Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 886
Delivered on Lord’s-day Evening, JULY 8, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“At the time appointed the end shall be.”- Daniel 8:19.
Human nature anxiously desires to know something of the future. If we were told tonight that we could repair to a certain spot where we might lift the veil of our own history and foresee the course of our own lives during the next few years, I am afraid very few of us could be trusted to absent ourselves from such a place, or miss such an opportunity. This anxiety to know the future and that strange credulity which gives heed to every species of so-called “prophets” and omens, has caused men and women to be the easy dupes of designing impostors in all ages—from the ignorance of the unlettered Egyptian, up to the cleverness of modern professors.
I might almost mention learned doctors who practice divinations, prophecy concerning things to come and bring in Holy Scripture to back up their prognostications. Everywhere that kind of spirit which leads men to amuse themselves with light literature leads them, also, to read the Bible with a view to espy the future and would lead them to resort to any kind of invention by which they might hope to have a glimpse of the unfolded scroll. Be persuaded, however, my Brothers and Sisters, that with the exception of some grand feature, some magnificent outline which God has revealed, the future is absolutely shut from human eye!
And as to the details which concern your life or mine, it is utterly impossible that we should ever become acquainted with them by any manner of horoscope, or soothsaying, or bibliomancy. We shall know them soon enough by the gradual development of experience, but it is idle and mischievous to attempt to know them till they transpire. Why is it that the future is thus shut out from our view? Is it not because the present is enough to occupy our talents? Rightly to serve our God in this present hour will take all the strength we have and all the strength we can obtain from Him. Sufficient unto the day is not only the evil thereof, but the service thereof.
Men who live too much in the past and go beyond that which is rightly conservative become of little service in the world. And men who are tempted to regulate their movements by forecasts of the future will always become abstracted, speculative, empirical—full of sentiment and void of diligence—but certainly of no service whatever in the stern battle of today. Believe me, Man, all your manhood is needed for the all-engrossing now! Use it. Your best way to ensure a happy, a holy and a glorious future is to mind the present and to keep your eye fast on your Master’s will concerning you in this, the hour which is flitting over your head, molding your character and working out your destiny.
God has concealed the future from us, probably, with a view to relieve our career through the world of dull monotony and infuse into it new phases of stirring interest. Life would not wear such a lively aspect if it were all spread out in a map before us on the day of the commencement of our pilgrimage. Much of the pleasantness of a journey lies in unexpected views and scenes which burst upon the traveler as he climbs a hill or descends into a dale. If he could see all at once—one long, unvarigated avenue—it would become weary walking for him. But the very freshness and novelty of the events—adventures and contingencies constantly occurring—help to make life exciting, if not happy.
I thank God for many a mercy which has come to me fresh from the mint of His Providence. I could not have imagined that such a well-timed godsend could have come to me in such an unexpected manner—it had all the marks of novelty about it—as if the Lord had been pleased to coin it and put it into my hand. Has not God also hid the future from us that we may not labor under the sense of being like “dumb driven cattle,” who have no will and no freedom, but both do and suffer what they are compelled by an irresistible agency?
Now, I believe in predestination, yes, even in its very jots and tittles. I believe that the path of a single grain of dust in the March wind is ordained and settled by a decree which cannot be violated. I believe that every word and thought of man, every flittering of a sparrow’s wing, every flight of a fly, the crawling of a beetle, the gliding of a fish in the depth of
the sea—that everything, in fact—is foreknown and foreordained. But I do equally believe in the free agency of man, that man acts as he wills, especially in moral operations—choosing the evil with a will that is unbiased by anything that comes from God—biased only by his own depravity of heart and the perverseness of his habits.
I believe in man’s free agency in choosing the right, too, with perfect freedom—though sacredly guided and led by the Holy Spirit—but in such a way that his disposition is trained to choose and prefer the right and the true, not violently driven in the teeth of his own reluctance. He is free in his agency, for the Son of God has made him free. I believe that man is as free as if everything were left to chance and that he is as accountable as if there were no destiny whatever. Where the two Truths of God meet I do not know, nor do I want to know. They do not puzzle me, since I have given up my mind to believing them both.