You write your occupation. Is it a calling you are ashamed to write? We will suppose it is a lawful one. Arises not the question, How fulfilled? With industry,—with honesty? Am I free from the deceits and trickeries so common in profession and trade, labouring to have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man? Do I remember, God would have me “diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”?
Have I ceased to have anything to do with the busy avocations of men? Is it that sickness has removed me from the active labours of life, or that prosperous circumstances enable me to live at ease, apart from the vexations and cares of business? How is the leisure,—how are the means spent? Both are talents for which account must be given. What account shall I be able to render, when the Lord comes to reckon with His servants?
This census paper,—ten years have passed since the last came. Ten years! How quickly flown: and yet a seventh portion of that span of life,—the allotted term, to the end of which so few, few reach. Ten years! how many sins have the moments which composed them witnessed! Multitudes forgotten by me; not one unregistered in heaven. Will they appear against me? Have they been cancelled? Have I sought pardon, where alone pardon can be found for them, in the cleansing fountain of the Saviour’s blood?
Ten years! How many troubles have they witnessed! Troubles,—ah, but how many mercies too! Think of THESE. Troubles and mercies,—which were most in number in the ten years passed? You can count your troubles, can you count your blessings? Are you willing, in the next ten years, to make this exchange: to let the troubles of the past ten years be the measure of your mercies in the next ten years; and to let the mercies of the past ten years be the measure of your troubles in the coming ten?
“Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.” (Psa. ciii.)
Yes, the past of national mercies and personal mercies, calls for hallelujahs of adoring thanksgiving. And that past we ought gladly to hail, as the pledge of continued blessing in the future. Let us enter on that future,—the way we have not passed by heretofore,—singing, “Ebenezer, hitherto the Lord hath helped us.” “The Lord will provide.”
But this thought of God’s mercies leads me to notice a connected topic, viz. the propriety and expediency of making special offerings to God on this solemn epoch in our history. It was suggested to me by a respected member of the congregation, that we should have special collections to-day; and the suggestion was urged by the most forcible of all arguments, an appeal to Scripture. Exodus xxx. 11–16 was referred to. It is written there,—
“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, When thou takest the sum of the children of Israel after their number, then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto the Lord, when thou numberest them; that there be no plague among them, when thou numberest them. This they shall give, every one that passeth among them that are numbered, half a shekel after the shekel of the sanctuary: (a shekel is twenty gerahs:) an half shekel shall be the offering of the Lord. Every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above, shall give an offering unto the Lord. The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less than half a shekel, when they give an offering unto the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls. And thou shalt take the atonement money of the children of Israel, and shalt appoint it for the service of the tabernacle of the congregation; that it may be a memorial unto the children of Israel before the Lord, to make an atonement for your souls.”
In connexion with these verses, I have read the following remarks in a letter in the public press: “There has never, to my knowledge, been in England,” says the writer in the religious periodical, “such a national offering as is here indicated; but there has been on three occasions a remarkable and progressive coincidence of calamity: thus after 1831, cholera; after 1841, blight, influenza, cholera; and after 1851, cholera, murrain, war.”
I deeply regret, my friends, that such words as these have ever appeared in print; none could well be more mischievous, because none could well be more likely to encourage the mistaken notion I met, and I trust controverted, at the beginning of my sermon. The writer seems to imply, that these calamities followed because an offering was not made. It is God’s, not man’s province to trace such connections. I believe he has misconceived the teaching of Exod. xxx. 11–16, and would make a temporary injunction of permanent force. I state what I believe to be the true meaning of the passage, in the words of a most able biblical scholar: “This tax is not in Scripture mentioned in connection with any other census” (save the one recorded in the first chapter of Numbers), “and we are of opinion that it was only a temporary measure to raise funds for the making of the tabernacle.”