ANOTHER year has flown by on the rapid wings of time, and we are at the commencement of 1904. When the Israelites were journeying through the wilderness, Moses described to them the promised land they were going to possess ere they entered it. He told them it was “a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year” (Deut. 11:1212A land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. (Deuteronomy 11:12)). We may take it, then, that God notes the New Years and their endings. More than this: He provided for His people during the whole year.
You who are reading these lines, have you done so? God has allowed you to live unto this present — all through 1903 your breathing has not ceased, neither has your heart stopped beating. His care has kept the functions of your body in motion. The accidents — known and unknown — from which you escaped as by a hair’s-breadth were the evidence of His care; the pestilence to which your neighbor succumbed was warded off from you by His good hand. “He giveth to all life and breath and all things.” Have you ever thanked Him? He is “not far from any one of us,” for “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Will you not “feel after Him and find Him”?
Look back over 1903. How often have you heard the good word of God? How many gospel meetings have you attended? Have you not sometimes even repulsed the strivings of God’s Spirit with you? And yet your last opportunity must come sooner or later, for in the very nature of things not one of us can live forever on earth, and come what will, you must face God someday. Consider, then, the work of God; and “this is the work of God, That ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (John 6:2929Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent. (John 6:29)). His long-suffering with you through this past year has been with a view to your salvation; He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:99The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)).
A month ago a small child was dying in a country village. An epidemic had laid the little fellow low, and his anxious parents saw that soon he too must follow others of his class to an early grave. Death is no respecter of persons — young and old alike obey his mandate.
Not very long before his end, the boy called his parents to him and said: “Dadda, you’ve been good to me always, mother too; but I’ll tell you who’s been best of all, that’s Jesus.” Then he asked for his loved Sunday-school teacher, and wished him to come, knowing “of whom” he had learned thus to center his childish faith in a Person — “Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”
An elderly man was sick in an old ivy-clad cottage in a lane not many miles away from where the little boy died. He was found sitting in the wide chimney-corner and looking very feeble. Hardly knowing his state of mind, after inquiries about his health, his visitor asked: “And do you know the Lord Jesus?” With tears in his eyes he replied in four words — words which, please God, you may be able to re-echo: “He DIED for me.” That was enough. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends;” but “when we were ENEMIES, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.” Was ever love like this?
Dear reader, there is nothing like the present time. Begin the year with God; use the day of salvation He gives you to consider His work in sending His own Son to die for you; then His great mercy in sparing you to see the New Year in, will not have been in vain; and if allowed to see it out, it will be true of you, too, that: “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof” (Eccl. 7:88Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof: and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. (Ecclesiastes 7:8)).
H. L. H.