022.35. The Close of the Year
Chapter 35 THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.
There is something that strangely appeals to mind and heart in the ending of a day. As the sun sinks out of sight, and shadows gathers and men and animals alike forsake the fields and woods and hie them home, there is felt a pathetic power in the scene that the most gifted in language would find difficult to define and describe. A page, if not a chapter, of life has been turned, never to be rewritten. Incidents, experiences, meetings, and partings have taken place that can never be repeated at all in most instances, or if gone over again, never as before.
Some years ago we sat on the brow of a mountain and saw the sun go down. For minutes it hung suspended over the horizon, a great scarlet globe, then slowly sank in an opaline west. That departed day has been recalled an hundred times to memory since then.
We never think of that sinking sun, or behold one like it, but a favorite song called "Goodbye, Sweet Day" comes to mind with the recollection of that evening, and all that appeals to mind and heart in the fact of a day forever gone.
If the termination of a day affects the spirit, how much more solemnly and profoundly should we be moved at the sight of the close or death of the year. A day is but a chapter of life, while a year is a volume. With some reason we may expect a number of chapters, but with what right can we count on many volumes! There may be many of the former, but necessarily there can only be a few of the latter. One thousand and ninety-five chapters, after all, meant but three volumes of life. One-third of the human race never reach the tenth volume.
Countless millions never complete the first.
So, as the year closes now in a few days, and some prepare to place the completed volume in their individual Library of Existence beside its earlier published companion books, and mark the number with the figures 10, 20, 30, 40 or 50, the thought may well and profitably fill the mind, "Shall I add yet another? or is this the last?"
What kind of a book have we made out of this present number? How does it compare with the others? Is it better, or is it worse in appearance and contents? Some of the chapters we doubt not are much tear-stained. One or more has a black border all around, showing that Death has entered the home. One speaks very dejectedly of a certain sunset; another as rapturously about a sunrise. Several tell of the cooling of friendships, and the decay of a love that was thought to be eternal. One with many blots and the unmistakable mark of blistering tears, dwells upon a betrayal of trust. Surely there can be no more fascinating book to read than one of the volumes we have just mentioned. And all are invested with a certain sad interest when we come to the completion of the last page and sentence, and the finished work is placed on a shelf in the Library of the Universe. It is now a production to be referred to in many coming days, to be remembered at a dying hour, and to hear read aloud in full at the Judgment Day of Christ.
Tennyson recognizes the musing melancholy of this time in the words: "I stood pensively, As one who from a casement leans his head, When midnight bells cease ringing suddenly, And the old year is dead." A part of the sadness which comes to the thoughtful mind over the close of the year, arises from the recollection of certain mistakes and failures made in this period of one’s life.
It is perfectly natural for the pastor, evangelist, Christian worker, and every one indeed, who has been faithfully serving God, and achieving blessed results for heaven, to overlook their actually large success, and instead, to dwell with pain on the blunders and shortcomings which took place here and there in their labors and battles for righteousness and salvation.
How differently we would act, we say to ourselves if we could go over the same way again. And we doubt not that with the painful light and knowledge which experience brings, there would be with many, a wiser course and more successful life.
It may well be asked, that if such desires and resolutions, such amendments of judgment and conduct have been occasioned by these mortifying circumstances, then has not the soul secured a victory after all from the very jaws of defeat; while through the mistakes made, a strange, sad, yet most powerful education has been received, through the blessing and overruling power of God.
Some one has said that we all see life like one riding backward in a carriage. The objects on the road are beheld and recognized only after they are passed. In like manner the real crises of one’s existence, the great opportunities, the times for certain speech and action, have in their momentous and weighty nature passed by before our minds and hearts seemed to take hold of the situation. Some of us, through lack of mental quickness, and by reason of disadvantages of many kinds, appear to be riding backward. We see the duty too late. We get sense on certain subjects after the hour the speech should have been delivered has gone. We see what we ought to have done to and for certain people, after they have departed from us and are out of our lives forever. Will not this fact count some in the Day of Judgment, that we had a back seat in the carriage? Then, does not God know that we knew nothing to start on? and so had everything to learn? In view of these facts it verily looks like men’s errors of judgment, and shortage of the best performance of what they desired and tried to do, might secure for them a kindlier consideration and treatment than is the usual fashion of the world to accord to its inhabitants.
Nevertheless, with all this, the regret remains in the breast with very many who are not intellectually and spiritually dead, that they did not speak and do the best in everything, in the year that is just closing with them forever.
Again, there is a sorrow felt over the departing year in the contemplation of the losses that have befallen us in that time.
They are many, and run from mere disappointment in plan and labors to the going out from us and out of our lives of those whom we would gladly have bound to us with changeless ties of friendship, affection and association forever.
These last experiences refer not only to bereavement, the empty room, the gap in the home circle, and the vacant chair in our midst, to which it looks like we can never grow accustomed; but to the losing of those who were once warm friends and loved us, and then grew cold, fell away and became either indifferent or open enemies.
David felt this pang in connection with Ahithophel, and breathes out his sorrow over the matter in one of his Psalms. Samuel seemed to bear a lifetime affliction over the heart defection and life and character fall of Saul. The Lord had to ask him once, as if to arouse him from his grief, "How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him?"
It matters not how we lose our friends, whether they of their own choice leave us; or are stolen from us by untruthful lips; or go back to the world and into sin and forsake us; or whether through our faithfulness to Christ they give up our company and go no more with us. Yet the pain of the loss is felt, and memory abides, and the old love will not die. So the closing of the year to the thoughtful mind, and to the soul possessed with any measure of sensibility is a time and experience not to be regarded lightly, but as a very precious, sacred and solemn thing. It is as if one had come down to a vessel’s side which was about to sail away with his treasures and with friends and loved ones whom he would likely never see again. An English poet filled with this thought and feeling, once wrote: "I did so laugh and cry with you, I’ve half a mind to die with you, Old year, if you must die." The Christian standing by the departing year can think and write and say nobler and better things than this, although the three lines are very natural, and somehow appeal to the heart.
We can say that the present volume is closed, but please God the next one shall be far better in every respect than its predecessors. The old year is going or gone, but the Saviour being our helper, the new year shall behold us enduring patiently suffering joyously, praying more, working harder, and living closer to Heaven than any other time we have ever known. The ship is about to sail away, but God assisting and keeping us we will come to the heavenly country at last to which the vessel is going. As we have bidden farewell to friends and loved ones on this shore, and seen them fade away into eternity; even so one of these days, it may be this very New Year, they over there will greet us with waving hands and shining faces and happy hearts, as leaving this world of sorrow and death, we drop anchor and land in that country where the King loves us, and where many have longed for our coming, and from which happy, blissful, blessed shore we will go away no more forever.
O that beautiful land! The far away home of the soul! Where no storms ever beat On the glittering strand, While the years of eternity roll.
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