“MENE — numbered and finished!” Is that true of you? The days of the past year are numbered and finished, and so, perhaps, are yours.
More than two thousand years have rolled by since that night when the King of kings wrote on the palace wall the death-sentence of the impious Chaldean monarch; more than two thousand years have rolled by since the terror-filled eyes of Belshazzar were fixed on that dread word of doom, “Mene—God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it;” generation has succeeded generation, dynasty overthrown dynasty since that dark night when human hands unwittingly carried out the divine decree, and Belshazzar’s kingdom and life alike were ended. Yet now, as you have crossed the threshold of the year 1888, beware lest God addresses to you a like word of warning.
You have no kingdom, but you have a life to be numbered and finished. God has preserved that life for twenty, thirty, perhaps seventy or eighty years, but He has numbered each day of it, and this may be the last.
Does this New Year find you one of Christ’s redeemed ones, one of those whose very hairs are numbered by a loving Father’s eye; or does it find you still afar from Him, one whose earthly days are numbered, on whose brow are written the awful words, “condemned already?”
Yes, ponder those words, “condemned already,” “numbered and finished!” Better realize your position now, while there is hope of escaping from it, than brood over it in hell, when it is for ever too late.
Condemned, but the sentence not yet carried out; numbered, but still a moment — the present moment — ere the thread of life is snapped. Yes, only this present moment can you call your own; then this moment accept the reprieve which the Judge Himself holds out to you; this moment turn your back upon those years of sin and folly, and your face toward Him who has seen and numbered them, and yet is waiting to be gracious to you. Perhaps over you the divine decree has been pronounced, “This night thy soul shall be required of thee.” Many more years may be your portion, or the end may come this night. In either ease why not be ready?
To you, a condemned criminal, a free pardon is held out; to you, whose days on earth are numbered, life eternal is offered; what are you going to do with the offer?
O, dear friend! do not spurn the pardon; do not refuse eternal life, lest it be never offered you again. Once more, at the beginning of another year, listen to the warning voice: “Mene — numbered and finished!”
C. H. P.