THE end of the year, that has come again, exhorts every man to think of his own end. The Old year is an impressive Memento mori, i. e. “Remember, that once you too must die!” wherewith the eternal God makes His children of men start up for a moment out of their thoughtlessness.
There are two evils, which you should avoid. One is of always, and the other is of never thinking of your death.
Always to have death before your eyes, dulls the spirit, makes your freshness fade, and unhumanizes you as man. Then you live under constant fear; you can not set your heart and attention to your daily work; and even your devotional life obtains the false fold of sheer fear of corruption and doom.
It is indeed a grace, that we are enabled, for the greater part of our life to put off from us the thought of our end, and with glad hearts to enjoy with relatives and loved ones, what our Father in heaven apportions to us of the delights of life.
Always to think of death would be no life upon earth. To enjoy his walk, the walker must not think all along the way of the door at which presently he shall knock. There would be no sailing the sea if all along the journey sailors stood on the look-out for land. And he who already at sunrise, and during all the hours of day, would look for sunset, would not enjoy half of the light of heaven which God provides for us.
In monasteries and hermitages it has been seen what that going to sleep and getting up with a skull on one’s table leads to, and more than one irascible among us is as a beacon at sea, to warn us away from this dangerous cliff.
But know well, that the second evil is yet worse. He who never thinks of his end, makes of his life a play; banishes wilfully the seriousness from his heart; and is not unlike the traveler, who, in the waiting room of a station between, takes delight in food and drink, and forgets that the journey extends further.
Never to think of the end is a sinful misuse of the grace, that enables us to put the thought of our end from us. For that very grace of forgetfulness should bear the costly fruit, that not too often, but at particular times we think of it the more seriously, and with our whole soul enter into it, in advance live through our own end, and in the midst of our years undergo the tremendous impression of dying.
Our human disposition brings with it, that gravediggers and undertakers are often entirely callous toward death. What one always sees, in the end one no more sees at all. While on the other hand the impression is deepest, most penetrating and overwhelming, when at a single time we are arrested with all the tension of our spirit by the thought of such an awful something as our death.
And this is what Old-year’s night, the messenger of God’s eternity to your heart, comes to do.
There is rotation in the year. The year forms a circle. Thus it turns, even as when you draw a circle, again to its startingpoint. It began with the first of January, and see, when presently the twelve strokes from city or village steeple have been sounded, you are back at that first of January again.
And so says the Holy Spirit in Psalm 146, man too turns back to his startingpoint and beginning.
He who is not familiar with the original Hebrew, here needs a brief explanation. The name of a human being in Hebrew is Adam, and the name of the earth is Adama. Thus the psalmist alludes to the fact that Adam is come from the “Adama” (earth) and that at his death he returns to this “Adama”.
Thus when it says: “Man turns again to his earth” or literally: “adam turns again to his adama”, it means: From the earth, your earth, O, child of man, were you taken and come, and to your earth at your end presently you again return.
As with the year, so in your life there is a circle-course, a movement as in a circle, which turns back into its starting point. With earth it began with you and with earth presently you end. Dust from dust and presently returning to the dust of the earth, itself again to become dust of that earth.
By that saying: “Man returneth again to his earth” (Ps. 146:4), the Scripture humiliates you so deeply. For though you may tread that grey dark earth slightly under foot, and turn away from a dug grave as soon as the oppressive odor of earth comes up to you, it still remains as Moses wrote: “From that dust of the earth the Lord formed man”. And every graveyard can teach you so seriously and eloquently, that, however finely fashioned and beautiful and healthy your body may be, once, God alone knows already how soon, it turns back to that dust of the earth, to become earthmatter again and disappear in earthy, rank earth-exhalation.
There is still much that is glorious about you now, were it but the glow and animation that beam from your eye; but presently all that glory shall prove to have been as a flower of the field. Then the wind makes itself heard across the country; her stalk breaks; her leaf withers; and one knows and finds even her place no more.