By Rev. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
ON one occasion, when the great Dr. Thomas Chalmers was confronted by an opponent with statements he made in a pamphlet which he had written in his younger days before the Lord dealt savagely with his soul, he frankly acknowledged that he had been the writer of these statements, and after stating the occasion on which they were written, he said, “Alas! Sir, so I thought in my ignorance and pride. I have now no reserve in saying that the sentiment was wrong, and that, in the utterance of it, I penned what was most outrageously wrong. Strangely blinded that I was! What, Sir, is the object of mathematical science? Magnitude and the proportions of magnitude. But then, Sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes—I thought not of the littleness of time—I recklessly thought not of the greatness of eternity.” This, alas! is the case with the great majority of our race, and they never make the discovery which Dr. Chalmers made until it is too late.
That time is short is clearly taught in Scripture. Moses, in the ninetieth psalm says, “The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four-score years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” Seventy or eighty years is but a brief space of time from God’s point of view, with whom a thousand “are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night,” and although that number of years may be long in our estimation when we look forward to them, yet they are but as a bubble on the bosom of the broad ocean in contrast to eternity. The Holy Spirit inspired men, who learned by experience the brevity of time, to write concerning it in the Scriptures, and in doing so they have used various similitudes. In one place it is said, “Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee,” (Ps. xxxix, 5). An hand-breadth is but a very short measure, yet it clearly demonstrates the brevity of time. If we look upon the four fingers which form the breadth of the hand as representing four-score years, and consider that, with some, a fourth of that time is gone already, with others the half, and with others again three-fourths, while with the remaining few the whole is almost out of sight, we have an apt illustration of a human life in order to show that our “age is as nothing.”
Again, Moses says that “we spend our years as a tale that is told,” and Job says, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle.” A tale when being told may be so interesting that both the one who tells it and those who hear it may be so oblivious to everything around them that these things are completely forgotten. In such cases the tale comes to an end all too soon, and, perhaps, unexpectedly, and no one has anything of it, but that they heard it and do remember some of its details. While listening to it other things were neglected, and now these things must be overtaken, but with many, who discover that they have neglected what should have been their chief concern, they shall find, the next moment after making this discovery, that in their case “there should be time no longer.” Thus our years pass unknown to us. A human being, young in years, will be eagerly looking forward to coming years of maturity,
and imagines that the years are longer than they should be, but the older one grows, the shorter the years seem to get, until one feels that he is almost out of sight.
We ought, however, to lay to heart that God has a definite purpose in giving us this hand-breadth of time in this world. He has a purpose to save sinners and has made a great and glorious Provision for that end, and is pleased to wait in order to be gracious to poor sinners. Therefore He is giving us time in the world in order to close in with this Provision. No sinner can say that he is lost for lack of time, for with many God has delayed the fatal stroke for many a year, and thus He has been clearly revealing that He has no delight in their death. Thus He manifests His long-suffering and gracious loving kindness, not only in “not willing that any should perish,” but in giving them renewed opportunities of closing in with His offers of salvation, over a great number of years.
These years that God has given us in the world are, too often, misspent, with no thought of the end for which they were given. Other things claim the attention of men and women, and, very often, things that will not profit for time itself, much less for eternity. It is right and proper for us to be diligent in our lawful calling, and we ought to make provision to the best of our ability for those who depend on us, but we ought to realise that the end of our creation is something infinitely higher, even to glorify God and to enjoy Him. In making provision for temporal wants we often forget the value of our souls, not remembering that the Lord Jesus asks the question, “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark viii, 36). Let us always bear in mind that the riches of the whole world are wholly inadequate to redeem one soul, and that nothing in this world, or out of it, can do that, except what God Himself has provided. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, such as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” (I Peter i, 18, 19).
Again, these years which were given us for our good for eternity, are spent in something that is worse than useless. Night after night for years on end, millions of human beings spend precious time in the vanities of this world, as if they were bent on drowning any thoughts about eternity, or the solemn fact that they shall have to render an account to God for the time He gave them in this world. The promiscuous dance with all its attendant evils is regarded with pleasure. The mad whirl of vain pleasure is eagerly pursued, and the talents and abilities which God has given for better ends are laid on the altar of the god of this world, and his devotees are promised much which they will never receive, but he carefully keeps from their view what they will actually receive: that is, the wages of sin, which is death.
The mis-spending of time is often a fertile source of regret when one comes to the end of life’s journey. While some are so irresponsible that, if they were to get some more years in the world, they are bent on spending them in the same way as the years that are gone, yet, there are others who are, brought to mourn with a bitter mourning over their mis-spent years. They realise that the pleasures of the world which they
were so eagerly pursuing, and which they often thought were within their grasp, were but empty shadows, and that what they were promised did not come to pass. They look back on a life of sin and have to confess that their days were consumed in vanity, and their years in trouble, in serving the world, the devil and the flesh. They find it now too late to begin to make resolutions, for the soul, whether prepared or not, must obey the summons to quit the clay tabernacle and take its flight to the world of spirits. This is a solemn warning, to those who are yet in health and strength, to remember the injunction of the Holy Ghost, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest,” (Eccles. ix, 10).
The other magnitude of which Dr. Chalmers spoke was the greatness of eternity. If we ask ourselves the question, ‘What is eternity?’ we cannot give a better answer than that given by a schoolboy in answer to this question in an examination paper, when he gave the reply, “Eternity is the age of God.” This ought to awaken very solemn thoughts in our hearts, for this eternity, which is co-existent with God, presents to our view but two places—heaven and hell—and but two classes of people who are respectively to occupy these places.
At the moment when the Lord’s people shall enter heaven they are, what they were never before, perfectly holy. They had many a panting after holiness in this world, but they found sin always present with them, but now sin is forever excluded, and in their worship in heaven, which will partake of the nature of praise and obedience, springing from perfect love, there shall not be the least taint of sin. They shall see Christ’s face, and shall be ravished with the matchless beauty and transcendent excellence which they shall see in Him. While they are in this world, when faith is in exercise they are enabled to say, “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness,” but they have only a very dark view of it in comparison with how they shall view matters in heaven, for their very life there consists in beholding Christ’s face and enjoying His favour, for “in his favour is life.” They shall drink eternally of pleasures that shall never know abatement or end, for “in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore,” (Ps. xvi, 11).
When confronted with thoughts of eternity we have also to think of the eternity of the lost. They are lost beyond recovery, and part of their torment is that they are separated from God, finally and forever, and from His goodness and mercy, love and compassion, and from all hope of obtaining happiness. They shall also experience the gnawings of the worm that dieth not and the torments of the fire that shall never be quenched. The place of their torment was not prepared for human beings but for the devil and his angels, but the lost shall have to experience the torments of that place, world without end. The Lord Jesus Himself in describing the fearful condition of the lost in hell gives a vivid picture of it in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus; showing that there is not so much diminishing of torment as the comfort of one drop of cold water to cool the tongue. This, be it remembered, is not the only place where the Saviour of sinners refers to the fearful torments of men in a lost eternity.
In the parable of the good seed and the tares He tells us that “so shall it be in the end of the world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth,” (Matt. xiii, 40-42). Again, He tells us of the guest without the wedding garment that the command was, “Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” (Matt. xxii, 13).
The happiness of the Lord’s people and the misery of the lost are alike eternal. The meaning of eternity, however, is infinitely beyond the comprehension of finite beings such as we are. Eternity cannot be measured in days, weeks and years, so that, though we would take the longest stretch of years imaginable, and multiply them by billions of billions, we would not have the faintest conception of what eternity is, for it baffles all our calculations. In this connection, therefore, we cannot do better than close this article with a quotation from the learned and saintly Thomas Boston. “When you are abroad in the fields, and behold the piles of grass on the earth, which no man can reckon; think with yourselves, that, were as many thousands of years to come as there are piles of grass on the ground, even those would have an end at length, but eternity will have none. When you look to a mountain, imagine in your hearts how long it would be, ere that mountain should be removed, by a little bird coming once every thousand years, and carrying away but one grain of the dust thereof at once: the mountain would at length be removed that way, and brought to an end; but eternity will never end. Suppose this with respect to all the mountains of the earth, nay, with respect to the whole globe of the earth: the grains of dust, whereof the whole earth is made up, are not infinite, and therefore the last grain would, at long-run, come to be carried away, in the way supposed; but when that slowest work would be brought to an end, eternity would be, in effect, but beginning” (Human Nature in its Fourfold State, by Thomas Boston).