Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 667
Delivered on Sunday Morning, December 31, 1865, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“At the last.” Proverbs 5:11
THE wise man saw the young and simple straying into the house of the strange woman. The house seemed so completely different from what he knew it to be that he desired to shed a light upon it, that the young man might not sin in the dark, but might understand the nature of his deeds. The wise man looked abroad and he saw but one lamp suitable to his purpose. It was named, “At the last.” So, snatching this, he held it up in the midst of the strange woman’s den of infamy and everything was changed from what it had been before—the truth had come to light and the deceptive had vanished.
The young man dreamed of pleasure. In wanton dalliance he hoped to find delight. But when the lamp of “At the last” began to shine, he saw rottenness in his bones, filthiness in his flesh. He saw pains and griefs and sorrows as the necessary consequence of sin and, wisely guided, wisely taught, the simple-minded started back and listened to the admonitions of the teacher, “Come not near the door of her house, for her gates lead down to the chambers of death.”
Now if this lamp of “At the last” was found so useful in this one particular case, I think it must be equally useful everywhere else! And it may help us all to understand the truth of matters if we will look at them in the light which this wonderful lamp yields. I can only compare my text in its matchless power to Ithuriel’s spear with which, according to Milton, he touched the toad and straightway Satan appeared in his true colors. If I can apply my text to certain things today, they will come out in their true light. “At the last,” shall be the rod in my hand with which I shall touch tinsel and it shall disappear, and you will see it is not gold. I will touch varnish and paint and graining and you shall understand that they are really what they are and not what they profess to be—the light of “At the last” shall be the light of Truth—the light of Wisdom to our souls.
It seems to me a fitting occasion for holding up this light this morning, when we have come to the end of the year and shall, in a few short hours, be at the beginning of another. This period, like Janus, has two faces looking back on the year that is past and looking forward on the year that is to come. And my four-sided lamp will, perhaps, gleam afar. I wish that, in the light of the beams of this lamp, “At the last,” you may have courage enough to look down the vista of the years that you have already lived and think of everything that you have thought and spoken and done. And then I hope you will have holy daring enough to let the same light shine forward on the years yet to come, when your hair shall be gray and the teeth shall fail, and they that look out of the windows shall be darkened.
We will, then, examine the past and the future of life in the light of, “At the last.” May it teach us wisdom and make us walk in the fear of God. I have said that my lamp has four sides to it and so it has—we will look at it first in the light which streams from death.
I. DEATH is at the last. In some sense it is the last of this mortal life. It is the last of our period of trial here below. It is the last of the days of Divine Grace. It is the last of the days of mortal sin. The tree falls when we die and it sprouts not again. The house is washed from the foundations and it is built no more if it has been founded on sin. Death is the end of this present life. And how certain is it to all of us! This year we have had many tokens of its certainty. One might almost compose an almanac for the year 1865 and put down the name of someone of note at least to every month—and I should scarcely exaggerate if I said to every week in the year.
All ranks and classes have been made to feel the arrow of the insatiable Archer. From royalty down to poverty the grave has been glutted with its prey. Not late in the year there fell one whose benevolence mingled with wisdom had blessed our land and who, being dead, is still remembered by the needy because he cheapened their bread and broke down the laws which, while they might have fattened the rich, certainly would have impoverished the poor. His wisdom could not spare him, and though he is embalmed in the hearts of thousands, yet to the dust he has returned.
Swiftly after him there fell one who ruled a mighty people in the flush of victory, when what threatened to be a disruption and a separation had ended in triumph to one side and the nation seemed as if it were about to start on a fresh course of prosperity. By the assassin’s hand he fell. Whatever question there might have been about him in his life, all men conspired to honor him in his death. The ruler of a nation who could subdue a gallant and a mighty foe, could not subdue that old foeman who conquers whom he wills. Abraham Lincoln died as well as Cobden!