ONCE more! Yet once more we have reached a year’s end! Let us bid the old year farewell with thanksgivings. Yes, even where clouds and griefs have closed us in, let us “in every thing give thanks.”
As the sands of time are sinking, we would be rejoicing in the eternal fervor of God. The dying beds of beloved friends called hence this year proclaim the peace which God gives to be eternal; the victories over suffering and in sorrow witness to the unchangeable mercy of God. Let such as will seek after phantoms, we will rest in the light of eternal truth. In our day of fashionable unbelief, and of fashionable sacerdotalism, the passing away of all fashions and the ever-enduring nature of the Word of God is a most important consideration.
Soon we shall each slip off the attire of this nineteenth century, and we shall enter eternity. And what then? No man will take with him out of this world one of its unbelief’s! No one will take with him one false hope, or one prop of his own forming. There is One and only One who can guide the soul safe over the waters into the haven of God’s rest, and that One is Jesus, the Saviour. He came from the glory to bring sinners to the glory, and He Himself is the Way. He has made the path clear before us. It is unmistakable. There is none other bearing any resemblance to it. It is sprinkled with His own blood. By faith in Himself; and in what He has done, we shall never be moved.
Let us use the little daylight that is left to work for Him. The night cometh when no man can work. Workers are sorely needed in town and country, as well as in the mission fields. May we each say, “Here I am; send me.”