A NEW YEAR’S MESSAGE

Time, like an ever-flowing stream, is perpetually gliding on, and hurrying us and all the sons of men into the boundless ocean of eternity. We are now entering upon one of those imaginary lines of division, which men have drawn to measure out time for their own convenience; And, while we stand upon the threshold of a new year, it becomes us to make a solemn contemplative pause; though time can make no pause, but rushes on with its usual velocity. Let us take some suitable reviews and prospects of time past and future, and engage in such reflection as our transition from year to year naturally tends to suggest.

The grand and leadng reflection is that in the text, with which I present you as a New Year’s Gift: “Knowing the time, that it is now high time to awake out of sleep.”

The connection of our text is this: — The apostle, having prescribed certain duties of religion and morality, adds this consideration, namely, what the time required of them. As if he should say, Be subject to magistrates, and love one another, and rather, knowing the time, that it is now high time, or the proper hour, to awake out of sleep. A sleepy negligence in these things is peculiarly unreasonable at such a time as this.

Hence it follows, that to awake out of sleep, signifies to arouse out of fleshly security, to shake off spiritual sloth, and to engage in the concerns of religion with vigor and full exertion, like men awake.

And, as even Christians are too often liable to fall into some degrees of spiritual sleep, as they often nod and slumber over the great concerns of religion, which demand the utmost exertion of all their powers, notwithstanding the principle of divine life implanted in them, there is great need to call even upon them to awake. Thus the apostle arouses the Eoman Christians, including himself among them, as standing in need of the same excitation. It is high time for us, he says, that is, for you and me, to awake out of sleep.

This is a duty proper at all times. There is not one moment of time in which a Christian may lawfully and safely be secure and negligent. Yet the apostle intimates, that some particular times call for particular vigilance and activity; and that to sleep at such times is a sin peculiarly aggravated. Now, says he, it is high time for us, to awake out of sleep: this is not a time for us to sleep. This time calls upon us to arouse and exert ourselves: this is the hour for action: we have slept too long already: now let us arouse and rise.

The reason the apostle urges upon the Roman Christans to awake at that time is very strong and moving: it is this: “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.” Salvation is hastening quickly towards us upon the wings of time. As many years as are past since we first believed in Christ, by so many years nearer is our salvation: Or, as he expresses it in the next verse, “The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” The gloomy, turbulent night of the present state is nearly over; the dawn of eternal day is just ready to open upon us; and can we sleep at such a time? What, sleep on the very threshold of heaven! Sleep, when salvation is just ready to embrace us! Sleep, when the dawn of celestial day is just about shining around us! Must not the prospect of everlasting salvation so near us, arouse us, and put us in an attitude of eager expectation and constant watchfulness?

My chief design is to lead you to know the time, and to make such reflections upon it, as its nature and circumstances require, and as are suited to our respective conditions.

The first thing I would urge upon you as a necessary introduction to all the rest, is the important but neglected duty of self-examination. It ought to shock a man to enter upon a new year, without knowing whether he shall be in heaven or hell before the end of it. And that man can give but a very poor account of the last year, and perhaps twenty or thirty years before it, that cannot yet give any satisfactory answer to this grand question. Time is given us to determine this vital point, and to use proper means to determine it in our favor.

Let us therefore resolve, this day, that we will not live another year strangers to ourselves, and utterly uncertain what will become of us through an endless eternity. This day let us put this question to our hearts: “What am I? Am I an humble, dutiful servant of God? Or am I a disobedient, impenitent sinner? Am I a disciple of Christ in reality? Or do I only wear his name, and make an empty profession of his religion? Whither am I bound? For heaven or for hell? Which am I most fit for in disposition? For the region of perfect holiness, or for that of sin and impurity? Is is not time this inquiry should be determined? Shall I stupidly delay the determination, till it is passed by the irrevocable sentence of the Supreme Judge, before whom I may stand before this year ends? Alas, if it should then be against me my doom will be beyond remedy. But if I should now discover my case to be bad, blessed be God, it is not too late. I may yet obtain a good hope, through grace, though my present hope should be found to be that of the hypocrite.

If I should push home this inquiry, it will probably discover two sorts of persons among us, to whom my text leads me particularly to address myself. The one, entirely destitute of true religion, and consequently altogether unprepared for a happy eternity, and yet careless and secure in that dangerous situation. The other, Christians indeed, and consequently habitually prepared for their latter end; but criminally remiss or formal in the concerns of religion, and in the duties they owe to God and man. The one, sunk in a deep sleep in sin; the other, nodding and slumbering, though upon the slippery brink of eternity. Now, for both of these sorts of persons, it is high time for them to awake out of sleep. And this exhortation I would press upon them, by some general considerations:

I. Consider the uncertainty of your time. You may die the next year, the next month, the next week, the next hour, or the next moment. And I once knew a minister who, while he was making this observation, was made a striking example of it. He instantly dropped dead in the pulpit. When you look forward through the year now begun, you see what may never be your own. No, you cannot call one day of it your own. Before that day comes, you may have finished with time, and be entered upon eternity.

Men presume upon time, as if it was owed to them for so many years; and this is the delusion that ruins multitudes. How many are now in eternity, who began the last year with as little expectation of death, and as cheerful hopes of long life, as you have at the beginning of the present? And this may be your doom. Should a prophet, instructed in the secret, open to you the book of the divine decrees, as Jeremiah did to Hananiah, some of you would no doubt see it written there, “this year thou shalt die.” Jer. 28:16. Some unexpected moment in this year will put an end to all the labors and enjoyments of the present state, and all the duties and opportunities peculiar to it.

Therefore, if sinners would repent and believe; if they would obtain the favor of God and preparation for the heavenly state; and if saints would make high improvements in religion; if they would make their calling and election sure, that they may not stumble over doubts and fears into the presence of their Judge; if they would do anything for the honor of God, and the interests of the Redeemer’s kingdom in the world; if they would be of service to their families, their friends, their country, and mankind in general; now is the time for them to awake out of sleep, and set about their respective work. Now is the time, because this is the only time they are certain of.

Sinners, you may be in hell before ths year finishes its round, if you delay the great concerns of religion any longer. And saints, if you neglect to improve the present time, you may be compelled to launch over the gulf of eternity, to unknown coasts, full of fears and perplexities. You may be cut off from all opportunities of doing service to God and mankind, of endeavoring to instill the principles of religious knowledge and practice into the minds of your dear children, and those under your care, unless you catch the present hour. For remember, time is uncertain. Youth, health, strength, business, riches, power, wisdom, and whatever this world contains, cannot insure it. No, the thread of life is held by the divine hand alone; and God can snap it asunder, without warning, in whatever moment he pleases.

“John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.

And there went out unto him all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins. Mark 1:4, 5

This is the Jordan River as it looks today, probably much as it did in the days of John the Baptist. Referred to often in the Bible, this amazing stream begins in the extreme north of Palestine and flows for 110 miles, finally entering the Dead Sea. Some parts of it are very deep and have a swift current while other sections can be forded. It is the only known river in the world that is below sea level for most of its course. Jacob forded it at Jabbok. The Israelites and Elijah and Elisha miraculously crossed it dryshod. The Savior was baptized there.

II. Consider your shortness of time. Time in its utmost extent, including what is past from the creation, and what is future to Judgment Day, is nothing to eternity. But the time of your life is vastly shorter. That part of time which is parcelled out to you, is not only uncertain, but extremely short. It is uncertain when it will end, but it is absolutely certain it will end very soon. You cannot hope to exceed the common standard of long lives: and that is but seventy or eighty years. No, you have but very little reason to hope you shall live this long. The chance against it, if I may so speak, is at least ten to one. That is, there are at least ten that die on this side of seventy or eighty, for one that lives to that period. It is therefore far more lkely that you will never spend seventy or eighty years upon earth. A shorter space will probably convey you from this world to heaven or hell. And is it not high time then for you to awake out of sleep? Your work is great; your time is short: none to spare; none to trifle away: It is all little enough for the work you have to do.

III. Consider how much of your time has been lost and misspent already.

Some of you that are now the sincere servants of God may recollect how late in life you engaged in his service; how long you stood idle in his vineyard, when his work was before you. How many guilty days and years have you spent in the drudgery of sin, and in a base neglect of God and your immortal souls! Others of you, who have the pleasure of reflecting that you devoted yourselves to God early, compared with others, are yet sensible how many days and years were lost before you made so wise a choice, lost in the sins and follies of childhood and youth.

And the best of you have reason to lament how much precious time you have misspent, even since you heartily engaged in the service of God. How many opportunities, both of doing good to others and receiving good yourselves, you have lost by your own carelessness. How many seasons for devotion have you neglected or misimproved! Oh, how little of your time has been devoted to God and the service of your souls! How much of it has been wasted upon trifles, or in an over-eager pursuit of this vain world? Does not the loss amount to many days, and even years? And a day is no small loss to a creature, who has so few days at most to prepare for eternity.

And to many of you, is it not sadly evident you have lost all the days and years that have rolled over your heads? You have perhaps managed time well, for the purposes of the present life; but that is but the lowest and most insignificant use of it. Time is given as a space for repentance and preparation for eternity; but have you not entirely lost it, as to this vital use of it? Are not your hearts more hard, and you less prepared for eternity now, than you were some years ago? Have you not been heaping up the mountain of sin higher and higher every day, and estranging yourselves from God more and more? To heighten the loss, your time past is irrecoverable. It is gone for ever! Yesterday can no more return, than the years before the flood. Power, wisdom, tears, entreaties, all the united efforts of the whole universe of creatures, can never cause it to return. And is there so much of your time lost? Lost beyond all possibility of recovery? And is it not high time to awake out of sleep? Have you any more precious time to throw away? Shall the time to come be abused and lost, like the past? Or will you not endeavor to redeem the time you have lost, in the only way in which it can be redeemed; that is, by doubling your exertions in time to come? Much must now be done in a little time, since you have now but little left. You have indeed had ten, twenty, thirty, or forty precious years; But, alas! they are irrecoverably lost. And may not this thought startle you, and cause you to awake out of sleep? The loss of the same number of kingdoms would not be half as great. To a candidate for eternity, whose everlasting state depends upon the improvement of time, a year is of infinitely greater importance than a kingdom can be to any of the sons of men.

From a Sermon by

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