Mottoes for the New Year : as given in texts of sermons. Preached in the Tenth Presbyterian Church

Front matter

PRINCETON, N. J. '^'

BX 9T78 .B663 M6 1882 Boardman, Henry A. 1808-

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Contents

[. GOD IS MINE IIELPKR. Psalm liv. 4 9

II. THE LORD IS AT HAND. Philippians iv. 5, . . . .27

III. "I WILL REJOICE IN THE LORD." IIabakkuk hi. 18, . . 4:!

I. God Is Mine Helper

PSALM Liv. 4.

Since we last met in this place, we have interchanged the customary social congratulations on the advent of a New Year. AVe are here to recognize this event in a more formal manner, and in some of its more important aspects. The anniversary is one which is sure to commingle in its observance our hopes and our regrets. The sorrows and the sins of the year that is gone are but too certain to come thronging around us, while, with equal certainty, our aspirations will go forth in quest of something purer and better in the future. Each successive year admonishes us afresh how absolute is our ignorance of the future. ' Thou knowest not what shall be on the morrow.' Much less canst thou forecast the changes which may be evolved before we, or others in our place, shall meet here on another New Year's Sabbath.

But one thing we do know : — If God be for us, we have nothing to fear from those who may be against us. In this view, I propose with all respect and affection, to give you something to think of during the coming twelvemonth. You may call it, if you will, your Year-text., or your Motto for the Year. Perhaps there is many a scene and event before you in which it will comfort you to recall the words, " God is mine helper." It was this reflection which cheered the heart of David when pursued by his enemies, and in peril of his life. It may solace and strengthen you also in time of trouble.

This, however, is but a very partial view of the use I would have you make of this Scripture. You all imderstand the design of a motto. The one I venture to suggest to you will be found as comprehensive as, to every Christian heart, it must be animating.

'God is mine Helper.' I can conceive of no equipment better than this for launching forth upon the pathless expanse of a new year. The forty-sixth Psalm has long gone in the Church by the name of Luther's Psalm, because the great Reformer was accustomed to repair to it for succor in all emergencies: — 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.' Not less cheering will you find the assurance, 'God is mine Helper.'

I have characterized it as ' comprehensive.' So varied are the occasions upon which it may be invoked, and so numerous the ends to which it can fairly be applied, that I should exhaust your patience by attempting anything like a complete discussion of the subject. All you will expect or desire of me is some passing illustrations of the use to be made of this promise in the ordinary experiences of life.

The offer of 'help' directs the mind intuitively to our need of help, and the proper answer to the inquiry, 'When do we require helpf is, 'When do we not require \tV Sini'ul, wayward, and siifFering creatures, our necessities are as continued as the moments of our lives. Our Saviour spoke without a figure when he said, 'Without me ye can do nothing.' In all our duties, all our trials, all our temptations, all our pleasures, we need help from above. If there are any who think otherwise, this fact itself only shows how great their real need is.

With every thoughtful person this season is sure to awaken reflections on the proper ends of life, and the manner in which we arc fulfilling them. It is well, at the opening of a year, to endeavor to frame a just estimate of our own powers and opportunities, and of the objects for which we are living. How common and how disastrous it is to err on these points, appears to every one who casts an eye over society. Everywhere we see a sad inversion of things, — the higher interests subordinated to the inferior, time made paramount to eternity, and earth to heaven. Even with ourselves, very much of life may have been a mistake. And where its aims have been right, they have too often been pursued with languor and inconstancy. How little have we, any of us, to shew for life, as compared with what we should have ! How meagre the results of our twenty, thirty, fifty years !

Perhaps we have been at fault in our plans ; or, we have misjudged our own capacities and responsibilities; or we have disparaged the aids proffered us by our Heavenly Father. If there is any disposition to revise the scheme of life, and to get a new and juster view of it, you need not lack for an infallible Teacher. ' God is mine Helper.' This will meet your case. For the help He affords is not confined to the exigencies of outward duty or suffering. It is his prerogative, no less, to iUuminate the understanding and to control the working of all our intellectual forces.

And herein, by the way, we are reminded of one of the most interesting of the methods in which He is wont to vindicate the implied promise of the text. There is no pursuit in which we more imperatively require his aid than in the search after truth,. This is an employment worthy of our rational nature. For truth, like its Author, is immutable. It is the prescribed aliment of the soul, — that by which it must be nourished and expanded, and which can never cease to be its portion and its life. But it does not obtrude itself upon the inert and the careless. Even in a sinless realm, the acquisition of truth no doubt requires exertion. And to us it is like treasure liid in a field. Especially is this the case as regards religious truth. Here, there is a veil upon our minds which no human hand can lift. And then the difficulties are largely increased by the variety of creeds and sects, and the conflicting interpretations put upon the sacred oracles. No one who considers these things can refuse his sympathy to those who are reverently and patiently asking, 'What is truth]'

It is quite certain that this search after truth will engage, in the course of the present year, the attention of many who are now before me. You will be seeking after the way to the cross; or you will be striving after a clearer insight into the doctrines of grace ; or you will be bringing opinions you have long held to the touchstone of the law and the testimony. And, whatever direction your inquiries may take, you will not Hiil to draw encouragement from the assurance, 'God is mine Helper.'

He is the Helper of all who seek in sincerity to learn his will. He has promised to be their Teacher. It is one of the express offices of his Spirit, to guide us into the truth. Let this dwell upon your minds whenever, as this year passes on, you sit down to the study of the Bible, or when you listen to the preaching of the Gospel. The passages from which you can extract no satisfactory meaning will become, under the Spirit's teaching, as lucid as the sunbeam ; and the doctrines which embarrass or distress you, will be found not only Scriptural but comforting. Thus instructed, you will grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Your faith will rest upon broader foundations; and, with a more comprehensive view of the perfections and government of God, you will have enlarged your sources of pure and elevated enjoyment.

We may pass beyond the sphere of religious inquiries. While there is a special significance with which we may say, in prosecuting the^se studies, ' God is mine Helper,' we need not, and should not, exclude his agency from studies of a less spiritual character. You have devoted yourselves, it may be, to the cause of Science. To whatever point in this wide domain you may have directed your attention, it would ill become you to decline the aid of the " Spirit of truth." Genuine philosophy is the handmaid of genuine piety. With equal capacities and opportunities, they will ordinarily be most successful in their researches who pursue them in a spirit of reverence • and gratitude towards the Supreme Being. He rewards the devout student of nature, as He does the devout student of his word, with discoveries which are concealed from the eyes of the self-complacent and the profane. The Geologist who traces in the vegetation of the rocks the memorials of the Creator's wisdom ; the Botanist who sees in every bud and blossom the image of Ilim who has made the lilies of the field a sweet remembrancer of their Lord ; the Astronomer who walks among the glories of the firmament only to adore the brighter glories of Him who set the stars in their courses and calls them by their names ; — all these may fitly say, ' God is mine Helper.'

Nor these alone. There can be no better motto for the Professional man than this. The grand aim of the liberal professions, like the ultimate end of all Science, is truth. And here also Truth hides herself, and must be sought out with arduous and patient toil. The intricacies of the Law, for example, are proverbial. The service laid upon the Bar, involves the interpretation of abstruse and ambiguous statutes, the examination of reluctant or reckless witnesses, the parrying of adverse arguments, the harmonizing or annulling of precedents, the application of settled principles to facts, and, generally, a course of procedure in which there is ample room, as well for the loftiest exertion of intellect, as for the play of those fervid passions and sympathies which constitute so essential and intractable a part of our being. Through all this complexity of influences the lawyer must make his way, not in quest of truth as a metaphysical abstraction, but in quest of Truth as the sponsor of invaluable personal rights, as the guardian of men's property or liberty, or, possibly, of life itself No man can hope to compass the just demands of this noble profession without exhausting labor. But even this needs to be reinforced from without. And with every Christian lawyer — Christian, not in name and form merely, but in heart and life — there is the unfailing support which is bound up in the feeling, 'God is mine Helper.'

Is there any reason why this feeling should not be carried into all the activities and conflicts of the forum "? The promise, ' I will help thee,' is not limited to sacred times and places, and to the offices of religion. The same Providence directs as well our secular as our spiritual affairs. If whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we are to do all to the glory of God, then must we be warranted to look for his assistance in every lawful occupation and in every scene of duty. It is one of the bright anticipations we associate with the coming millennium, that all professions will then be conducted on the higli principles of Scripture morality, and pervaded with the spirit of the Gospel. When " Holiness to the Lcn-d " comes to be inscribed upon the bells of the horses, Christianity will no longer be denied its rightful place in the social structure. It is cause for congratulation that its claims are now acknowledged by so many wliose abilities adorn the walks of jurisprudence. In their loyalty to Christ they are consulting their own good, professional as well as spiritual. For the promise is, 'Them that honor me, I will honor.' On the ground of success in life, a young lawyer would do well to plant himself upon the deep foundations of Christianity. But there are loftier motives by far which should prompt to this course; and those who adopt it will know the

IG MOTTOES FOR THE NEW YEAR.

strength and the comfort to be drawn from that scripture, 'God is mine Helper.'

If the Jurist requires this, how much more the Physician. With him, the stake is not property nor Uberty, but Hfe. The enemy he has to cope with is subtle and insidious ; entrenched, often, in the hiding-places of the system, and skilful in masking his true character. We need not disguise the fact: — while Medicine justly claims its position as a science, there must still be very much in the application of it which can only be referred to conjecture and experiment. This is no disparagement of the Profession. Man cannot achieve impossibilities, and the age of miracles is past. We accept the Science as it is, and recognize in it one of the greatest of our temporal blessings. We note with gratitude the signal progress it is making. But we are daily reminded that it is overmastered even by familiar diseases. And when we see a physician grappling with maladies on the issue of which precious lives are suspended, and, with them, the happiness and hopes of a wide circle of friends and kindred, we feel that if there be any earthly mission in which men need help from heaven, it is this. It cannot be deemed surprising, in this view, that families should so often desire the ministrations of a Christian physician. It is not merely that they confide in the integrity which has religion for its basis, and understand that personal piety is the nurse of delicacy and sympathy, but that the conviction forms and strengthens that such a physician carries the blessing of God with him.

We cannot err in supposing, that he himself, as he pursues his daily rounds among the sick and the dying.

must appreciate, as few other men can, the assurance, 'God is mine Helper,' Let the young men who have devoted themselves to Medicine think of this. On a strictly professional view of the subject, nothing could more enhance the A'alue of your attainments, or better aid you in making a successful use of them, than a personal faith in Jesus Christ. It will be a rare element of professional power, if, when you have entered upon your work, you shall be able to say, day after day, as you go forth to the abodes of disease and suffering, 'God is mine Helper.' And when you superadd the considerations proper to your individual accountability, and the obligations which lie upon you, as upon each one of us, to do all that can be done for the Church of Christ and the good of mankind, how can you think of ever engaging in the practice of this most beneficent profession without first consecrating yourself to the service of God 1 As I look over this congregation my sympathies are enlisted, as they have long been, in behalf of the Men of Business here. It were superfluous to talk to you of the hazards and vexations which are bound up in a business life. You know more about them than I could tell you. And the present season is one, above all others, to enforce the lesson with which I come to you to-day. It is while the remembrance of these great disasters is fresh upon your minds that I would remind you of the only Source from which you can ever derive help commensurate with your necessities. Calamities which overwhelm men, which break up their plans, and disperse their fortunes, occur only at intervals. But all along the thoroughfares of business, there are temptations and discomforts which try the temper and, sometimes, imperil the soul: It must happen very often in the course of a year that when you return to your homes at evening your retrospect of the day will include some passage of an irksome or painful character — some provocation given or taken, some injury inflicted or received, or something which you would gladly efface from the record.

Now it were fanciful to imagine that there is any infallihle method by which all experiences of this sort can be avoided. They inhere more or less in the kind of life you are leading. But what cannot be cured, may at least be mitigated. I do not say, that the text is a talisman which will carry you harmless through all temptations and perplexities. But if you could only have the sentiment, 'God is mine Helper' deeply enshrined in your hearts and guarded by a firm faith, it will certainly enable you to go on your way with a steadier step, and to lift your eyes in surrounding darkness to the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.

Suppose you take it with you to your counting-rooms, your factories, and your workshops, morning by morning, and see whether there is not in it virtue to purify the atmosphere you breathe through the day. Two great ideas it embosoms, God, and Help. It must be useful to have these before the mind anywhere. If the thought of God were more familiar in the realm of trade, it would be auspicious for the eager crowd who jostle each other in its avenues. The mistake lies in excluding the Deity from this realm; in assigning religion to its place, and traffic to its place, and keeping up an unscriptural and vicious divorce between them. Surely you cannot dispense with Christianity in your business. You need its principles, you need its counsels, you need its comforts. It can aid you as no earthly power can. Accept the succor it tenders you, and carry it with you as ^vade meciim^ your inseparable guide and support through the year — 'God is mine Helper.'

And what better maxim can be proposed for the secluded world of Home'? The cares, the trials, the joys, the temptations, the anxieties, the pleasures of Household life — what pencil can delineate this variegated scene, with its ever-shifting lights and shadows'? And who does not feel his own incompetency to deal with its responsibilities'? Next to keeping one's own heart, there is scarcely anything harder to do than to bring up a family of children aright. ' Aright,' I say; for, of course, they are brought up in some way. But how this duty is too commonly performed, it needs but a glance around us to show. The difficulties attending it demand an amount of wisdom and patience, of love and firmness, which only a few parents possess. And even these are frequently baffled by questions unexpectedly evolved out of even ordinary and daily family life, or lost sight of in sudden shadows which envelop the household in gloom.

That any parent can be willing to bear such a burden without the aid of religion may well awaken surprise. Even a true faith may not be equal to all the emergencies of this relation. But there is certainly no other resource which offers so much assistance, and supplies so much encouragement, as the presence and blessing of God. I will not say to you. Hang up this precious Scripture in your parlors, in your bed-chambers, in your libraries. But I will say to you, Grave it upon the palms of your hands, and upon the tablets of your hearts, ' God is mine Helper.' Bear it with you into the familiar scenes of every-day life. Have it within reach every moment. This year will bring with it occasions when you will feel your need of it. It may evoke many an ejaculatory prayer to the Giver of all good, keep you from many an error in judgment, repress many an unseemly ebullition of temper, and carry you safely through many a scene of perplexity. Be it your household motto, 'God is mine Helper.'

It has already been intimated that this exclamation broke from David's lips, when he was in peril of his life. The most obvious association it suggests, is that of trouble or danfjer. And since we are all exposed to afflictions, it would seem to be both reasonable and important that we prepare for them. This year will tread the beaten round of the years that have preceded it. Sickness and sorrow and change will come, as they have been wont to come, and do their allotted work. Families that are now in affluence may see their riches make to themselves wings and fly away. Families that are now given up to unthinking gaiety, may be clad in mourning. Some who are to-day in health will die. Others will lose their health, and fall into tlie sad routine which defines the life of an invalid. Parents will still be tried by the follies and the sins of their children. Whatever else may fail, trouble will not forego its mission. Where, or in what shape, it may come, no finite mind may presume to say. But that its foot-prints will be seen here on the next new year's day, in places where they are not seen now, and, in some instances, freshly made where they are seen now, no one can for a moment hesitate to believe.

MOTJOES FOR THE NEW YEAR. 21

Can you wonder, then, if you are urged to make tliis pledge of sympathy and protection your own"? We are none of us able to cope with affliction in our own strength. Men of obtuse sensibilities may bear trouble without heeding it. Natural fortitude or pride may do something towards sustaining an individual under it. But in neither case is there anything in the deportment worthy of our rational nature, and of the relations we sustain to God. Affliction is his rod. He never uses it without a purpose. He means that we shall feel it. To be indifferent to it, or to bear it with a proud and sullen acquiescence, is an affront to Him. Christian resignation is as alien from this carriage as light from darkness. There can be no true submission except as He imparts it. Nor can we have any adequate support in seasons of trial except that which comes from Him.

'God is mine Helper!' What could mourners do without this % The shafts of death are falling around us, smiting here a blooming infant, there a man of threescore and ten, and there a youth in the pride and flush of early manhood; — what are these stricken households to do if they cannot say ' God is my Helper !' And what other dependence have these invalids, to whom are allotted weary months of debility and suffering] Even if their trial be not aggravated by the woes of poverty, and they eajoy the alleviations which wealth can command, and the soothing ministry of attached friends, these cannot satisfy them. They need something which they can hope for unvaryingly; something which can make them see that it is a Father's hand that is leading them along this thorny path ; something which can disarm death of its sting, and reveal to them a risen Saviour and a reconciled God; something which can fill their souls -svith peace and patience, and, as their sufferings abound, cause their consolations to superabound. This 'something' earth has not to give. It is bound up in the sweet assurance, 'God is mine Helper.'

There are those here who have found it so. I have but rehearsed to you their experience. And an experience it is of so much higher value than anything of earth that I should only degrade it by comparing it with gold and silver, or thrones and sceptres. Is not the bare statement of the case sufficient to commend their example to your imitation "? Rest assured it will be a privilege and blessing above all price if you shall be able to say, when disappointment and suffering come, ' God is mine Helper.' For in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength; and with his arms around you, you cannot sink. The storm may rage, and the billows swell, and your frail bark may strain and quiver, but if Christ be with you what have you to fear] He has but to say to the surging waves, 'Peace; Be Still!' and a calm like that which soothed the boisterous Gennesareth will spread itself through your agitated breast. That soul can have nothing to dread which has heard those wondrous words, ' Fear not, for I am with thee: Be not dismayed, for I am thy God.' Happy will it be for us if, as this year wears on and we encounter its trials, we can say with an humble and steadfast faith, 'God is mine Helper.'

Still more, if possible, shall we need this succor in our spiritual confiicts. If we cannot wage the warfare with sorrow in our own strength, much less can we carry on our warfare with sin. Here, above all others, is the field . where we are made conscious of our impotence.

' Deny thyself, and take thy cross, Is the Redeemer's great command.'

His ' great command' it is ; and great is the difficulty of obeying it. Outward hinderances and dangers may be formidable, but they are not peculiar to the Christian life. And if they were, this would still remain 'the great command,' — 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.' The grand requisition of Christianity is a discipline which amounts to self-crucifixion. It begins with the first earnest aspiration of the sinner to be freed from his bondage. It terminates only with the believer's expiring breath. The whole field he traverses in making his way to the celestial city has to be fought over, step by step. And the discouraging thing about it is that he carries his worst adversaries in his own bosom. It is himself he has to contend against ; himself that is to be subdued ; himselt that has to be crucified. What wonder that even the great Apostle of the Gentiles, holy as he was, and honored of God and man as he was, should be so harassed by this warfare as to exclaim, ' Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!'

This contest is before us all — all except those who are content to submit themselves to the unchallenged and brutal mastery of their corrupt passions. The sins we have to struggle with may vary with our temperaments, our training, and our circumstances. With some they will have acquired a colossal strength, while with others they may be comparatively feeble or already brought into partial subjection. But in every case the final issue must depend upon the aid received from above. No one, not even the most mature and stable Christian, can stand before the power and subtlety of his own sins, except as an Almighty arm holds him up.

All along the paths before us there are temptations and snares correspondent with our several characters and occupations. Could the curtain be withdrawn from this year, as it now is from the year just closed, it would make us tremble to discover what perils await our souls, and how deadly and exhausting a contest we must have with our besetting sins before we can attain true peace of mind. Especially would it fill us with anxiety should we learn, as we might, that this year was to close the strife and determine our everlasting destiny.

Is it possible, in this aspect of things, to exaggerate the importance and the seasonableness of the Scripture with which we have to do'? The exigences of this warfare are upon us. We cannot escape it. The true question with us all must be, ' How can I meet it V And how can we meet it, except in the strength of Omnipotence'? If we can but say, 'God is mine Helper,' all will be well. AVe may say of this motto, what Constantino said of the sign of the cross, which, according to the tradition, he saw in the air, and then placed upon his banner, — 'In hoc signo vinces:' "By this sign thou shalt conquer." With a covenant God for our Defender, we need not fear the assaults of earth or hell, or the more dangerous corruption and treachery of our own hearts. The conflict may be severe and protracted, but its issue is as certain as it will be glorious. " Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High. What time I am afraid I will trust in thee." "When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn their back : this I know ; for God is for me." "Unto thee, O my strength, will I sing: for God is my defence, and the God of my mercy."

Such, then, is the divine equipment with which I would have you go forth to the duties and temptations, the trials and pleasures, of another year. To show wherein God is accustomed to ' help ' his people, how willing he is to do it, in what manner his aid is to be sought, would exceed our allotted time. Nor can these points require elucidation to those who know what it is to trust in him. Enough, that it is the ineffable privilege of every one of his children to carry the assurance into all the avocations and events of life, 'God is mine Helper.'

Take it as your pastor's New- Year's wish and prayer, May God he your Helper ilirougliout this opening year! May he help you, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health. May He help you in poverty and in affluence, in your successes and in your reverses. May He help you in all your efforts to subdue your sins, and all your exertions to promote the prosperity of his Church and the salvation of your fellow-creatures. May He help you in fulfilling your daily duties, and in bearing your daily burdens. May He help you in submitting to trials without murmuring, and in enduring wrongs without resentment; in receiving mercies without ingratitude, and in enjoying this life without forgetting the life to come. May He help you in denying sinful self and in denying righteous self; in growing up into His image and putting on all the graces of the Spirit. May He help you in preparing for whatever He is preparing for you. And if it be so, that this is the last New Year's Sabbath you are to spend on earth, may the dawn of another year find you enjoying that Sabbath whose sun never goes down, and whose worship shall never end !