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‘Then cometh the end.’
1Co_15:24
I. The most striking thing about the whole matter is the way in which men’s desire and dread are both called out by this constant coming of the ends of things; this stopping and restarting of the works of life.
(a) There is man’s desire of the end. This partly arises from man’s instinctive dread of monotony. ‘I would not live always’ has been a true cry of the human soul. Man’s mere dread of monotony, his sense of the awful weariness of living on for ever, has made him rejoice that down the long avenues of life here he could read the inscription of release, ‘Then cometh the end.’ Every man has gathered something which he must get rid of, something he would not carry always; and so he welcomes the prophecy, ‘Then cometh the end.’ But it is not only the sense of the evil element in life that makes men desire the coming end. That is, after all, a poor and desperate reason. When life has been a success and developed its better powers, then, for a man to say, ‘This road is glorious, but I am glad to see it stops yonder; for beyond, without doubt, there is something yet more glorious’—that is a fine impatience. The noblest human natures are built thus.
(b) There in man’s dread of the end. Undoubtedly the sense of the changefulness of things is what sends such a feeling of insecurity through all our ordinary living—a dread which haunts the very feature of life which, as we have seen, wakens also the almost enthusiastic desire of men’s souls. And one reason is, the soul shrinks from change. Another reason is, that one shrinks from the thought of the coming end of the condition in which he is now living in proportion as he is aware of how far he is from having fulfilled and exhausted the fulness and richness of this present life. But the strongest element in our dread of change is the great uncertainty which envelops every untried experience, the great mystery of the unlived. We dread the end even of our own imperfect condition.
II. Fortunate, indeed, is it that the end of things does not depend upon man’s choice, but comes by a will more large, more wise than his. If we, in such mingled mood, were at last compelled to give the sign when we thought the time had come for this mortal to put on immortality—how the desire and the dread would fight within us! We are spared all that. ‘It comes of itself,’ men say; the Christian man with perfect reverence and truth exclaims, ‘God sends it.’ Apart from this view of the changefulness of life, this perpetual hurrying of all things to an end, we can make nothing out of it all. But if around this instability of human life is wrapped the great permanence of the life of God; if no end comes which is not in His sight truly a beginning; then there is light shed upon it all, and everything is instinct with His spiritual design.
III. How is it with you?—Have you anything to which there comes no end? Any passion for character, and the love of God? Those, and such like things, are eternal. There is no end to the great things of life. If one is living in the resolute pursuit of them, he may first welcome, and then rejoice to leave behind, the several means which in succession offer him their help to attain the object of life. A noble independence this gives to man’s soul. The more your soul is set upon the ends of life, the more you use its means in independence. Consider the life of your Lord, particularly its crowning scenes. Let such be your lives. As He was, so let us seek to be. That while we hang upon our cross, and cry ‘It is finished,’ it may be with a shout of triumph, counting the end but a new beginning, and looking out beyond the cross to richer growth in character, and braver and more fruitful service of our Lord.
—
Bishop Phillips Brooks.