Exodus 12

The Beginning Of Months

This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. Exodus 12:2.

Some of you may have visited an old farm; possibly you have lived on one. If you have lived on a farm many years ago, you would remember a strange looking machine in the corn yard. It was like a merry-go-round in a fair. If you were lucky enough to be at the farm in late autumn, you would see a horse tied to this machine and being driven round and round in a circle, making the great thing move while it went. Now, it is not the machine I want you to think of, but the horse. It had to plod on patiently over the same round for hours, kept going all the time by the whip of the man beside it.

You boys and girls are inclined to think of school life as being something like this dull and dreary, one continual round of work that never seems to stop. You forget that although your work in a sense goes round in a circle, it is a circle not in the least like that of the farm-yard wheel. The whip need not be there at all, and there's a break after every round. After each break you start afresh, and if you have been working you find yourselves on a slightly higher

Is there not something about October that makes us feel we are off on the new round the sharp air, the frost on the grass, the grey mornings? It is the beginning of our year. For the big boys and girls that may mean a great deal; perhaps an entrance to the University or a chance to do better there. One October many years ago, a very clever boy tried a University scholarship competition. He did not take a high place, but it entitled him to a small scholarship. “I felt I did not deserve one at all,” he wrote to his sister, “but now I am working very hard.”

The new start may mean going into business. The other day I met a boy who had just left the Sunday School. “I'm a chemist now,” he said, “I'll be an apprentice till I'm nearly eighteen; that's old.” He had an idea of rising in the world, for he went on to say, “After that, I'll try to make money enough to build a house for my mother.”

Some of you will have joined the Latin class for the first time. A knowledge of Latin opens a door to wonderful secrets. And the Greek class there are great books written in Greek; the very greatest of these is our New Testament. The younger boys and girls have nearly all got new books: even the very wee ones can show their new primers. Ever upwards you boys and girls go, as October comes round October, the dawn of the year.

“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.” These were the words of the Lord that came to the Israelites through Moses. It meant the beginning of their freedom from bondage. They would be feeling very solemn; their boys and girls would be almost afraid to ask questions, but you may feel sure they were eager to know what the new life was to be like.

The setting out is always hopeful. The most wearisome part of a journey is not the end but the middle January, February, March tramp, tramp, tramp; the brave boys and girls will keep up their courage then; they will set a stout heart to the long level road.

October will come again. Ever ascending, you will one day come to a place from which you can look down and say, “I remember the reading book that really set me to work; I got it one October morning.” Better still, from the heights you may one day see something of the glory that is in store for those who have hungered for the hill-top of goodness. Jesus Himself said that those are blessed who hunger and thirst after righteousness. If you begin to do that today, “this month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.”