XIX

GOD'S NEW YEAR

There was no more sea.-Rev. xxi. 1.

N Greek thought and in Hebrew religion the sea

IN

was the emblem of mystery. This book of Revela

tion was written by a man who was familiar with Greek thought, as the prologue to the Fourth Gospel shows. Yet he was himself a Hebrew, and wrote about a religion which, though it was destined to be universal, had its beginnings at Jerusalem. Perhaps the use in Israelitish song of the sea as a symbol of mystery and dread had its origin as far back as that instance which we read for our lesson-" The Lord, with a strong hand, led His chosen people to deliverance through the midst of the sea." Compare, for instance, with our text the language of Psalm lxxvii., which is evidently inspired by the gratitude felt by Israel for that great historic salvation. "Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest Thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." Compare that piece of poetry with the well-known lines of our English poet, William Cowper:

The seer of Patmos had some such feeling as this in his heart, and takes a far outlook with wide and glorious vision, when he sees the coming end even of the mystery, when there shall be no need for the symbol"I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea."

We all feel life to be a mystery; we cannot help it, and the older we grow the deeper does the mystery become. Your little child can ask you-perhaps has asked you questions that the wisest of men cannot Christina Rossetti sings:

answer.

"The mystery of life, the mystery

Of death I see

Darkly, as in a glass; their shadows pass
And talk with me."

Life

Was it not Charles Dickens who wrote, "This world is a world of sacred and solemn mystery; let no man despise it or take it lightly"? Our life-the life of any man-is but a moment between two eternitiesthat which has been and that which is to come. begins, continues, and ends in mystery. I have often heard a man say-so doubtless have you" I wish one could see any meaning in it all; life is a mystery to which there is no solution." I have heard many men say, "We give up trying to find any solution; do your duty in the day. Do not seek to probe into what may have no meaning. Life is a mystery, and we cannot find the key." Just now that is the fashionable attitude and the so-called reasonable thing to say"Don't speculate, be practical; life is a mystery. Live as you can in the fleeting moment, doing bravely what

is in you to do." There are worse creeds than that, but few of us can remain in that condition of suspended judgment. We want a key for the door; we want to know what is on the other side, that we may understand something of the meaning of our own life.

The mystery presents itself in myriad forms. Let me just say briefly how it has come to some of you during the past year. Here is one person into whose experience death came for the first time last year. It is very remarkable, but none of us feel that death has anything to do with us until it actually comes. We hear about visitations in other families, and are sorry for the sufferers, but we feel that Death is a stranger that has nothing to do with our home circle. We do not like to think of his possible advent, nor can we picture to ourselves what life would be like if Death really came. Well, here is one to whose home Death did come last year and took away the very person whom you could least afford to spare, and that is a thing he often does. Before that blow fell you thought you would be sure to go first, but it was not so; and you have not been able to see anything kind in that call of the grim spectre. You remember how you felt the next morning; you had to go to the great city to work, and when you heard men talking as if nothing had happened, and when you saw them busy here and there labouring for the meat which perisheth, you could not help stopping to ask yourself, “Is it not all a dream? What a weird mockery is this! The real to me was that something which is lying cold and still in what was once my home." You have managed to right yourself a little since, but you look forward on the new year in a very different mood from that in

which you faced the old. Because of that visit of death life is to you a deeper mystery than it was before.

Then here is a man who last year went through the greatest sorrow of his life; in fact, experienced the complete overthrow of that for which he had lived. You know what I mean, maybe. You had pinned all your hopes to the future of that life, for whom you toiled, sacrificed, suffered, and counted the sacrifice not dear. Now where is he-dead? Better if he were! Perhaps you are so much in a sadder position than he whom I have just instanced that you will say it would be good news if you could know that that boy of yours was in his coffin, rather than where he is and what he is. You can't help saying to yourself, as you sit among people who pray, and perhaps you don't pray, "To what purpose was this waste? If there be any meaning in life at all, why is it that my life, which was not selfishly lived, appears to have been lived only for torture? My boy has failed me." Yet you would be crucified to save him if you could. "Oh, Absalom, my son, my son, would God I had died for thee!"

Here is another-how different an experience is his! He sits in a corner of a pew, solitary, unnoticed; the frost of age is on his hair. He makes no complaint, there is no eagerness in his outlook, no protest in his prayer. He is patient, resigned, still. Ah, young man, you would never dream that that old man once had as much spring in his step as you have in yours, and as much hope in his heart as you cherish for the opening year. Once he felt as you do, in the pride of your youth-and you are right to do it-that you are going to conquer life and wrest the golden secret out

of fate. He thought all that; his experience was hope deferred, and now it is hope gone. He knows what fate has to give him; it is to be a hewer of wood, a drawer of water to other people all the days of his life. Yet he feels that he has not lived out, and never had the chances to live out, what there was in him to be and to do. It is a mystery, is it not, that he never could and never shall? Here is a man who has only a little corner of his life (does any man live any more?); life has been an illusion, a disappointment, and as he draws near to the dark river he says to himself, "A mystery, a mystery! I am no nearer to the meaning than I was at first."

Here are all these stories of struggle, poverty, shame, and sin. What is that strong man who is conscious of a weak will and mighty passion, and who says to God," Strange that You have made me so that I so easily do evil and so hardly do good! I am not master of myself. If You had made me as passionately earnest to pray as I am passionately earnest to gratify the flesh, life would have been very different for me to-day. Where is the good of making resolutions when I know the history of the past year?" Mystery! Surely God's ways are in the sea, in that any of these stories can be told at all.

The pain of life is just in the mystery. If we knew, there would not be any pain. It is that we do not know, as we look forward upon the undiscovered future, and strain our eyes with peering into the gloom trying to see what is to be, that the pain comes. Hence it is that some of you, standing on the threshold of another year, view it with a certain misgiving. What has this coming year in store? Mystery!