During the past week we have read of two great beginnings in the record of God’s work and purpose in the earth. In Genesis we have read of the “creation,” or the fashioning of an ordered state out of a “waste and void” earth upon which the Spirit of God “m oved” or brooded. A t the close of this creative process there came “m a n.” His chequred career commenced, according to scripture chronology, a few years short of six thousand years ago.
The other great beginning we have read of in the gospel of Matthew, the opening verse of which describes the gospel as “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” This new beginning took place some four thousand years after the creation of Adam.
A year as w e all know is a natural division of time, marking the period which our earth takes to travel once in its orbit around the sun. The day is also a natural division of time, and so is the month. The day marks off the period which the earth takes to revolve on its axis. The month, broadly speaking, represents the period taken by the moon in its journey round the earth; hence its name.
On the other hand, the week is not a natural division of time marked by any physical phenomenon. The origin of the week is inseparably bound up with the record of creation, the “six days” in which God set in order the economy of things as we still know them, and rested on the seventh from His labour. There is no other explanation of the origin of the period called week apart from this divine record.
The period which we call a year is taken hold of for many purposes. We measure our eras and epochs with it; we measure our own individual ages by its aid from childhood to old age. We review and compare one year with another, it may be, from various points of view. In the world of business, for example, it is customary to close the records annually, and to summarize the year’s enterprise in a statement of account.
These statements make possible a rapid review of past history, particularly from a financial point of view, and in their detail too they often enliven the imagination and quicken one’s interest in the nature of the enterprise underlying the statement, and the character and resource of the individuals who direct it. But there is one feature which characterizes them all. They bear always the evidence of continual change. Here are years of plenty, of want, of disaster, of activity misdirected, of transactions unprofitable. They bear evidences of those who perhaps we have known ourselves, a glance at their vices; of those who have moved on to some other field of activity; of those who have “had their day and ceased to be.”
Let us look back somewhat further than such records are able to take us; and endeavour to catch broader view than these narrow channels of human enterprise can possibly give us.
We are well on in the twentieth century since Christ appeared. It sounds late. If we look back over the history of our own country we seem to get enveloped in the mists of antiquity. But that is probably because of our unfamiliarity with the history of the past, rather than through absence of information. We know that great changes have taken place. And yet in many respects life at the beginning of the Christian era, or at any rate early in the Christian era, was in many respects the same as it is now in this country. Humanity remains unchanged in its fundamental characteristics.
Last Easter one or two members of this ecclesia paid a visit to the village of Wroxeter in Shropshire hard by the River Severn. Beneath the surface of the wide-spreading fields which lie to the northwest of the village are the remains of a Roman city of no mean order. It is difficult to realise that in the first five centuries of our era there flourished here a city full of life and movement.
It was there before Jerusalem was destroyed in A. D. 70. Here were the Courts of law, the public baths, the market place, the money exchange, the great assembly hall and the cemetery. Life proceeded then in that ancient city very much as it does now, and in some respects its institutions were superior to those of our state a century ago, or say two centuries ago.
In the years 1859-61 parts of this city were uncovered, and in one of the “hypocausts” or flues underneath a chamber there was discovered the skeleton of an old man near whose hand lay a little measure of coins which he hoped to save. Not far from him were the skeletons of two women. The coins were mostly dated in the fourth century. The dark hiding-place did not save these fugitives from some disaster which overtook the city. The beams of the roof fell and blocked their way of escape, and they perished; and the little hoard of coins with the remains of these three unfortunates lay there undisturbed for 1,400 years.
Mary Webb, whose literary work has become famous, lived near this place. She wrote a verse expressive of its departed glory which reads like this:
The skulls of men who, right or wrong.
Still wore the splendor of the strong,
Are shepherd’s lanterns now, and shield
Their candles in the lambing field.
So passes in all ages the glory of men. “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away,” and it carries with it in time kingdoms and empires, republics and commonwealths; all human institutions, in fact; having outwardly every appearance of stability and permanence, with humanity itself.
I have been reading a book this holiday, in the first chapter of which under the heading “Shadows from Child-Life” there is depicted a boy sleeping in his father’s bedroom, who woke up in the darkness and stillness of the night. His father’s watch hung at the head of his father’s bed, and the ticking of if arrested his attention. It never waited; it went on inexorably. Every time it ticked a man died in the great world outside, so he had been told. The boy lay with his eyes wide open.
He saw before him a long stream of people, a great dark multitude, that moved in one direction; they came to the dark edge o f the world, and went over. He saw them passing on before him, and there was nothing that could stop them. He thought of how that stream had rolled on through the long ages of the past— how the old Greeks and Romans had gone over; the countless millions of China and India; they were going over now. Since he had come to bed, how many had gone? These thoughts induced great beads of perspiration on the boy’s forehead.
The thoughts themselves had been provoked by the words which his father had read that evening from the 7th chapter in Matthew’s gospel: “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”
This boy’s vision of perishing humanity may be depressing, but is it not deadly true? It is the consequence of this sentence of death which was passed upon our first parents, part of the dispensation into which we are born, and associated with that first great beginning of “Creation.” The ideas are more softly and nobly expressed in the 90th Psalm, verses 3 to 9.
Are these thoughts appropriate to these late days of Gentile times? I think so, if we add to them a message of hope. In God’s mercy we have come to know the way of life. Narrow as it is, we have been shown the gate of entry. Jesus, whom we have met to call to mind, has declared: “ I am at the door; by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture . . am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” It is the knowledge of God as disclosed to us in the Lord Jesus that is the foundation on which we stand, and which gives direction to our lives; not the direction which leads to destruction, but to salvation.
The position in which we stand is comprehensively described by Peter in the first chapter of his second epistle, where, after enumerating the privileges of the believers by means of which they may escape the corruption that is in the world, he goes on to indicate our duties. We are to give all diligence, adding to our faith virtue and knowledge, temperance and patience and godliness, brotherly kindness and charity. Here we have work on the moral and intellectual sphere outlined for us which is more than sufficient for a lifetime’s effort. The apostle recognises this, for what he emphasizes is not the necessity for reaching perfection but for continual growth and development and the avoidance of retrogression, concluding his epistle with these words: “ Beloved, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (2 Pet. 3:17).
In all ages there have been men and women who have left the narrow way and joined the great stream of those who pass on to everlasting destruction. They have set before them the devotion which they owe to Christ, but they have grown tired of waiting. There is no sign (they have said) that Christ will ever come: look at the years that have passed.
What is the apostle’s answer to this? “Beloved, do not forget that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This does not mean that God has plenty of time. It means that God is independent of time, but that with us this is far from being the case. Time is for men, not for God. It is for us to “ give diligence,” to make speed and “hasten.” At most we have but a few years allotted in which we must do what we can.
Cecil Rhodes when he lay dying wrote down on a scrap of paper this epitome of his life; and this is what he wrote: “So much to do, so little done!” Is not this true of all of us? It is a solemn thought reminding us that if we make the most of our opportunities, it is but little we can do; and that if we neglect our opportunities, even that little may be for ever left undone.
But it is not so with God. It is foolish to attribute slackness to Him. “The Lord is not slack as some men count slackness.” From various motives (often selfish ones) men are slow to redeem their promises or carry out their resolutions. But any seeming delay upon the part of the Lord arises out of his love and long-suffering towards His children; His unwillingness that any should perish, but desire that all should come to repentance. And so, the apostle says, “It is not for men to wait idly for the city of the Lord, or while walking after their own lust.; to question whether he ever will come. It is for man hasten to the day of the Lord by developing with diligence and urgency those virtues which are associated with true discipleship and true devotion.”
The years come and go, and the Lord remains away. What of it? A more important consideration is whether, had he come> we should have been ready for him. Peter says, “Count that the long-suffering of God, in seemingly delaying the hour of his judgment, is salvation.” Do not spend the time indolently waiting, but be up and doing, avoiding the error of thinking that because we are looking for Christ, w e are therefore ready to meet him. We need to be roused.
And therefore let this be our motto for the days that lie ahead: “Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.” The hour of judgment will assuredly come. When it does come the books are opened, the record reviewed, and the balance struck. May we be so privileged that we may not be among those who go eternally into the abyss, but permitted to be among the happy throng redeemed out of every kindred and tongue and people and nations.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One