Verse 1
The Uncertainty of Tomorrow
What is "to-morrow"? Who can define it? Who can be certain as to its contents, or even as to its duration? Days are not counted by the hours that are within them, but by the work to which those hours are consecrated, or by the pain by which they are made memorable, or by the hopes which shine from them as new glories in life. Holy Scripture is very sensitive about our treatment of to-morrow. For example, in this case it is not to be boasted about that is to say, it is not to be pledged or mortgaged to our ambition: it is not to be treated as private property, as if we had a right to dispose of it: it does not in any sense belong to us: therefore we have no rights in it; we have to receive it as a gift and to use it in the spirit of faithful stewardship. There must be no vaunting as to time: we are simply to live according to the will of God, and to take our moments one by one as precious gifts to be used for the glory of the Giver. On the other hand, whilst we are not to boast about to-morrow, Jesus Christ is particularly emphatic in warning us not to be anxious about it. If we may not triumph in the light that is coming, neither are we to permit ourselves to be devoured by a canker in view of the possible obligations and burdens of the coming day. Observe, therefore, how strict are the exclusions: first, boasting is excluded; secondly, anxiety is excluded. We have seen in many instances how men have inflicted pain upon themselves by an unwise use of the time called "to-morrow." One man said he had much goods laid up for many years; therefore he would take his ease, eat, drink, and be merry; but God said unto him, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose things shall those be, which thou hast provided?" We can lay up the goods, but we cannot lay up the years; we can build the barn, but we cannot with certainty build the future; we should therefore understand by what limitations we are bound, and should work within those limitations with all thankfulness and energy.
By "to-morrow" we are not to understand literally the next twenty-four hours; we are rather to understand the future in general, it may be a day, or a week; it may be a year, or ten years. We fix within our own minds periods within which divine providences are to culminate, or within which warnings are to fructify, and because we have made a miscalculation we think that providence itself has been guilty of negligence. "If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." It is impossible to be too careful in defining what we may regard as "delay" on the part of God. We do not understand the word; we presume to be God ourselves when we thus lay bounds to the divine movement: a thousand years are in God's sight but as yesterday when it is passed, or as a watch in the night. With God there is no time in our sense of the term. Until we rid the mind of the sophism that we can calculate and reckon justly, we shall be continually disappointing ourselves by fixing periods of fruition, and times for realisation of good or of evil. "Watch, therefore: for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh." Ignorance is as certain as knowledge. To know that we are ignorant may be the beginning of wisdom.
A wonderful part has been played by "to-morrow" in human life. It is not ours, as we have said, and yet we could not do without it; we have never seen it, yet it is necessary to us; but for the future, the past would be a great mockery, as but for the harvest the seedtime would be a period of toil and fretfulness. We may say that posterity has done nothing for us, but we thus speak ignorantly, for it is posterity that operates upon our thought like an inspiration, now stirring it with holy ambition, now chastening it with wise fear, now enriching it with abundant hope. What we are going to be to-morrow! To what triumph we are coming on the third day! We promise ourselves wondrous things in a year, in a century; then we shall see all mystery cleared up, then we shall prove how sagacious have been our foresight and our arrangements in respect of all the necessities of life. Within proper bounds, this action of the future is to be welcomed as an inspiration, but because of its preciousness we must beware lest it become a temptation. Men may put off until to-morrow what they ought to do to-day; then is to-morrow perverted and wasted, being no longer an inspiration, but the refuge of indolence and folly. The true preparation for to-morrow is a wise use of the present. He who prays well to-day shall sing well to-morrow. The only way in which earnest men can provide for to-morrow is by looking well to the immediate duty. Rest assured that if we are faithful to-day we shall not be left without comfort to-morrow. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and sufficient unto the day is the joy thereof. God has made great promises to faithfulness, and he has not reserved his heaven as the only blessing, the blessing of an undefined and indefinable future; he promises a present heaven of satisfaction, consolation, and blessedness of every quality and degree: even now, night by night, we may hear the sweet voice of approbation saying, "Well done, good and faithful servant." There is a sense in which the days are singular; that is to say, they are separate one from another, and within the limits of each is the judgment-seat set up, and men are tried as for good or evil behaviour; in another sense all the days are brought together into one solemn totality, and are treated under the designation of "life," and upon the whole period of the existence is the divine judgment pronounced. Whether in the one case or in the other, whether in singularised days or in totalised life, the solemn rule holds good that the only way to prepare for the future is to take earnest heed to the present.
If we do not know what a "day" may bring forth, how can we know the universe? We must reason from the little to the great. As a matter of fact, we cannot tell what may happen within the next few moments; we live in the excitement of uncertainty, unless we live in the repose of faith. Such being the case, we may reason upward from the little to the vast, and may wisely say to ourselves, If we cannot tell what a day may bring forth, what do we know of what is hidden in the depths of eternity, in the counsels of the Infinite, in the whole purpose of the living God? Ought we not to be humble, docile, expectant? If we knew to-morrow and the next day, if we could read the volume of the next half-century, if we could with certainty forecast the occurrences of the next hundred years, we might encourage ourselves in the belief that we could comprehend more perfectly the decree and purpose of God, we might presume upon our knowledge, and carry it to a point involving a species of divinity: but we are beaten back at the very first: we cannot see through the next door that is shut upon us; we cannot see beyond the walls of our own retreat: so therefore we are taught humility, whether we will accept the lesson or not; we are bowed down in our frailty, we are made consciously ashamed of our ignorance, and how boastful soever our temper, we are obliged to confess that we cannot tell with certainty what will occur on the morrow.
Out of this lesson should come an instruction larger than itself. The result of this realisation of fact should be the cultivation of a right spirit in regard to time and development, and the whole mystery of futurity. Ours should be a spirit of dependence; we should say, If the Lord will, we will do this or that. We should take nothing into our own hands as if by prescriptive and inalienable right; we should remember that our breath is in our nostrils, that we are as a wind that cometh for a little time, and then vanisheth away. Again and again we should remind ourselves that we all do fade as a leaf, and that we have nothing that we have not received; out of this abasement comes legitimate and final exaltation; without a consciousness of such abasement we see nothing as it really is, our hearts are perverted by ingratitude, and we exclude the light from the whole area and scope of our life. Whilst we are in a state of abasement it by no means follows that we are in a state of despair; on the contrary, we are exhorted to hope continually in God, and to be assured that he who made yesterday his tabernacle will not leave to-morrow like a vacant temple. A right reading of the past will rekindle the lamp of hope. How has God dealt with us? What was his care of us in six troubles? When the night was long, how fared it with us? Did any star gleam through the gloom? Did any whispered song assail us in the darkness? Was any friend raised up to us as if with suddenness? Recalling all the holy past, we will sing of the goodness of the Lord whilst we have our breath, and to-morrow shall be as this day, and more abundant, not because of our wisdom and foresight, but because of the infinite lovingkindness of the Lord. Living in this spirit, the future has no burden for us, no sting, no cloud of judgment. Come with it what may, the Lord himself will bring it with his own hand, and delivered by that hand even the trials shall be blessings, even chastisement shall be for the purification of our souls. To live in this spirit is to escape the solitude and desolation of conscious orphanhood, and to live in the very smile and within the very embrace of God.
Whether we are nominally religious or not, we are confronted by the unknown, the incalculable. Close the Bible, yet we cannot shut out the mystery of to-morrow; renounce all metaphysical religion, yet there is a practical religion which we cannot escape, the religion which comes of superstition, uncertainty, mingled hope and fear, the struggle of various sentiments: all this disennobles our vaunting ambition, and brings us to the lowest levels of humiliation. The proudest man is bound to acknowledge that he is as ignorant as the meanest creature of the secret which to-morrow will reveal. It might be supposed that if we closed the Bible, and abandoned the sanctuary, we should escape all mystery, and should be enabled to enjoy a land all light and all simplicity. Facts are against this false theory. Without a Bible, without a conscious spirituality, without a religious reading of life present and to come, there remain a thousand mysteries, dark, troublous, tormenting, charged with the very spirit of fear, animated by the very spirit of mockery. He who has no religion may have no faith, but he has infinite credulity: he who believes on the living God and regards himself as a little child, created that he might be developed, instructed, and perfected in wisdom and goodness, may have little credulity, but he has living faith; he will hear the word, "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass," not as an idle sentiment, but as a profound and practical philosophy. The Christian has no "to-morrow" as a fear: he has an everlasting to-morrow as to the hope of growth, progress, and advancement in all capability and faculty for divine service. Woe to the man who has so used his yesterday as to have no hope of to-morrow! Blessed be the man who so uses the present as to divest the future of all terrors!
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