1 Corinthians 15:24

1 Corinthians 15:24

The Certain End.

It is not possible to rule these words out of life. They are perpetually recurring. You tell of any process, you trace out how it is going to work on from step to step, you. see how cause opens into effect, and then effect, becoming cause, opens into still further effect beyond; but always, by-and-by, your thought comes to a stoppage and a change. The process is exhausted. "Then cometh the end." Your story has to round itself to that.

Let us think of this characteristic of life, and see what it means.

I. We may begin by noting this which is the most striking thing about the whole matter the way in which men's desire and men's dread are both called out by this constant coming of the ends of things. Look (1) at man's desire of the end. It is, in the most superficial aspect of it, a part of his dread of monotony. There is something very pathetic, it seems to me, in man's instinctive fear of being wearied with even the most delightful and satisfactory of all the experiences which he meets with in the world. Is it not a sign, one of the many signs, of man's sense that his nature is made for larger worlds than this, and only abides here temporarily and in education for destinies which shall be worthy of its capacities? "I would not live alway" has been a true cry of the human soul. (2) But this is the most superficial aspect of it. Very early in every experience there comes the sense of imperfection and failure in what we have already done, and the wish that it were possible to begin the game again. Already there are some things in life which the soul would fain get out of life. The first sketch has so marred the canvas that the perfect picture seems impossible. In many tones, yet all of them tones of satisfaction, men desire the end. (3) Turn now to the other side, and think of the dread with which men think of the coming of ends in life. There is (a) the sheer force of habit It is the inertia of life. That this should cease to be is shocking and surprising. (b) Very often one shrinks from the announcement of the coming end of the condition in which he is now living, because, when he hears it, he becomes aware how far he is from having yet exhausted the condition in which he is now living. (c) There is the great uncertainty which envelops every experience which is untried.

II. The workman's voice has not to summon out of the east the shadows of the night in which no man can work. God sends it. And, if around the instability of human life is wrapped the great permanence of the life of God, then is there not light upon it all? All satisfaction with the temporariness comes only from its being enfolded and embraced within the eternity of the Eternal.

Phillips Brooks, The Light of the World,p. 401

References: 1 Corinthians 15:24. H. J. Wilmot Buxton, Waterside Mission Sermons,2nd series, No. 20. 1 Corinthians 15:24. Christian World Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 384.