THE END OF THE YEAR, AND OF ALL THINGS. SERMON I. ST. JOHN, vi. 12. Gather up the fragments that remain, that WE may believe it is not without a meaning that the Church has appointed these words to be read to us this morning. We have reached the last Sunday of the Christian year. The year has gone round, swiftly (oh, how swiftly!) and brought us again to this last Sunday before Advent. Another portion of our trial-life here upon earth is closing in. We stand on the threshold of that solemn season which speaks to us of the coming of Christ our LORD. The Church and the World, my Brethren, have their different reckonings of time. They start from different points, and follow separate courses. The World has its reckoning for barter and trade, for pleasure and convenience. It portions out its affairs B into months and quarters, as the most practical division. The Church follows another path. She tracks her way by the footmarks of her LORD, and of His accepted Saints. Her holy seasons are counted and set in order, not by the mere signs. and changes of sun and moon, the natural ordinances of Creation, but by the birth, showing forth, sufferings, rising again of her LORD, her Sun of Righteousness: by these supernatural ordinances of Redemption she reckons her time. Accordingly, she studs her calendar with jewels, graven as signets, with that Name before which every knee shall bow. And they are :-ADVENT, the season of His coming, first to redeem us, then to judge us; EPIPHANY, the season of His manifestation to us Gentiles;-LENT, when we follow Him through the dark time of His fasting for us. and our sins in the wilderness;-then the still more clouded season of His Sacred PASSION, or Sufferings, when we accompany Him from His entrance into Jerusalem even to His Cross :-then the joyful burst of EASTER-tide, when He arose from the grave; then the coming down of the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love upon WHITSUNDAY;-then the celebration of the Feast of HOLY TRINITY, when we specially adore Three Persons in One GOD. These are the paths through which our Church would lead us to the LORD, her LORD and ours. These are her solemn feast-days, which have been made an ordinance for ever: and by a diligent use of these as they pass over us one by one, by striving to enter into the spirit and meaning of them, by making their lessons our own, by dwelling upon them and praying over them, we are to rise up higher, step by step, into the mountain of the LORD'S House. And now we have come to the end of the Christian year. The next thing that will meet us is Advent: and before Advent we are commanded by the voice of our Saviour to "gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." Let us observe the force of this command, as it stands connected with what had gone before. Our Blessed LORD had just been performing one of the most wonderful of miracles-a miracle which sets at nought all our thoughts when we try to realize it. He had been feeding five thousand men, beside women and children, with five barley loaves and two small fishes: feeding them abundantly; for it is said they had "as much as they would." There was no stint in the provision made for their feast for there was no stint or bound in that loving compassion out of which it flowed. All were fed and satisfied: fed by His Almighty power, which could as easily have commanded the manna down again from heaven, or multiplied one crumb of bread to feed a famishing world. And yet, no sooner was the meal finished, than he issued the command in the text. Two lessons may be drawn from these words. |