These thoughts and the lessons they teach appear to my mind not inappropriate to the season through which we are passing. Nature is putting on her autumn garb of sombre tints, telling us that her strength and beauty are passing away, and that her days of brightness are declining. The woods, once vocal with the song of birds, now begin to look lonely and deserted. Their stillness is broken only by the rustling fall of the dry and withered leaves, like the stealthy and hushed footsteps heard in the sick chamber. The sighing of the winds through the branches robbed of their crown of verdure is mournful in the ears of the listener, as the low, dreamy moanings in a sick man's sleep. They both speak of decay and whisper of death. Of those of us, my brethren, for whom God is preparing the couch of sickness, against whose sight the light of day will be shut out, and upon whose prostrate form the shadows of suffering will soon fall, some will rise and walk forth in the warm sunshine of a hopeful spring, and some, like the fallen leaves, will never flourish again, but lie, like them, to crumble, decay, and mingle with the dust. Their white pall of the winter snow shall also be ours. The fierce winter storm shall howl its doleful requiem over our heads as it passes by, but we shall not heed it. The earth shall smile in beauty again, but not for us.
Oh! be it for us as it may—God knoweth! it will be well for us to have thought upon sickness, and to have prepared our souls for the trial. If health be again granted to us, we shall return to it again all the better for having known how to receive it and how to improve its time. If not, then, when our name shall have become a memory, and our form a vision of the never-returning past, we shall look back from the further shore of the dark river of death over which we have passed, and be glad that we learned how to lean upon God in those last dreadful hours in life, glad that we offered to Him beforehand the willing sacrifice of health and strength and life, and thus ascended from the altar of the bed of suffering, as a victim of acceptable merit in the sight of Him who rewards, more than tongue can tell, the least we ever do or suffer for His sake.
Sermon XXI.
Thoughts For Advent.
(For The Third Sunday Of Advent.)
Philippians iv. 8.
"For the rest, brethren,
whatsoever things are true,
whatsoever things are modest,
whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are holy,
whatsoever things are amiable,
whatsoever things are of good repute;
if there be any virtue,
if there be any praise of discipline,
think on these things."
The Christian is so deeply impressed with the truth, that a time will come when his faith will be changed to sight, his hope be realized in reward, and his charity be perfected in the enjoyment of all that is good, that he may be said to have this thought always uppermost in his mind. It regulates his conduct, consoles him in affliction, cheers him in the hour of darkness and of doubt, and puts in his mouth and hands the words and deeds of encouragement to his fellows. It is a magnetic thought, which, amid the storms and tempests of life, and through all its weary wanderings, keeps one's heart ever turned towards God and eternity. This blessed time for which we are all looking is the coming of the Lord, the manifestation and glorious consummation of the Kingdom of God. As the Apostle expresses it: "Looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." [Footnote 111]
[Footnote 111: Ep. Titus ii. 13.]
The holy season of Advent brings this truth more strongly before us, and directs our thoughts to it by the Gospel prophecies of the second advent of Christ, and by the warnings to prepare for it which St. Paul gives so often in his epistles. The words of the text follow immediately the admonition of the great Apostle which the Church has chosen for the third Sunday of Advent: "The Lord is nigh." Let us to-day, then, think on these things, and endeavor to make these thoughts profitable.
I. Whatsoever things are true. Here is a thought worth thousands. We look around us, and see so much insincerity, duplicity, and double-dealing; we meet so many who will overreach us with a friendly smile on their countenance, and cheat us without a blush, that we are tempted both to exclaim with David, in haste, "All men are liars," and to descend from our Christian stand-point of high integrity and noble frankness, in order to cope with the world after its own fashion, and meet it with its own weapons. But it is an unfortunate day for the Christian when he begins to forget or disbelieve in what is true, and to think on what is false. His mind is quickly pervaded with a subtle poison, which induces a meanness towards his fellow-men—a distrust of their good faith, and ends in a practical disbelief of the Providence of God. To him such unmerited success as attends the corrupt and swindling practices of the day is at first astonishing. The wicked seem to have it all their own way, and profit by the delay, and despite the coming of the hour when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed before the judgment-seat of Christ. His Christian simplicity and candor gives way little by little before the attacks of this lying spirit; his faith in truth, honesty, and pure motives is gone, and his practice is not slow to follow his faith.