For what has such a life been a whole year long, in your home, in your city or village, among your people and in your native land, yea, upon all the earth before your God! Did not everything live on and on, as though there were no God in heaven, and to forget God and not to think of God. And to substitute one’s own will and counsel for the counsel and will of the Lord, was but the natural utterance of our sinful existence! Have there this year also not again murders been committed and robberies, have people not slandered and lied, cursed and blasphemed, envied and hated; and in every way delighted in sin, as though there were no law on the part of God appointed for our human life! And it is true, in the circles of God’s people it was different. There was praise and a song, there upon the knees thanks were given and prayers offered. But even then, in our circle how far below the holy ideal that beckoned us did we remain, and beneath the “following after as beloved children”, to which God called us! So much richer talent was entrusted to us, and how empty and poor was not the larger part of the fruit which we brought unto God! God was to rule as King in the midst of His baptized and redeemed children, and how innumerable were the bitter moments, that self-rule seemed more dear to us than to be ruled of God. Yea, worse still, the moments that the throne of Satan seemed erected again in our heart. Richer unfolding ever and wealthier fruit of spiritual life there should be among God’s children, and how the gold proved again and again to be tarnished and all wisdom in Christ stunted and all development of more grace foiled. A year is so long, and how much farther it should have advanced us on the way! And now, where were you with your faith when this year began, and at what part of the way does its end find you? A whole series of sins stood on the program of your spiritual struggling, to be crucified, dead and buried; and now, look around you, examine your heart, and ask yourself, with what scornful glee they still have free play in you, full of evil, vital strength. God did not take you away yet; life is still yours. But what shall a new year avail you when, after having carried you twelve months with equal lack of purpose, equally poor as to fruit and equally rich in new guilt before God, it sinks back into eternity?

And, therefore, when in those impressive moments, which the change of the circle of years brings you, you look back to what is behind and forward into the veiled future, do not drift on the stream of your feeling, but man yourself to brave, heroic, courageous seriousness. And call upon the Holy One, that He may atone that year you have sinned away in the blood of the Lamb; that He may awaken you and enrich you with double portions of His grace, and be it then by bitter chastisements, be it by tender mercies, draw you away from the evil world and entice you unto Himself.

Days are becoming more and more serious, the future outlines itself so menacingly in the gathering clouds on the horizon. A century ago the blood of the nations in Europe was poured out in rivers, and the seers of our days continually speak of a coming catastrophy, which in dreadfulness and bitter desolations will far outrun the cruelty of the first Revolution. Everything arms itself to the teeth, and every connoisseur feels that there is no name imaginable for the terrors that await us, when once—O, God, be it late—those millions upon millions of soldiers, with their inexhaustible supplies of instruments of destruction, in contempt of death shall storm loose upon one another.

And were even this but the worst! But you well know, far worse and more dreadful is the wrenching loose of the foundations of our entire social system; that subversion of the ordinances of God, on which He has founded our human life; and that rousing and wilful outpouring of the viols of hatred and vengeance, wherewith one part of the children of men is set up against the other; now as yet held back behind the bars of law and saber, but which makes you shiver at the thought of what it once shall be, when finally the bars bend and break, and it shall become one Cain and Abel among all peoples and nations, and in our own dear fatherland and in the city of our habitation. In fact, no one of us makes for himself even a weak representation of the terrible times that are at hand, and of the dreadful things which we or our children shall live to see.

And can you say, that our generation has any idea of this, and seriously prepares itself for these dreadful things? Is there a careful avoidance of what can hasten that outbreak? Is there activity all day long, in ever wider circles to introduce antidotes against this poisoning of human life? Is courage faithfully nursed to be able to remain standing in the day of vengeance? And can you say, that children are brought up as a generation destined to face such evil days and so dreadful an issue of history? Alas, everything is sport and play, and shouts and sings, and ignites bonfires and dances, laughing on the verge of the most awful abyss. Fire stirs and smoulders underground where your house stands, and there is no one to carry water to extinguish it. Even among the Lord’s people there is no perception of this and no presentiment of how, when that awful catastrophy comes, madness shall break loose against the “pious” in particular, and the martyrcrown shall glisten again. Sunken away in dissensions, eager for honor and spoil, that more sacred circle lacks that higher note of life which, on the march to the field of battle, must inspire the real hero.

And yet, voices of admonition are not wanting. In all sorts of manners and ways God calls from on high to warn you. From the beginning He declares also now the end. He calls on you to give heed to the signs of the times. He drew in His Word the fixed lines, after which the development of the history of the nations shall run, and He raised up men, who all through this century have warned you, and have told you what is to come. And when this voice did not reach you, He visited you with adversity. He lessened the supply of your prosperity, in a small oppression and bitter injury He gave you the foretaste of what awaits you. No, the conflagration will not break out suddenly without you have been warned. Long beforehand the sparks crackle and you hear a sound as of smouldering fire. At once something cracks and shakes and breaks, so that involuntarily you start up and scent treason; and he who in sensual pleasure and fickle song did not stop up his ear to this divine warning, observes what is approaching, and realizes how closely the evil is already at the heels.

Oh, that the ear of the spirit might be opened wide and the Lord’s people might become listening, to observe how the Lord is making His approach with the terrible voice of His judgments. Those judgments can no more be averted. Things must go through the breakers, if we shall ever reach a safer haven. A hundred years ago the nations in France’s Revolution openly attempted to take off the crown from the head of God and assail the honor of His Anointed. They broke the bands and unravelled the cords. And when Paris took the lead in this, no voice went forth of horror and indignation from the bosom of the other nations, but from almost every nation echoes rose of that wild song of liberty, and without God against God, by self-will and self-choice, after one’s own desire to refashion life has now for a whole century long been the parole of the peoples. It is true, terrible was the tyranny of the rulers of that day, and a change should and was bound to come, but this was the sin of the nations at the time, that they sought deliverance from this oppression and the breaking up of that tyrannical yoke not in the way of humbling themselves before God, but in arrogant defiance of their God undertook by insurrection, with their own hand, to secure a better future for themselves.

And, therefore, to avert this is no more possible. Now the nations must run their own chosen way, and the end of that way must be, that instead of in Paradise they must arrive at the gate and the terrorization of hell. Therein must the honor of God be avenged, and the foolishness of man be mocked. It must, and once it shall be shown unto all the powers in heaven and on earth, that he who undertakes to lift up his hand against his God, injures not his God, but himself.

This must come to pass, for “from the beginning God has declared the end”, and has announced to every child of man, that “Whoever should eat of that tree, should die”. The wages of sin can never be other than death. And the peoples of Europe can find at the end of their deeply sinful way nothing else than death in their social and death in their domestic and death in their political life.

Yea, if it were still thinkable in Europe, what was once seen in Nineveh, that, with kings and princes and wise men in the lead, whole nations would humble themselves in sackcloth and ashes and in despair of heart before the Lord Sabaoth, even now the turning away of evil might yet come and wrath be averted. But he who is no stranger in the Nineveh of our days, and opens his ear to listen, and to catch the voices that are abroad among both higher and lower classes, well knows that the nations and peoples of Europe are too far gone to come to such a concerted action. There is no trace, no hint of such a disposition of spirits present. And if in some circles a certain tendency becomes evident to hold the christian religion high again, is it not frequently in the faith of the lower classes to seek a safeguard for the protection of his possessions rather than by devoting oneself to the Lord to arouse oneself to the glory of His Name!

And, therefore, we may not hesitate. We must prepare our souls for the dreadful days to come, and even realize the possibility that already this year, which we now enter upon, may bring us something of that awful catastrophy. Let every one put away the folly and the lightsomeness from his heart and from his lips, now that the Lord sets Himself to examine every one’s path and every one’s deeds. Let him that ever yet halted between the Lord and Mammon, break with the sinful amphibiousness of his whole life and convert himself to the Lord his God. Let no one of you be overtaken this year by death while you with your lamp without oil lie asleep on the threshold of eternity. That all God’s children in this good land might cease from envying one the other, and doing each other injury, and that as an altogether unique people they might join themselves together in heartfelt, brotherly love, that for the sake of holding off the evil day, they may strengthen each other’s hands.

When presently the twelfth stroke of the clock shall have sounded, we stand again at the opening of a new year. For that year also God appoints the beginning. He plants it. His divine hand commits the germ of it to the life of the world. But likewise His is the knowledge of what the end of the year shall bring us. Whether for you, or for one of your dear ones, it shall be the last year of life; or whether for you or for one whom your soul loveth, it will be the year of conversion and of coming unto life; whether roses will be strewn upon your way, or thorns on the stalk shall smart and wound you. He knows all the trouble that this year shall burden your heart. He has filled the cup of bitterness and of suffering, that this year shall be put to your lips. But He also holds in His beneficent hand all blessings that shall come to you, all the abundance that shall be your portion, all the blessed comfortings that shall refresh your heart. And, therefore, do not fear and neither be afraid, but now, at the change of years, in childlike confidence grasp the faithful hand of that Father Who is in heaven; and with that Father Who is in heaven this year also will be to your good and to your benefit. All things, even your deep fall into sin, must work together for your good, provided you know but one thing, which is, that you love your God.

What then may come, be it death or life, be it hunger or sword, be it the strong hand of powers and authorities, this year, too, it shall be the blessed experience of all God’s children that neither height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come, nor any other creature shall be able to separate them from that almighty love of our God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So be it!

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