THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR

In preparing the copy for the press our thoughts were meditating upon the close of this year 1936. This issue will be the last number for 1936, and we feel obliged to thank our readers for their kind support and interest shown throughout the year. Also the many friends who have submitted various items and those who have so kindly aided us in the work.

We feel grateful to God for his goodness and mercies received and raise our Ebenezer here, “The Lord has helped thus far.” And we say with one of old: “Our lot in future years, unable to foresee, He kindly, to prevent our fears, Says, “leave it all to me.”

Yea, Lord, we wish to cast
Our cares upon thy breast!
Help us to praise thee for the past,
And trust thee for the rest.

My friends, has not the Lord been kind to you throughout the swiftly passing year? Do not you owe Him your very breath? Look back over your past life. Can you not see how gracious He has been, in childhood and in youth; in middle age and hoary hairs, supported by His care? And what returns have you made to Him? O Lord!

Assist us, we pray, to lament
The sins of the year that is past
And grant that the next may be spent
Far more to thy praise than the last.

Youthful readers and friends, your life is drawing to a close even as the fast closing year of 1936. Today you are here but tomorrow you may never see. Is your soul prepared to leave this world for the world to come? Eternity is before you. Your sins are charged against you. And hell is gaping for you every moment of time to swallow you up into eternal misery. The Lord has given you his gospel from sabbath to sabbath throughout the year. He has shown himself mighty to save. Have you heard his voice calling unto you: “Come sinner, let us reason together; repent ye, turn ye unto me, forsake thy evil and wicked ways, confess thy sins and guilt and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and ye shall be saved.” He has revealed Jesus as the Savior and Mediator. He, has given you his precious Word in your home. Have you improved it by a proper use or have you abused it, slighted it, and neglected it? Know thou, that for all these things thou shalt have to give an account unto the Lord thy God. Therefore, hasten for thy life’s sake and seek mercy through the blood of Jesus.

Beloved friends in the Lord, surely you may sing:

The Lord, our salvation and light,
The Guide of our strength and our days,
Has brought us together to-night,
A new Ebenezer to raise.

He has crowned thee with his goodness and blessings through the passing year. Each morning his mercies were new. He inclined his ear to your prayers, and his bountiful hand he opened wide to your wants. Surely he has helped you again and again, did he not? He provided you with temporal and spiritual blessings, His sabbath days were to you a day of rest, were they not? And his Word he did bless with power, now and then, to your soul. Well then, beloved, have you been deserving of such mercies and blessings? Indeed not, for your sins and iniquities do rise up against you mountains high. O your wretched unbelief, doubts, fears, misgivings; your evil heart bringing forth such corrupt thoughts and your hands such polluted work. Your eyes so full of wantonness, your lust so eager for evil instead of good. “The good that 1 would I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do” continually. “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of sin and death?” “I the Lord thy God, which hath brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage! Thou shalt have no other gods before me!” O beloved, how idolatrous we are; may God cleanse us more and more by his sanctifying Spirit. When we are permitted to view the passing year,

How well it becomes us to cry,
“Oh! who is a God like to thee?
Who passeth iniquities by,
And plungest them deep in the sea!”

O may you be favoured with that blessing of God that your soul may pass from death unto life in the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone is the hope of glory and to whom your soul goes out even in the smallest desire by God’s implantation of his grace.

The Lord enable thee to take a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, as a memorial of the subduing of the Philistines of your soul, that they may not come up anymore into thy coasts. Yea, that your soul may enjoy the knowledge and blessing of God so that you may realize that His hand is against all thine enemies all your days to deliver both your soul and body, from their power and dominion and to give thee life eternal to His honor and glory.

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