Jeremiah 8:7,8

The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times.

Instinct contrasted with reason in its discernment of times

I. The birds of passage show in their periodic migrations, their discernment of seasons, and this both as regards the time of their visiting and the time of their leaving us. Probably some peculiarity in the material structure of migratory birds renders them extremely sensitive to changes of temperature--and as these changes always recur at certain seasons of the year, they observe seasons, and make a corresponding change in their places of abode. So great is their sagacity, so true their instinct.

II. Consider the operation of unsanctified reason in discerning times.

1. Consider the invitations of this season of grace.

(1) The Saviour’s voice issuing forth from the pages of the written Word, addresses sinners in such soothing accents, and holds forth to them promises so refreshing, that one would think it could hardly fail of winning an entrance into their hearts, and finding a response there!

(2) But we believe that in every case in which the sinner has made a nominal profession of Christ’s religion, and been formally admitted to the participation of Christian privileges, the Holy Spirit seconds, by an inward action upon the conscience, this external call of the Saviour. In the abysmal depths of the consciousness He strives with the reluctant soul, and whispers in accents, which even the giddy whirl of vanity and frivolity cannot entirely drown or shut out, “Come.”

(3) God employs subordinate human agents to herald in the ears of His people His invitations of grace. The bride, that is the Church, says “Come.” She says so by her ministers, who are her commissioned representatives.

(4) God invites us to return in penitence and faith to His bosom by the dispensations of His providence, no less than by more immediate and direct summons (Hosea 5:15; Micah 6:9).

2. But if the majority of sinners be not gently won by the invitations of grace, they will haply be driven by terror to take refuge in those offers. Let growing age and infirmity bring death and judgment very near--the prospect will surely urge the wanderer to return with hurried steps to the sheepfold! When hoar hairs are here and there upon him, he will lay to heart the cheerless desolate prospect which lies before him in the vista of futurity, and fly before the approaching winter of God’s wrath! (Dean Goulburn.)

Migration heavenward

When God would set fast a beautiful thought, He plants it in a tree. When He would put it afloat, He fashions it into a fish. When He would have it glide the air, He moulds it into a bird. The prophet was out of doors, thinking of the impenitences of the people of his day, when he heard a great cry overhead. He looks up, and there are flocks of storks, and turtledoves, and cranes, and swallows, drawn out in long line for flight southwards. As is their habit, the cranes had arranged themselves into two lines, making an angle--a wedge--splitting the air with wild velocity; the old crane, with commanding call, bidding them onward, until the towns, and the cities, and the continents slid under them. The prophet, almost blinded from looking into the dazzling heavens, stoops down and begins to think how much superior the birds are in sagacity about their safety than men.

I. They mingle music with their work. The most serious undertaking of a bird’s life is this annual travel. Naturalists tell us that they arrive weary and plumage ruffled, and yet they go singing all the way, the ground the lower line of the music, the sky the upper line of the music, themselves the notes scattered up and down between. I suppose their song gives elasticity to their wings, and helps on the journey. Would God that we were as wise as they, mingling Christian song with our everyday work. A violin, chorded and strung, if something accidentally strike it, makes music; and I suppose there is such a thing as having our hearts so attuned by Divine glory that even the rough collisions of life will make heavenly vibration. Some one asked Haydn why he always composed such cheerful music. “Why,” he said, “I cannot do otherwise. When I think of God, my soul is so full of joy that the notes leap and dance from my pen.” I wish we might all exult melodiously before the Lord. The Church of God will never become a triumphal Church until it becomes a singing Church.

II. They fly very high. During the summer, when they are in the fields, they often come within reach of the gun; but when they start for their annual flight southward they take their places mid-heaven, and go straight as a mark. The longest rifle that was ever brought to shoulder cannot reach them. We fly so low that we are within range of the world, the flesh, and the devil. So poor is the type of piety in the Church of God at this day that men actually caricature the idea that there is any such thing as a higher life. Moles never did believe in eagles. But because we have not reached these heights ourselves, shall we deride the fact that there are any such heights? I do not believe that God exhausted all His grace in Paul, and Latimer, and Edward Payson. I believe there are higher points of Christian attainment to be reached in the future ages of the Christian world.

III. They know when to start. If you should go out now, and shout, “Stop, storks and cranes, don’t be in a hurry,” they would say, “No, we cannot stop. Last night we heard the roaring of the woods bidding us away, and the shrill flute of the north wind has sounded the retreat. We must go.” So they gather themselves into companies, and turning not aside for storm or mountain top, or shock of musketry, over land and sea, straight as an arrow to the mark, they go. And if you come out this morning with a sack of corn, and throw it in the fields, and try to get them to stop, they are so far up that they would hardly see it. They are on their way south. You could not stop them. Oh! that we were as wise about the best time to start for God and heaven. I was reading of an entertainment given in a king’s court, and there were musicians there with elaborate pieces of music. After a while Mozart came and began to play, and he had a blank piece of paper before him, and the king familiarly looked over his shoulder and said, “What are you playing? I see no music before you.” And Mozart put his hand on his brow, as much as to say, “I am making it up as I go along.” It was very well for him; but, oh! we cannot extemporise heaven. If we do not get prepared in this world, we will never take part in the orchestral harmonies of the saved. Oh! that we were as wise as the crane and the stork, flying away, flying away from the tempest. Some of you have felt the pinching frost of sin. You feel it today. You are not happy. There are voices within your soul that will not be silenced, telling you that you are sinners, and that without the pardon of God you are undone forever. Oh! that you would go away into the warm heart of God’s mercy. The southern grove, redolent with the magnolia and cactus, never waited for northern flocks as God has waited for you. Another frost is bidding you away: it is the frost of trouble. Where do you live now? Oh, you say, “I have moved.” Why did you move? You say, “I don’t want as large a house now as I used to want.” Why do you not want as large a house? You say, “My family is not so large.” Where have they gone to? Eternity! (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Migratory birds

(children’s address):--It is very remarkable that in the whole globe there is no place suitable all the year round for birds of this order; and that these untaught and unthinking creatures should shift their habitation, and make long voyages through the vast empire of the air. God has imprinted upon their nature that wonderful instinct which enables them to determine when to go and which way to take. The prophet, with the deep instinct of a poet, sees, and declares to Israel, the inner meaning and lessons of the laws and habits of these aerial voyagers.

I. We must obey the “call” of God. At “the appointed time” the birds feel an impulse or moving within them that they must be going, they congregate together, like swallows in autumn, all ready for their long journey. So in the same way, by the movements of conscience and the voice of Divine truth, God is calling us. Abraham obeyed that “call,” and left his idolatrous surroundings, and so did the fishers of Galilee, they left their nets and followed Christ. In the second part of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, you see how the children left the city of destruction and went on the heavenly journey.

II. Do not delay to start. You have noticed the birds preparing: the trees and hedgerows are covered with them, and there is such a chattering! Stragglers are coming in, one after the other, and, at last, the signal is given, wings flutter, and then, like a moving dark cloud, the birds begin their wonderful passage across the pathless seas. But some swallows are too late, they are left behind, and perish in the cold. We read in the Bible that Lot’s wife lingered and was overtaken by death: the five foolish virgins were all unprepared and “too late”; but the Psalmist was of a different character; he said, “I made haste, I delayed not to keep Thy commandments.”

III. Beware of temptations. What is it that makes some of the birds late, so that they cannot start with the others? Perhaps, the sunshine! Everything looked so beautiful, the trees were decked in splendour, like Joseph’s coat of many colours, and the fat red berries glowed like little balls of fire, and so the birds were tempted to delay their journey until it was too late. It was so with the Jews in Babylon. God called them out of the land of captivity, and opened a way for them through the desert, back to the temple and city of their fathers, but many of them were tempted to remain behind; they had nice houses in Babylon, and there were many pleasant things there, from which it was hard to break away. So the world today will seek to keep you back from God, and prevent you beginning the heavenward journey. Beware of its temptations, and pray God to make you strong to overcome.

IV. Like birds, fly high, that is, live near to God. There are two advantages the birds have when they fly high up in the air, they can see farther, and they are a greater distance from the guns and snares of the earth, and the weapon of the enemy. In churches, the lectern, on which rests the Bible, is generally a burnished eagle, as if to say, that just as the eagle soars upward and upward towards the sun, so the Bible, if we daily and prayerfully read it, will bring us into the light of God’s own presence. Then shall we see the way of life more clearly, and “escape the fiery darts of the evil one.” God, too, will fit us for our long journey just as He strengthens the birds for theirs, giving to the swallow long and powerful wings, and to the quail and other birds of shorter pinions marvellous strength of body. Cullen Bryant beautifully says of the waterfowl--

“He who from zone to zone,

Guides thro’ the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way which I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.”

(A. Hampden Lee.)

Duty of repentance illustrated

I. Respecting the nature of the duty; the similitude in the text directs us to consider it as a return, a treading back our steps, as birds of passage return to the country from which they departed. We may then define repentance to be, A change of mind, operating in a change of conduct.

1. The leading step in the process must of necessity be conviction. No man will think of returning into the right way, unless he be made sensible that he has wandered out of it. Conviction is produced gradually. Upon some hint given to a man, either from within or from without, he begins to suspect himself in the wrong; and then, if he be honest enough to prosecute the inquiry, discovers at length that he actually is so. Sometimes it is flashed upon the mind at once--he awakes, and the dream is at an end. It is produced by various means, by disappointments, by crosses, by losses, by sickness, by the death of a friend, by a passage in Scripture, or a discourse upon one, by the incidents of common life, or the changes that happen in the natural world; in short, there is hardly a circumstance of so trivial a nature, but that providence, in some instance or other, has been pleased to make it instrumental to this salutary purpose.

2. The next step to conviction, in the process of repentance, is sorrow. The man who has offended his Maker, and is become thoroughly sensible that he has done so, and of the consequences of his having done so, cannot but be grieved to find himself in such a situation. The degree of this sorrow is varied almost infinitely by the different temperaments of mind and body in the penitents, and the different views under which sin presents itself to their several imaginations. And, therefore, the same degree is not to be exacted of all. By enthusiasm it has been, not unfrequently, aggravated even to frenzy and madness. In Scripture it is drawn with an aspect perfectly sober, but yet described, in many instances, as very intense, like that occasioned by the languors of sickness in its last stage, or the pain arising from dislocated or broken bones, and venting itself in complaints and lamentations, in sighs and tears. There are temporal ealamities, which can draw tears plentifully from most persons; nay, a fictitious representation of them can produce the effect. Spiritual ones, perhaps, would do the same, if we felt them as we ought to feel them; as due retirement and meditation would cause us to feel them; and as we shall one day feel them, when death shall be seen levelling his dart at our pillow, and the throne of judgment rising to the view, beyond him.

3. A third step is confession. One of an ingenuous mind, who is heartily sorry for his offences, will not be ashamed or backward to own that sorrow.

4. A fourth step is resolution to amend.

5. One step more remains, and only one, but that very steep and difficult of ascent, which is, to carry what we have resolved into execution. It is this which finishes and crowns all the rest.

II. The motives to it. Evil to be avoided, and good to be obtained, are the motives, which influence and produce all human actions. To escape from the rigours and storms of winter, and to enjoy the sweets of a milder and more gracious season, is the instinctive cause, why the heaven-taught monitors, to whom we are referred, migrate from one country to another. It is to avoid the judgments of God, and partake of His mercies, that man is called to repent.

1. The evil, then, to be avoided, is “the judgment of God,” consequent upon sin, and sure to overtake it, if unrepented of Sin, which is the transgression of the law, cannot but be noticed by Him who gave that law; and if noticed, must be punished, either in this life, or that which is to come. Sin is often punished in this life; much oftener than we are aware; indeed so often, that we may say to you as Moses to Israel (Numbers 32:23). It would be in vain, however, to dissemble, that in the present state, as is the offence, such is not always the punishment. Notorious sinners often partake not, to appearance, the common evils of life, but pass their days in prosperity and health, and die without any visible tokens of the Divine displeasure. To take off, in some measure, the force of the objection, it must be remarked, that, besides those judgments of God, which lie open to the observation of mankind, there are others, even in the present life, of a secret and invisible kind, known only to the party by whom they are felt. In the brilliant scenes of splendor, of luxury and dissipation, surrounded by the companions of his pleasures, and the flatterers of his vices, amidst the flashes of wit and merriment, when all wears the face of gaiety and festivity, the profligate often reads his doom, written by the hand whose characters are indelible. Should he turn away his eyes from beholding it, and succeed in the great work, during the course of his revels, yet the time will come, when from scenes like these he must retire, and be alone: and then, as Dr. South says, “What is all that a man can enjoy in this way for a week, a month, or a year, compared with what he feels for one hour, when his conscience shall take him aside, and rate him by himself?” There is likewise another hour which will come, and that soon--the hour when life must end; when the accumulated wealth of the east and the west, with all the assistance it is able to procure, will not be competent to obtain the respite of a moment. It will still be alleged, perhaps, that instances are not wanting of the worst of men, in principle and practice, going out of life with no less composure than the best. I believe these instances to be very rare indeed. But however, by habits either of sensuality or infidelity, the conscience may be drugged, and laid asleep in this world, let it not be forgotten that there is another world beyond this, in which it must awake, to sleep no more. And if in this world some sins are punished, as we have assurance they are, while others of far greater magnitude and more atrocious guilt are permitted to go unpunished, it will follow, by a consequence which the wit of man cannot gainsay, should he study for a thousand years to do it, that such sins, not being punished here, will most inevitably be punished there.

2. The good to be obtained needeth few words.

(1) The light of heaven shining upon our tabernacle, the Divine favour attending us and ours, through every stage of our existence, sanctifying prosperity, and turning adversity itself into a blessing, while it becomes an instrument to rectify the disorders of our minds, to soften the few hard places remaining in our hearts, to smooth and lay even the little roughnesses in our tempers; thus gradually and gently preparing us for our departure hence, and fitting us for the company of “the spirits of just men made perfect.”

(2) The answer of a good conscience, diffusing peace and serenity over all the powers and faculties of the soul, refreshing like the dew falling on the top of Hermon, exhilarating as the flagrance of the holy oil descending from the head of Aaron; sweetening the converse of society, and the charities of active life, and affording, in retirement and solitude, pleasures concealed from the world around us, joys in which “a stranger intermeddleth not.”

(3) The reward in heaven, the glory that shall be revealed, to be known only when it shall be revealed; the bliss without alloy, and without end, which he cannot conceive who has not experienced, and which he who has experienced can find no human language able to express.

III. Some short rules for the conduct of our repentance.

1. Stifle not convictions. Attend to every suggestion of this salutary kind, from what quarter soever it may proceed: attend and slight it not. It is the voice of God calling you to repentance. Listen, and obey.

2. Be serious. The subject will cause any man to become so, who considers it as he ought to do; who reflects, what sin is in the sight of God, what sorrow it occasioned to the Son of God, what destruction it hath brought upon the world, and is about to bring upon himself, unless prevented by a timely repentance. (Bp. Borne.)