Have you received other mercies connected with your temporal well-being? Perhaps at the beginning of the year (as at the beginning, maybe, of many a year before) things looked very dark for you and yours. Yet "hitherto" God has helped you. You may never have had more light on your path than what enabled you to take the next step with safety, but that light has never failed you. God has been pleased thus to discipline many of His people. You may, possibly, remember also peculiar deliverances:—from sickness; from money difficulties; from bodily dangers; with unexpected additions to your means of comfort and of usefulness.
Again, call to remembrance your social mercies, which have come more indirectly through others. Think of the relations and friends who have been spared to you! Begin with your dearest, and pass on from those to others less closely allied, but still most valued, and number them all, if you can. Do any remain whom death threatened to remove during the past year? Have any, have many, been a comfort to you? Have your anxieties regarding the temporal or spiritual well-being of others been lessened? Have beloved ones been given to you during the year—such as a wife, a husband, or a child? If God hath led you in this way during the past year, it ought indeed to be remembered!
And if any of those Christian friends have fallen asleep in Jesus, then it is a great mercy to know most certainly that they are your friends still, and your best friends too; and you should thank God for the happiness which they now enjoy, and which you hope to share with them.
But you have other mercies to remember besides these. Surely much has been done for your spiritual good by your Father in heaven. He has shewn patience, forbearance, and long-suffering towards you; and has been teaching you during these past months by faithful ministers or faithful friends; and has been striving within you to bring you to Himself, and to keep you there. Have you enjoyed no peace in believing, nor gained any victories over self and sin? Have you possessed no more calm and habitual fellowship with God? Have you done no good? Has prayer neither been offered in truth, nor answered in love? Has all been fruitless and dead? Oh, let us beware of the falsehood of denying spiritual mercies bestowed on us by God! "If I should say I know Him not, I should be a liar like unto you," said our Lord. The graces of the Spirit, the least of them, are the earnests of eternal good, the assurances of enjoying the whole fulness of God.
BUT YOU HAVE SORROWS TO REMEMBER. Alas! we are in little danger of forgetting these. The sunny days may come and go unheeded, but the dark ones are all registered. We cannot forget that "the Lord taketh away;" but why do we not as vividly remember that the same Lord "giveth" and that in both cases we have equal cause, did we only see it, to exclaim, "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" I ask not what these sorrows have been. Enough that they are very real to you, or to those who are bound up with you in the bundle of life. It was a weary time to you in the wilderness, and it is well to remember that portion of the way in which you have been led, which was as a dark valley and shadow of death.
AND WHAT OF SIN? That is what makes it so hard for us to remember the past journey. The backslidings and falls in the way; the careless straggling behind; the lazy resting-places; the slow progress; the careless devotions; the misspent days of the Lord; the opportunities lost of doing good to others, or of receiving good ourselves, through procrastination, sloth, and indifference; the manifestation of our unloving and selfish spirit towards our brother, in envy, bad temper, backbiting, jealousy, or unguarded speech; the little done or given for God's work on earth, in charity to the poor, or to "our own flesh" who required assistance;—the everything, in short, which deters memory from looking steadily at what it would if it could blot out for ever from its records! Yet it is of great importance that this portion of the journey should be remembered; although it is not the way in which God led us, but which we chose for ourselves in our ignorance and self-will. Ponder it well! Recall what your conduct has been in avoiding temptation; how you have made use of the means of grace; the days in which you may have lived without God, or if you prayed to Him, when you did so as a form, without any real faith or love; the days in which you have been so presumptuous as to live without "faith in the Son of God," and to meet trials, temptations, and duties, without seeking strength from the Holy Spirit; the Sundays that have come and gone without having been improved, and sermons heard in vain, and public worship joined in outwardly only, without reality; the little help, or possibly great discouragement given to Christian ministers and Christian members by your very coldness; the time lost never to be recalled, and of all that could have been done for the ignorant, the afflicted, the wicked, the sick and dying, for friends and relations, which has been left undone, and never can be done in the other world. Think of what your Master has said, who is to judge you—that "herein is my Father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit"—that "if any man will be my disciple, let him take up his cross daily, and follow me"—that "many will say in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten and drunk in thy presence? hast thou not taught in our streets? have we not done many wonderful works in thy name? and I will say unto them, I know you not; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity:"—think of this now, for think of it one day you must: and if you do so with any degree of truthfulness, I am sure you cannot enter another year without pouring out your heart in humble confession, and laying down your burthen at the foot of the cross, crying out, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness, and according to thy tender mercies blot out all my transgressions!"
Allow me now to put what I have to say in a practical form:—
1. When you review your mercies, consider how you are affected by them. It is easy, I know, to say, and to say so far truly, "Thank God for them!" Yet the whole spirit in which they are possessed may be intensely selfish. We may have been seeking our life in them to the very exclusion of God from our hearts, forgetting that "a man's life," says our Lord, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." What things? Any creature things whatever! To make these our life, that is, our happiness, or to esteem them as essential to our happiness, is, as our Lord adds, for a man "to lay up treasures for himself, and not to be rich towards God." This is that "covetousness which is idolatry,"—the worship of Self, through what ministers to Self.
2. As you remember your sorrows, remember not only how you were sustained and comforted under them, but, what is of incomparably more importance, consider how far you have been realising God's purpose in sending them. That purpose may have been to perfect you by trial; or to prove your loyalty to Him; or to prevent evil in yourselves and others. But never forget that the lesson of all lessons is, that we or others should find life, and life eternal—that is, as I have said, life in the knowledge and in the love of God, which will satisfy and endure for ever; or, if this is already found by us, that we should possess it "more abundantly." Now, whatever tends to make us realise that what we often call and think to be "our life" is yet no life—that money, friends, or earthly enjoyments cannot fill the immortal soul, or be its portion for ever;—whatever awakes us from this dream and dispels the delusion, and makes us know the excellence and reality of true life in God, must be a blessing of the highest and richest kind. Yet what has such a tendency to do all this as sorrow, and the very trials which we so much deplore? The pain is no doubt great—often agony—a very cutting off a right hand, or plucking out a right eye; but the gain intended by the operation is incalculable and endless. Yet, what if all the good is lost through our blindness, ignorance, hardness of heart, pride, self-will, and unbelief? Alas! alas! if we too "go away sorrowful" from Christ when He threatens to take away our "much riches," though He does so in order only through this very discipline to induce us to follow Himself, and by the cross to gain life eternal! Alas! when it can be said of us, "Yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day; that ye might know that I am the Lord your God." And what is their punishment? "They have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger, they are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? Ye will revolt more and more!" What a real loss of friends would this be! For by separating ourselves through unbelief from Christ, we thereby for ever separate ourselves from our friends in Christ, if they are with Him!
Ye who have experienced comfort from good in affliction, bless God! "O Lord, my strength, my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction!" "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." Let the remembrance of the past, also, strengthen your faith for the future. As you "let your requests be made known to God with prayers and supplication," do not forget the "thanksgiving" for this will help you henceforth to "be careful for nothing." He who has led you out of Egypt, through "the depths," and across the desert, will never leave you nor forsake you.