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VOL. VII.-NEW SERIES.]

[JANUARY 1, 1864.

THE CHURCH.

"Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the
chief corner-stone.".

JANUARY, 1864.

THE COMING YEAR BOTH NEW AND OLD.,

BY THE REV. J. H. HINTON, M.A.

We familiarly speak of the incoming year as the NEW year; and undoubtedly with justice, for in some respects it is new: but in some respects also it is, from its very commencement, OLD; that is to say, it is the same as those which have gone before it.

The world we live in is the same. The transition in point of time from the past year to the present effects no change in the scene of our existence. The features of the natural world are the same-the same the hills and vales, the woods and streams, the crowded cities and the fruitful plains. The aspects of human life are the same, whether of life domestic, social, or public. We reside where we did; we are still under the wing of our parents, or in the midst of our children; our engagements in business are the same, and our conditions of health or sickness, of prosperity or adversity. And public affairs are the same; the state of nations, with the various elements of agitation or of peace, the attitude of statesmen, and the battle-strife.

We ourselves are the same. The change of the year has made no change in our character or habits. We bring with us across the boundary our whole selves; all that we were we are. All our constitutional tendencies, all our established habits, all our moral virtues or vices, still characterize us. If we have been hitherto irascible, sensual, proud, we are so still; if we have been tem, perate, benevolent, pure, we are so still. Accessible to the same temptations, feeble in the same points, with the same marked imperfections or eminent excellencies, we have the same difficulties of self-discipline, and the same facilities for self-conquest.

Our circumstances are the same. The new year finds them exactly as they ́ were. Were we rich? We are still rich. Were we poor? We are still poor. The fever that raged before still rages, the pain that racked the frame still racks it. Or the smile of prosperity continues unclouded, and successful enterprize pursues an uninterrupted course. Our facilities and advantages are the same as they were, and so likewise are our temptations and trials. Our old joy and sorrow, our old peace and conflict, enter without change, and without question, into possession of the newborn year.

The dispensations of God are the same. In this respect nothing finishes with the lapse of time, nothing begins with its new reckoning. "God repeateth that which is past." The stately machine of Providence, in its vast operations, so

* Eccles. iii. 15.

uniform in principle but so multiform in detail, moves on in undisturbed identity, while the starry timepiece marks in heaven the commencement of another year. Summer and winter, seedtime and harvest, succeed each other as of old; sunshine and storm, abundance and famine, health and sickness, life and death, mingle themselves mysteriously together, as they have always done. The moral trial of mankind proceeds just as it did. Satan, the great enemy, still lies in wait to deceive, and seeks whom he may devour; the fascinations of pleasure still make their winning appeal to man's yielding heart; the cares of the world still lie heavy on the anxious bosom, and the temptations of sin and folly still besiege with power the citadel of virtue.

Our duties and supports are the same. We bring with us from the old year into the new the same burden of responsibility, and the same obligations of duty. No relaxation takes place in that which God requires of us. We have still to render a full consecration and cheerful obedience; we have still to watch and pray, to arm ourselves for war, and to fight the good fight of faith. But, if our obligations are the same, so also are our encouragements. If our need of help be no less, no less shall be the help kindly vouchsafed to us. The same promises still breathe their "exceeding great and precious" assurances into our ears; while the faithfulness of our covenant God is everlasting, and, like himself, changeth not. His ear, as of old, is quick to hear prayer, and, as of old, his arm is mighty to save.

It will not be unprofitable to us to remember these things. A hurtful fancy may lurk in the mind that the new year will bring to us many more things new than will really be found in its hand. It is a grave and profitable thought, that the new year is, in all practical matters, but repetition, or rather a prolongation, of the old. What, indeed, divides the one from the other but an imperceptible movement of the earth among the stars, altering, it is true, the place of the earth in the heavens, and the aspect of the heavens to the earth, but nothing more. We, and all things that interest us, are not new, but old.

Yet the year is, undoubtedly, in some sense new, and, in the course of its progress, it may prove to be more new than at first it appears.

In relation to the course of time the year is obviously new. With the year the earth on which we live commences a new revolution round the sun, and the record of a new period of time, which by such revolutions is ascertained and measured. This period of time has never occurred before, nor have we ever spent it. In this sense it is both new in itself, and new to us.

And, although the mere commencement of the year produces no practical change to us, during its progress there may occur to us changes of great importance, and such as may render, not the year only, but our life, emphatically

new.

Not exactly, indeed, although generally will the occurrences and the experience of this year resemble those of the past. We ourselves shall be somewhat older, and, it may be hoped, somewhat wiser, than we have ever been; we shall view things in somewhat different lights, and address ourselves to our duties and trials, probably, in a somewhat different spirit. We may, perhaps, bring with us from the past a store of Christian wisdom, in the exercise of which we shall walk more humbly with God, fall into fewer sins, and commit fewer mistakes. Those around us, also, will have advanced somewhat in life, in common with ourselves-especially our children-and will present themselves to us in new aspects of loveliness, and in new forms of requirement. Nor will the dispensations of Divine Providence-although generally similar to the past -be absolutely identical with them; for these, with all their broad resemblances, possess an infinite diversity. Human life has no sameness-no monotony. Man's joys and sorrows are so numerous that they are capable of being blended together in combinations of endless variety; so that, as no two human lives are

the same, no single life shall be the same throughout. We shall this year, undoubtedly, experience modifications of health and sickness, of comfort and distress, both personal, domestic, and social, which will, by fresh combinations of old elements, render it practically a new year to us.

And it may be to us a year of great changes. It may witness new and most important developments of character. If we enter on it still alienated from God, it may be the period of our reconciliation to him, the birthday of a new life; and so it may become "the beginning of years" to us. Or the coming year may find us growing in grace, and making rapid advances in the Christian life; or perhaps, unhappily, it may witness our backsliding from God, or our fall by the temptations of Satan.

It may witness the occurrence of great temporal changes. In this year may originate that greatest passion of the human heart, by which all subsequent life shall be influenced with unspeakable power; or in this year may be formed a union to be productive of blessings which the longest life cannot exhaust. In this year you may greet with ineffable parental love your first-born; or in this year another may be added to an already numerous family. Or the year may be one of sorrowful events; one in which those we love may sicken and die, and in which it may be required of us to lay the dearest objects of our affection in the grave. Nay, it may be the time for ourselves to suffer; and, if we could hear the announcement of coming events, we might perceive it whispered to us, "This year thou shalt die.”

It is evident, therefore, that the coming year will be one, not merely of old, but of new requirements from us: a watchfulness ever ready for new tempta tions; a patience ever ready for new trials; a Christian wisdom adapted to new claims of duty, and steadfastness of piety prepared for new conflicts. If not with new substantial graces, the new year will require old graces in a new attitude of vigorous preparation-will require us to be in a greater degree the wellequipped Christian than we have ever been. May it find us so!

And shall we not find new supports and consolations too? That great and glorious God, whose infinite and mysterious wisdom imparts to our life its endless changefulness, will he not be prepared to manifest in every change a welladapted aspect of mercy? Undoubtedly he will. The treasures of his grace in Christ Jesus are as infinite as his wisdom. It is, indeed, in order to show forth his own glory, that he leads those he loves through such paths of trial, and he will not fail of his design. He said of old, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee;" ;"* and the promise is as true for the year on which we are entering as it has been for any that are past. "And as thy days thy strength :"+ no more, and assuredly no less. Ever-varying help shall attend us in ever-varying need. Something, perhaps much, of the loving kindness of the Lord we have known in years that are past; and the new year, bringing, as it does, its new demands, shall witness exhibitions of it equally new. What can we need more to invigo→ rate our courage, or to cheer our hope, than the animating appeal, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee."

* Heb. xiii, 5.

+ Deut. xxxiii. 25.

Isa xli. 10,

THE SACRED RESULTS OF SUFFERING.

BY THE REV. RICHARD GLOVER.

"Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book! that they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."-Job xix. 23-26.

WE were not prepared for this utterance when it burst upon us. Instead of strength, faith, victory, which these words seem to register, we had immediately before observed the most languid weakness. The lowest point in Job's painful experience seemed to have been reached. The hour and power of darkness seemed to have attained its midnight gloom. Apparently from sheer exhaustion of power, he ceases to impeach the righte ousness of God's dealings with him, and begins to beg for the pity of those friends whose attacks he had resented with such withering scorn; when, as if the Spirit of comfort had seized the occasion of the first all in his angry irritation to enter his breast, we see him rising and shaking himself from the dust of his sackcloth, loosing himself from the bands of his neck, bursting the bonds of sorrow with all the ease with which Samson burst asunder his green withes. As if "moved by the stirring of a gift Divine," his eye regains its brightness, and his tone its loftiest grandeur. Conscious of the greatness of the words he ís about to utter, he longs for a perpetual record to preserve them to succeeding ages; and when, by the expression of this desire, he has raised our expectation to the highest pitch, he abundantly rewards it. For, in words that transcend all other Old Testament utterances in the range and clearness of prophetic vision they exhibit, in words that would have done honour to the highest ecstasies of St. Paul himself, he exclaims, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."

There is evidently something here worthy of our study. The mere fact of a soul of man cherishing such exultant hopes, is one whose importance we cannot overestimate; and the importance is at once felt to be immensely increased when we note that these hopes are cherished in the midst of deep affliction. Let us, then, dwell for a little on the subject these words present, looking at it with regard chiefly to two

points; viz., first, THE ORIGIN, and second, THE OBJECTS, of this blessed anticipation. First, then, the origin of this hope.

In a world where true and holy hope is rare it concerns us to know how a hope like this was produced. Whence grows this lofty expectation? How came a hope so majestic into the patriarch's heart? What is the explanation of its presence? We could explain the origin of all his doubts, and sullenness, and fears. They seem the simple and natural brood of night. But whence comes this hope? We see no break in his sufferings, no bow of promise in the cloud of gloom, no circumstance of comfort which we could accept as explaining his returning hope and brightening expectation. The unrelieved pressure of affliction is still upon him. Whence in such circumstances does hope gather fresh vigour to its pinions, and soar so high in the atmosphere of prophetic light? Can it be that sorrow has kindled a hope so lustrous? Can it be that grief has nurtured a solace so sublime? Let us see.

The Scripture account of the origin of hope is a very strange one. For while we naturally fancy that hope is the child of light and peace, a plant that needs luxu rious circumstance of heat and soil, and which requires that→→

"Heaven send it happy dew,

Earth lend it sap enew,

Broadly to bourgeon and deeply to grow," Paul in one of his epistles gives a very different account of its genealogy. Beginning far off, as we think, "Tribulation," says he, "works patience; and patience, experience; and experience, HOPE.' So that, according to his account, hope springs not from the joyous experience of mercy, but from the patient experience of suffering; is not a hot-house plant, but a root of hardy growth, flourishing beneath the watery frown of sunless summers, and beneath the rind of wintry frosts; something which, wherever it is a plant of God's right hand's planting, flourishes all the better for the difficulties with which it has to contend. And strange

as this account of Paul's appears, it is so well substantiated by facts that we cannot disregard it. For, not to mention other proofs, is it not manifest that the "Songs in the Night Season" have always been the sweetest of all the songs of Zion; richest in pathos, most refined in sentiment, most fragrant with the sweetness of calm, assured hope?

Can it be, then, that the range, and strength, and clearness of Job's prophetic hope are illustrative of the apostle's word? that this sublime expectation is really in great measure the result of the patient endurance of grief? Can it be that this sublime hope was nurtured with the dew of tears, and rooted by the storms of groanings that could not be uttered? Yes, dear friends; the more you examine the matter, the more you will see that this glorious hope is indeed the offspring of sanctified trial and of grief.

For, in the first place: Strange as it seems to explain this hope on Paul's theory, there is no other explanation of it which is not encompassed with greater difficulties. You cannot, for instance, conceive a hope of this kind growing within the soul in his prosperity. While all things went well with him there was nothing compelling his thoughts to go so far afield as they do here, nothing to make his hope rest on experiences so remote. Noble and spirituallyminded as he was, IN HIS PROSPERITY the majesty of his faith would show itself rather in filling the present with noble deeds that enriched others, than in eliciting from the future apocalyptic visions to enrich himself. His joy would come rather from the experience of present, than from the hope of resurrection blessings. Under no pressure of ill, a longing for a nearer and more personal manifestation of God would have been passing strange. Almost ignorant of family bereavement, disease, and death, it would have been strange indeed if the ultimate issues of being had so long and deeply engrossed his thoughts as to permit him to draw conclusions like these before us. Ready to reveal everything of the future necessary for comfort, the Spirit could hardly have found in Job the inquiring wistfulness which would have been capable or worthy of receiving such disclosures.

But, on the other hand, are not all the thoughts here expressed very congruous with a season of adversity? When bereavement enters his home, when disease

invades his frame, when imminent death threatens the extinction of his being, i would he not, as we all do at such times, ransack the unseen future for elements of hope which might relieve the pressure of present ills? At such a time is it strange if he becomes impatient of the distance at which an unseen God keeps ? and"Faltering where he firmly trod,

And falling 'neath his weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs, That slope through darkness up to God," is it any wonder if he longs for some personal manifestation of God, such as takes place in Christ Jesus? longs for some ear that is seen, to receive his cries, and some glance of pity that is perceived, to convey the solace of his grief? for some manifest Divine presence that would facilitate the weakened fellowship?

And when the grave holds all that is, dearest to him, is it any wonder if he begins to question its sovereignty and omnipotence? if, recalling elements of spiritual dignity in his children, his soul refuses to believe that the little span of earthly existence has limited the duration of their being? Would it be strange if, gazing on the manifold glory of man, as seen in the light of fond recollection, he should ask with burning words,—

"And he-shall he

God's last work, who seemed so fair,

Such noble purpose in his eyes,

Who rolled the psalm to lofty skies,
And built him fanes of holy prayer;
Who loved, who suffered countless ills,
Who battled for the true and just→→→
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or sealed within the iron hills,
And be no more?"

Would it be strange if, recoiling from the thought of the finality of death, he should yearn for some restoration of his being, and longingly should almost hope for complete redemption? Would it be strange if the Spirit of God, whose name is the Comforter, should reveal the ultimate issues of life, which his yearnings had already defined so well? should change his hope into assurance, and his yearning desire into peaceful expectation? Would it be strange if embracing the first season of quiet in his soul, he should give the clear prospect of an Incarnate God and a restoring resurrec tion, when his grief had almost guessed both, and would have expected both, had the agitation of his soul permitted it?

No, dear friends, you feel this is not strange! Of all developments it is most natural; and in a fainter degree is con

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