A donation so transcendent calls for some corresponding attitude. What would we think of a child accepting its holiday gifts without showing appreciation, and speaking not a word of acknowledging thanks? Nothing is more rude than ingratitude. That spoils it all. Look at the interest the heavenly inhabitants took in that unspeakable gift. They came down with gracious messages concerning it. They were all present and sang their highest songs when the Savior was born. Their conduct was just such as we may expect from beings so pure, so intelligent, and yet it was not to them, nor for them. "Unto us a Child is born, unto us this Son is given." It is for us and for our salvation that the Lord of glory came and was made man. Here is a thought that ought to stir us to a higher pitch of emotion and gratitude. People have capacities to appreciate favors, to acknowledge good, to feel the worth of help when great and pressing need is upon them; why not over against this amazing goodness of God? Oh! that any human heart should be found weighted down by such leaden dullness that it should fail in its adoring thankfulness to God for His unspeakable gift. Far better such had never been born!
And thankfulness and rejoicing, if genuine, is never selfish. Observe our children at this time. When they have received their gifts, they do not selfishly hug them to themselves, place them in a corner, and strive to keep others from seeing them; they run about displaying what kindness has bestowed, shout and make commotion, nor feel happier than when others—their playmates and companions—come to share in their merriment. It is not different with God's Christmas gift; it is designed to be the occasion of universal joy. "I bring you glad tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son."
A certain ancient writer remarks: "Were some explorer to discover the real elixir of life by which life and health and youth might be made perpetual, with what shouts of triumph and songs of joy would the discovery be heralded forth!" Friend would rush to bear the glad tidings to friend, over hill and mountain; across valley and plain would the joyful tidings roll, until there were no solitary inhabitant, be his dwelling ever so remote or concealed, but would have found it out. Beloved, here is the true elixir of life, in Bethlehem's manger; there is the fountain of perpetual health and youth. Let the glorious truth, then, receive universal proclamation; let the tawny African in his dark jungle, the Eskimo in his icy, squalid hut, the dweller in the most distant isle, and the man, woman, and child that lives with you and next to you,—let one and all hear the glad news that God's unspeakable gift has come to earth. Yes, let this blessed truth spread till every sinful and sorrowing brother may rejoice with us, and that from earth and sky may echo forth in grateful refrain: "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift," now on these present Christmas festivals, and then when these earthly celebrations will have passed over into the celebration of heaven, we shall see and adore Him who was once a babe in Bethlehem, but now sitteth upon the throne, God blessed forevermore. Amen.
LAST SUNDAY IN THE YEAR.
We all do fade as a leaf.—Isaiah 64, 6.
There is perhaps no truth which is more generally admitted and which is more frequently referred to than that life is short and time is fleeting, that—"man born of a woman," as Job expresses it, "is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down." Every tolling knell that resounds its muffled voice from the church's spire, every painful sickness that casts us upon a weary and dreary couch, every change of season in nature's annual round and tearing off one leaf after the other from the calendar, until the present date, the 31st day of its last messenger, bids us discard the whole,—all these are just so many solemn and constant monitors reminding us of the brevity, the rapidity of time's flight. And yet, with all these numerous and unmistakable evidences of the transitoriness of all earthly things, how little of an abiding impression they produce! Who of us, in thoughtful reflection, does not admit the necessity of asking in this matter for divine instruction and of preparing ourselves for the time when time shall be no more, and when we shall be called upon to give account of how we have used our earthly days, and to leave this world and all its concerns? It is to this that I would invite your thoughts on this day which marks the concluding day of another chapter of life's calendar. May God's Holy Spirit teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom, as I endeavor to explain and apply the words of our text.
Human life, man's natural existence, is most aptly represented by the figure before employed, the fading of a leaf. More than two thousand years ago did the inspired penman, the Prophet Isaiah, write these lines, and yet its truth is preached to us with unfailing regularity and solemnity in every recurring autumn. As we go out into the woods towards the close of each successive summer, we observe a gradual change in the appearance of the trees. We see the leaves, first one and then another, and then by degrees all of them alike, changing their green for a brown and yellow hue, at length, till, shriveling at the edges and loosening their hold to their native boughs, the wet and the cold and the wind cause them to fall to the ground with a sound so soft that it is almost silence and there, by the action of the elements, they soon decay and mingle with the earth, out of which they were first produced. Just so, my brethren, it is with ourselves. As soon as we begin to live, we begin to die. "Our hearts like muffled drums are beating funeral marches to the grave." If we succeed in adhering to the tree of life during the spring and summer of man's allotted years, autumn and winter of old age will certainly overtake us, and we shall sink away as surely and as silently as the descending leaves in fall, our spirits returning to God, who gave them, and our bodies mingling with the dust from which they were taken. We look over the annals of the world,—where are those mighty conquerors, a Hannibal, a Cæsar, an Alexander, a Napoleon, who once made whole nations tremble and kingdoms fall? Where are those brilliant statesmen, a Bismarck, a Webster, a Calhoun, and a Clay, upon whose lips admiring senates hung with wonder and delight? Where are the poets, the historians, the warriors, the divines, who, each in his day and generation, were the theme of general conversation, and were lauded with the tribute of a nation's praise? "Like the baseless fabric of a vision,"—gone. It is related of Xerxes, the powerful King of Persia, that when about to cross from Asia over to conquer Greece, he ordered a review to be made of all his forces on the shores of the Hellespont. A magnificent throne was erected upon a lofty peak. Seated on this pinnacle of gold, he gazed upon the unnumbered millions below him on ship and shore. No sight could have been more dazzling or more august. The hillsides were white with tents, the sea with ships. Gay banners floating in the sun, glittering with gold and silver, weakened the eye by their brightness and beauty; whatever unbounded wealth and intense love of display could produce or suggest was there, and in the midst of such transcendent glory and deepest homage, where multitudinous nobles were urging to kiss the hem of his garment and worshiped him as a god, the great king, Xerxes, wept. Amazed at such an act, expressive of feelings so contrary to those in which they were indulging, they reverently inquired the cause of his tears. "Alas," said he, "of all this vast multitude not one will be left upon the earth a hundred years hence." That was said more than two thousand years ago. How many generations have followed that, over which he wept and uttered this sad truth! We occupy their places now for a few days, and then we shall lie beside them. Of the congregation that is looking up into my face this morning, twenty, thirty, fifty years, where shall it be? The church bell will be rung out, I hope, from its steeple, but it shall be rung by other hands, and for other worshipers. This pulpit will be filled by another preacher and the pews by other listeners. As you would pass in your way home from its door, in your family and social circles, how you would miss the old and once familiar forms, yea, perhaps our very homes will be occupied by strangers. As the prophet says: "We all do fade as a leaf."
Lest our subject should be rendered useless by being too general, I will proceed, without further delay, to apply our text and this by addressing the various classes of persons among you, so that all, by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, may derive some spiritual benefit. That our text refers not to one class, but to every, is evident from the word "all,"—"We all do fade as a leaf." It applies itself, then, first to the young. Not only in autumn and winter, but even in the spring and early months of the year, leaves are seen to fall. And similarly, as the inscriptions upon the many tombstones in our last resting-places will testify, so many of the human family disappear in infancy and youth. It is a mournful sight to see them thus carried off in the vigor and tenderness of opening bloom, but it's one that ought to convey solemn teaching to those of youthful years. And what teaching? Wise King Solomon has expressed it in these words: "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth." And why? Because it is the most favorable time, the most God-honoring time, the most profitable. At no other time is the soul so capable of deep and abiding impressions, are the affections more easily touched and moved, are we more accessible to the influences of emotions and truth. It is preeminently the choosing time, the valley of decision, in which at almost every step we do or leave undone something which has its effect, for good or ill, upon one's future habits and character and eternity; and you can only be prepared to determine matters that call for decision when you have made the great decision; you can choose and act safely and wisely in all the other departments of life, the social, the intellectual, the moral, only when you have taken a decisive stand upon the subject of religion. Hence, our Savior urgently entreats young people: "Seek ye first," first in point of importance and first in point of years, "the kingdom of heaven." Ah, my young members, if the sun does not dispel the mists pretty early in the morning, you may look with reasonable certainty for a foggy day, and so if the Sun of Righteousness, Christ Jesus, does not early in the day of your lives dispel the mists of unbelief and sin, the chances are that it will be more or less gloomy obstruction the rest of your lives. You will never be such Christians as you would have been; there will not be the development of character as if you had started at the right time, and there will always be a feeling of regret in your heart. Note, then, that this is the time to begin to serve God; now is the time to put the yoke of Christ upon your necks and to break yourselves in for lives of usefulness. And what is more God-honoring? Religion is always an ornament, it decorates the silvery locks and the wrinkled brow, but it looks exquisitely attractive and suitable when worn by youth. God accepts the sinner at all times, even when he comes with tottering footsteps and with stooped back; but is it right to do service to another and make Him suspend His claim as your rightful Lord to satisfy the world and the flesh, His degrading rivals, to sow wild oats in the springtime of your years and send Him forth to gather among the stubbles the gleanings of life, after the enemy has secured the harvest? Nay, to Him belong the first-born of your days, the first-fruits of your season, the price of your love and devotion,—give them. You will never regret it. Incalculable are the benefits of early piety, beneficial for body and business, for character and connections, for mind and morals, for after-life and life after death; for, as our text inculcates, your earthly existence hangs but on a slender, frail, and feeble fiber. Do you know of none in your circle of acquaintances swept low by the grim reaper whom we call death? And what assurance have you, my youthful hearers, that you may not be among his victims in the succeeding year? Glory not, then, in your health and strength. Pride yourself not on anything which is so feeble and frail, but seek those solid blessings which are to be found in Christ Jesus, and make true preparation against the time when you shall go hence and be no more. "Remember thy Creator," thy Redeemer, thy Sanctifier, "in the days of thy youth."