“A HAPPY New Year to you!” is the salutation which greets us, we walk down the street on this first day of the new year. Bright and happy it seems, for the sun, as if desirous of ushering in the new year becomingly, is shining with even some pretense of warmth. But our business is not this morning in the broad, sunny street; we turn into a dark and squalid-looking court, and reach the door of our destination—the last house in the court, in which we had been told a man lay dying. We knock at the door, which is partly opened by a tall, gaunt, famished-looking woman, with a child in her arms, who peers suspiciously out at us through the aperture.
Having apparently satisfied herself that we are not the rent collector, and with the hope, perhaps, that we may be the doctor’s new assistant, she opens the door a little wider, and enables us to explain that we have heard of her husband’s illness. Bidden to enter, we learn that the husband has been down with rheumatic fever for nearly four weeks; that another child is also in bed upstairs with a fever, while the child she holds in her arms has but just recovered. “You’ll excuse me, Sir,” says she, “for I am but weak myself,” and she sinks wearily into a chair.
Mounting the creaking stairs, we enter the room above, and see the husband. There, upon a bed, sits the object of our visit, a man of some forty-three years. His back is propped up by a chair fixed behind him, his brows are knit with pain, whilst beside him in bed lies the child, who is “down with the fever.”
“A happy new year!” What a solemn irony the words, which so lately rung in our ears, would contain if we pronounced them here! Happiness? The squalor, the agony, the quick, short breath, the poor hands, with the joints knotted out of all shape, the clammy sweat upon the sick man’s brow! We are full of sympathizing pity, as we learn from him the length of his illness, the pain he has suffered, and gaze on his distorted hands, which he stretches out as mute witnesses of his suffering, and then thrusts them beneath the clothes to keep them warm. He has not slept a wink for three long weeks, and is about worn out; in fact, last night, at twelve o’clock, he made sure he was dying, he says. We sympathize with him in his suffering, and then, after a momentary prayer for guidance, ask him gently how it would have fared with his soul if he had indeed died at twelve o’clock last night.
The sick man turns a quick, searching glance upon us, as if, poor fellow, no one had ever questioned him as to his soul’s salvation before, and then slowly ejaculates, between the short breaths, “It would—have been—all right.”
“Then you have,” we reply eagerly, “got hold of the Lord Jesus Himself as your Saviour?”
“I have,” says the sick man; “leastways He’s got hold of me.”
“Thank God for that! and how long have you known it—or rather Him?”
“This morning, Sir, shortly after twelve o’clock.”
“Then it is a happy new year to you?”
“It is indeed.” And we praise the Lord together.
Somehow the court does not seem so bad after all as we leave it, for are there not ringing in our ears and hearts, with a deeper meaning than perhaps ever before, the words, “A happy new year! a happy new year!”
And, reader, how is it with you? If, instead of reading these lines, it may be, in health and strength, you were stretched upon your deathbed, could you look back to the time when you by grace, as a poor lost sinner, took shelter beneath the blood of Christ? Could you look on with joyful anticipation to an eternity to be passed with that blessed One who died for you, and say, “Yes, thank God, it is all right with me”? If not, remember this one thing, and this one alone, can meet the claims of a holy and sin-hating God—the precious blood of Jesus. Speaking to Israel, on the day that they took shelter from the destroyer beneath the blood of the Paschal Lamb, the Lord declares, “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” (Ex. 12:22This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Exodus 12:2)). It was, indeed, their happy New Year’s Day. Happy, too, are they who know that Christ, their Passover, is slain, and, therefore, can keep the feast. What a portion is theirs! The judgment, which was their due, is behind them, for it has fallen on their Substitute, the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and the glory, which was His by right, but which He would not have alone, lies before them. “Happy art thou, O Israel: who is like unto thee, O people saved by the Lord?” (Deut. 33:2020And of Gad he said, Blessed be he that enlargeth Gad: he dwelleth as a lion, and teareth the arm with the crown of the head. (Deuteronomy 33:20)). Yea, happy now, and happy throughout eternity. My reader, may such a happy new year be yours.
J. F.