So die the old, sated with days; but so also many a man is carried out in the strength of his life; young men and young women who have known no midday-sun of life, fill long rows in our cemeteries; and as the scythe mows the ears of corn, so mowed the scythe of death our little darlings, which faded early, before they had yet sucked the full breast dry.

And this year again, that now comes to its close, how many thousands upon thousands have been carried out, who a year ago at this time, when dying was talked of, thought of every one else sooner than themselves.

And now too, how many there are, who while reading this our word of admonition, can not possibly imagine, that it might come to them, and who, when the year again is past, will no longer be on earth.

It can be your lot who reads, it can be the lot of him who writes this.

Man goeth to his eternal home.

Pilgrims are we, but who, at a moment when least we think of it, suddenly can face eternity.

Reader, if it came to you this newly beginning year, would you be prepared?

For, unless God is gracious unto you, nothing will avail, you return again to your earth, and all joy remains cut off from you for ever.

Place yourself before the mirror, and that whole man, whom you see reflected in that mirror there, is nothing but sheer earth.

When God fashioned your unformed substance in your mother’s womb, says the psalmist in Psalm 139, you were curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. All your mother had, to fashion you, was taken from the dust of the earth. And with your growth, your body increased by the food you took; in your milk and in your bread, and what other food was given you, it was all dust of the earth transposed by God’s omnipotent power into bread and milk.

To that earth you return again, because it is your earth. That is to say, all there is of you came from that earth and from dust of that earth was fashioned, and thus, as soon as this fashioning power lets go of you, everything in you must dissolve again; and then there comes out of it, what there was in it; dust from the earth and for the earth.

Nothing but disdain and horror.

O, the grave is so disagreeably somber. And whether friends place wreaths upon it or plant flowers around it, avails you not, when in the earth you are engaged in becoming dust of the earth again. No dead person sees those wreaths, and the fragrance of those flowers he no more drinks in.

And therefore the people of the Reformation were correct when they would have nothing to do with wreaths on the casket and with flowers on the grave.

No, you do not break the terrible seriousness of the graveyard with your roses and immortelles. Let barrenness and dryness remain upon our graves. Sacred symbolism of what it really is in those graves.

“For we consume away in Thy displeasure” (Ps. 90:7).

Oh God, when we have come to the end of our life here on earth, and must go down into the grave, let our hope be in Thee!

No immortelles and no forget-me-nots, but only the Word of God belongs on the grave.

For in that dark moment it will come to God with you.

If God then does nothing for you, the earth will have you. Then you are booty and prey of the earth. Resistance is not possible. The earth will do with you as she pleases. And when the earth shall have done her pleasure with you to the end, vile corruption shall for ever overtake you, and shall bring upon you underneath that earth, in the abyss, a destruction from which no soul has ever yet returned, to tell us, how it there is, but of which Jesus has whispered to us, that there a worm gnaws that never dies, and that there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. A place of outer darkness; with a fire in the smoke of that darkness that can never be quenched; a dreadful state full of contempt and horror.

O, do not die like this, whoever you may be, young or old, who might read this, and not to die like this, take no rest until you know, that in your dying God shall perform an act of grace also upon you.

Here an uncertain expectation avails you nothing. To an unfounded hope your little boat can have no anchorage amidst the terrible breakers of death.

No, no, you need assurance, certainty, in that dreadful hour not to fear and tremble, but to rest in the faithfulness of your God.

Your humiliation is deep, be it so. You must return to dust, go back to your earth. Everything there is of you now, your blood and nerves, your flesh and heart will presently be taken away from you. Nothing will remain of you but a few dry bones, if even these shall not be ground to dust. Even this uttermost of self-degradation may not be spared you. Once you must lie before your God altogether helpless, as creature altogether resistless before that so often scorned Creator; and it will be terrible, if then, without mediating grace, you must fall into the hands of the living God.

But now listen, how the saints of God do sing!

They cry: “Death, where is thy sting, grave where is thy victory!” (1 Cor. 15). They jubilate: “I know, that my Redeemer liveth, He shall stand (keep watch) over my dust, and from out my flesh I shall see God!” (Job 19:26). In an exalted mood another sings: “I have a desire to depart, and to be with Christ!” (Phil. 1:23). And still another: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life (Ps. 16:11), and afterward Thou shalt receive me in glory” Ps. 73:24). And still again another glories: “I shall satisfy myself with Thy likeness when I awake” (Ps. 17:15).

Confess, does not such jubilation arouse your jealousy? Would it not be worth to you more than gold in the hour of your death, if in the midst of your dying pains you were able so to glory, so to jubilate, knowing that neither height nor depth, neither death nor hell, can separate you from the love of God, which is assured you in Christ Jesus?

And the secret of such jubilant language is so simple.

Also a Job, a Paul, a David, they have all turned back to their earth and dust has consumed their beauty; but their God had come upon them in grace, and had planted in them a germ of eternal life, where the dust of the earth could not reach it, yea, which only, after the dust of the earth had delivered them from the body of death, has gloriously sprung up in the blessed atmosphere of the heavens.

These men believed, they believed in the Christ; nothing more; nothing different. A voice cried: “that whosoever believeth in the Son, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” And by that faith it came into their soul. Not first in their dying, but long beforehand, while they yet lived. And so while they were alive they felt long in advance, that when their dust went to their earth, God would surely perform the act of grace upon them, to translate them into His heaven.

This made them glad. This enticed from their breast a note of eternal jubilation. And from that faith they have led the song for the whole church of Christ, of “Death, where is thy sting, and hell, where is thy victory.”

And, praise be to God, there are still many such also in our land. You find a few in every city and in every village, who still sing this after the saints.

For to their soul also God has done great things.

They lay not first in their dying, but long before their death “entangled in the bands of death, as the fear of hell deprived them of all comfort”. And from the tumultuous distress of their soul the prayer went up on high: “Oh, Lord, save thou my soul!” And, God heard. He is worthy of my love. “The Lord is great, gracious and all just. And to such as pray our God is full of compassion”.

Alas, most people now seek to make this superficial. That after death one enters heaven, seems to many people a matter of course. Especially the dear, inoffensive, honest people.

Nothing is needed but faith. Well, they are not unbelievers. What, preacher of the mercies of God, what more would you have!

And yet, with this the church of God is not content.

If it were so light a matter, if the way were so smooth, why should Jesus have declared, that the gate is straight and the way narrow, and that few there be that find it!

The proof to the sum turns out differently. For you readily observe, that these dear and not unbelieving people rather do not talk about that “turning back to their earth” and that the jubilant triumphing over grave and death is utterly foreign to them.

Oh, the difference speaks so loudly.

Where there is genuine faith, the outlook upon eternity is sure and certain. One might die today, or tomorrow, and any moment God might call would be good and welcome. Yea, then there is delight and love, already now to anticipate that glory when we shall see Him as He is, and therefore be ourselves like our Jesus.

But when it does not go deeper than the surface and plastered wall exhibits its beautiful white, then underneath all this refined exterior there stirs a certain unrest; you miss that truthfulness of tone; then one talks of everything else rather than of those awful eternities; and when it comes to dying, eternity is entered on a guess, with a prayer that God might yet be gracious unto their soul.

Judge for yourself, for such imaginative halfness is not this matter of eternity too serious; and do you not mislead yourself and hold your soul back, by not penetrating to deeper, more fundamental truth?

It is now Old year!

The year ran long, as though there would be no end to it. And see, that end is here. And how quickly it came and overtook you.

And so it shall be with your life.

That too lasts seemingly so long. Sometimes it is as though no end is visible on the horizon. And yet the end of it shall once come upon you as a thief in the night.

Watch therefore and pray!

Do you not hear, how the Lord calls even you!

Our times are fraught with danger. Life is so busy and overbusy. Everything chases and drives. As flakes whirl along in the snowstorm, day by day our restless lives whirl past us. Impressions crowd out one another. And the moments in which a human soul may restfully collect itself, to be alone with her God, oh, you find them so rare.

And God the Lord knows this, and he also knows, how great a danger this presents to His children, to wander off with the rest, and to be hurled away in the whirlwind of modern life. So He enriches and deepens and multiplies His grace. And so the child of God makes his way.

But woe to you, if on the ground of this you take your ease and go on in sin.

Rowing against the stream is rather your heavenly calling, and in lieu of struggling against that chase of the snowstorm, the pressure of the love you have for your God.

And therefore let the people of the Lord for the sake of their own soul and the soul of their children learn to understand the signs of the times.

However greatly the times have changed, and temptation has increased and pleasure has become the supreme object of pursuit, and lightheartedness has obtained the upper hand, death remains, and now as for twenty and thirty centuries, “our days are threescore years and ten and if we are very strong four score years, and they continue to be mostly labor and sorrow.”

However much the apostles of a very easy Gospel may seek to tempt our souls, He, Jehovah our Lord, is what He was and what He shall be and His righteousness can not be broken, and His judgment comes.

Yea, however mighty man’s hand may have become over the forces of nature and able to control all sorts of disease and unite pole to pole, that might of man’s hand has never reached across the boundary of eternity, and the: “Thus far and no further” remains on the part of God the call to our century also.

Praise be to God, that to this we may add, that however high the waters of unrighteousness and of opposition against God may have risen in our age, yet now as for twenty centuries and more His Faithfulness endures and His Compassion does not grow old.

O, with the return of this year to its startingpoint might that Faithfulness and that Compassion of our God be the comfort of His people everywhere.

And when presently more than one “turns back unto his earth”, let the refreshing of his deathbed be the sweet remembrance, of how by the seriousness of Old year’s night God the Lord took hold of his soul, and how before the Presence of God he sank away forevermore to find Him!

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