Ecclesiastes 8:5

A wise man’s heart disoerneth both time and judgment.

A watchnight meditation

Of all seasons of the year the present one inclines us most to thought. If, when the old year is dying, or when the new is being born, men will not think, it is very doubtful if they will ever think at all.

I. A man who is not utterly unwise will see that this is a time for review. It is said of the Emperor Titus that he used to review each day as it drew to its close, and if he could not recall anything which he had done for the good of others he set it down in his note-book that he had lost a day. It was not a bad rule for a heathen king, but hardly good enough for a Christian man. And yet some of us who live in the mid-day of the Gospel do not aim so high, with the poor result that we hit something very much lower than the mark set before us. We come short of the glory of doing the Divine will. It is bad enough to lose one day, but how about losing three hundred and sixty-five? Yes, unless it has been lived in God, consciously in Him and for Him, we may set it down as lost. Let us all find opportunity for a quiet, earnest talk with the hours of the year that has gone. Look well at the old before you greet the new. It will make the new all the better, and when in its turn it becomes old the task of reviewing it will not be so unpleasant.

II. A man of wisdom will see that this is an appropriate time for reconciliations. Has there been a little rift in friendship’s lute? Now is a good time for mending the instrument and bringing back the harmony, music for the King of kings. Take the tide of good feeling at the flood, and be reconciled to those whom for a while thou mayest have been alienated. “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness we repent of, but our severity.” Let us see to it that we enter the new year at peace with God. He is reconciled in Christ to us. Why should we stand out?

III. The wise man who observeth time and judgment will hear a voice at this particular time appealing to his generosity. Yea, there is more than one voice speaking to us on this behalf. There is the very voice of poverty itself speaking in plaintive tones to those who have the sympathetic ear. There is the voice of our own joys and comforts reminding us of the distress of those who are devoid of these things.

IV. This is a time for consecration. To consecrate ourselves to God is to recognize the supreme fact of our existence and to act upon it. This is the time of all times for consecration, while the goodness of God is passing before us. As the mercies of the year marshal past us in grand and swift review let us listen to their pleading and present ourselves to God. (T. Jackson.)

The wise man’s improvement of time

I. The Christian’s spiritual discernment of time.

1. The wise man marks with a discerning eye the successive developments which time has made of God’s gracious purposes towards our guilty race.

2. The man who is spiritually “wise,” and divinely taught, solemnly ponders the devastations of time. And how fearful have been his ravages! He has overturned the mightiest empires, sapped the loftiest towers, and laid low the proudest cities. But above all, time has with irresistible flood swept away in succession the countless millions of our race. Tamerlane the Tartar reared a vast pyramid, formed of the skulls of those victims whom he had slain in battle; but death wages a more fatal contest over a wider field; and for us “there is no discharge from that war.” Diseases in all their sad variety are his ministers; and were a pyramid to be erected by him of human bones, it would pierce the clouds of heaven.

3. The Christian marks and ponders the shortness of time. What are six, or ten, or a hundred thousand years? They are but units in eternity’s countless reckoning; they are but drops in eternity’s unfathomable and shoreless ocean. But when we reckon time by the period of man’s life, “the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength” in some “they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for we are soon cut off, and we flee away.” Life is truly like the bridge which the moralist describes; a mighty multitude presses to cross it, but it is filled with openings through which the passengers are continually dropping into a dark and rapid river beneath, and but a few are left; and as these approach the other side they, too, fall through and perish. The Christian, “knowing the time,” learns to die daily; he cherishes more and more of the pilgrim spirit, and in all his plans and prospects he acts continually under the practical influence of the apostle’s appeal (James 4:13). Ye merchants and busy tradesmen, I ask, is it thus in your case? Is such wise discernment of the shortness of time yours?

4. The wise man’s heart also discerneth the swiftness of time. And thus it is that human life is compared to “a tale that is told,” to “the weaver’s shuttle” flying rapidly across the web.

5. Finally, the Christian discerns that time is a precious talent for which he must give an account.

II. The lessons and duties suggested by the year that is past, and that which has now begun.

1. In a public and national sense this has been a truly memorable year.

2. The past year is memorable in the review of it, in your history as families.

3. How solemn and affecting to you as a congregation is the review of the past year!

III. In reference to the year on which we have now entered, what important duties devolve upon us!

1. Let us never forget that as we live in a world of change, it becomes us to expect changes and trials, and to calculate upon the probability of being called away by death, ere the year has closed.

2. Let the disciples of the Lord Jesus remember their solemn responsibility to live for the glory of God.

3. Finally, let us unite our prayers with those of the people of God of every name who are met at this season to supplicate, with one accord, the outpouring of the Holy Ghost on the Church and the world. (John Weir.)