memory weakens me for present work, either because it depresses my
hope of success, or because it saddens me with the remembrance of
departed blessings, then it is a curse and not a good. And if I dream
myself away in any future, and forget the exigencies of the imperative
and swiftly-passing moment, then the faculty of hope, too, is a curse
and a weakening. But both are delivered from their possible abuses, if
both are made into means of helping us to fill the present with loving
obedience. These two faculties are like the two wings that may lift us
to God, like the two paddles, one on either side of the ship, that may
drive us steadily forward, through all the surges and the tempest. They
find their highest field in fitting us for the grinding tasks and the
heavy burdens that the moment lays upon us.
So, dear friends! we are very different in our circumstances and
positions. For some of us Hope's basket is nearly empty, and Memory's
sack is very full. For us older men the past is long, the earthly future
is short. For you younger people the converse is the case. It is Hope
whose hands are laden with treasures for you, Memory carries but a
little store. Your past is brief; your future is probably long. The
grains of sand in some of our hour-glasses are very heaped and high in
the lower half, and running very low in the upper. But whichever
category we stand in, one thing remains the same for us all, and that is
duty, keeping God's commandments. That is permanent, and that is the one
thing worth living for. 'Whether we live we live unto the Lord; or
whether we die we die unto the Lord.'
So let us front this New Year, with all its hidden possibilities, with
quiet, brave hearts, resolved on present duty, as those ought who have
such a past to remember and such a future to hope for. It will probably
be the last on earth for some of us. It will probably contain great
sorrows for some of us, and great joys for others. It will probably be
comparatively uneventful for others. It may make great outward changes
for us, or it may leave us much as it found us. But, at all events, God
will be in it, and work for Him should be in it. Well for us if, when
its hours have slidden away into the grey past, they continue to witness
to us of His love, even as, while they were wrapped in the mists of the
future, they called on us to hope in Him! Well for us if we fill the
passing moment with deeds of loving obedience! Then a present of keeping
His commandments will glide into a past to be thankfully remembered, and
will bring us nearer to a future in which hope shall not be put to
shame. To him who sees God in all the divisions and particles of his
days, and makes Him the object of memory, hope, and effort, past,
present, and future are but successive calm ripples of that mighty river
of Time which bears him on the great ocean of Eternity, from which the
drops that make its waters rose, and to which its ceaseless flow
returns.