Joy in Service; Forgetting, and Pressing Onward; Until the Day Dawn | Page 8

George Tybout Purves
own journey as Providence has led us on, and above all things, of him whom we are to hold in everlasting remembrance. But we must keep life's balance true. Some people are always living among the gravestones, regretting what is now inevitable, mourning over losses that cannot be repaired, thinking the days of old better than those which are to be--and wasting their energies in sorrowful reminiscences and wistful longings for a perished past, instead of using their energies in the accomplishment of what may be done for the winning of better crowns. It is against this practice that the apostle's experience warns. This practice makes progress impossible. It is a source of misery. It fetters the Christian mind. It does not know that the resurrection has taken place. It makes life a threnody instead of a hosanna. We are to turn from the past that we may obtain the better future. Let me give you an example of the way in which we are to forget the things which are behind, and reach forth unto those things that are before.
I. It is worth our while to forget old doubts and questionings, through absorption in the practical application of the truth brought us by Jesus Christ. Most of the doubts and questionings which men have on the subject of religion are very old. Their hair is gray with the anxious thought of many centuries. They may be represented by old men, with wrinkled foreheads and feeble knees, pretending by dress and manner to be young. But you would be surprised to find how old they are, these questions that disturb your religious faith and hinder you from the performance of your whole duty.
There, for instance, is that weary question about the reason why God allowed sin and misery to enter into his world--a question which men are still pondering, under which they are still restless and sometimes unhappy. But lo! it is as old as human history. The ancient Brahmins wrestled with it. We find it echoed in the hymns of Chaldea that date from the days of Abraham, in the songs of Greece, and in the literature of the age of Solomon; and neither philosophy nor science, neither discovery nor accident, has to this day been able to frame a satisfactory answer.
In like manner the question how to harmonize in thought the absolute sovereignty of God, who ruleth over all and designed the end from the beginning, with the freedom and responsibility of man, is an ancient problem which no answer has been found able to finally solve. Hindoo philosophy settled it by fatalism, making man nothing and deities all. Greek thought vibrated between the two extremes; and from the beginning of Christian history the problem has vexed the ingenuity and taxed the patience of the Church. It is not peculiar to Calvinism. It is a problem which has ever risen up before inquiring minds and baffled the wisdom of the greatest who have grappled with it.
And so, too, most of the specific doubts about and objections to Christian doctrine have descended to us from remote generations. Modern philosophy turns out to be only a careful repetition of speculations which were indulged in by the earliest thinkers. Most of the really important objections to the Bible were raised by the shrewd and cultured antagonists whom ancient paganism put forward as its champions. There can scarcely be a new theory devised, for the human mind has long since gone over the whole ground with plowshare and rake. Nothing is more instructive and entertaining to the student of Christianity than to recognize in ancient times the faces with which he is familiar in our day, although they may be dressed in different clothes and speak another tongue. He will hail them as well-known families, and will return with the conviction that, so far as the religious doubts and questionings of the human mind are concerned, there was some truth in the declaration of Solomon, that there is nothing new under the sun.
I do not mean to say that progress is not being made in religious thought as well as elsewhere. I think there is. God's truth is being better understood. God's Word is being read more intelligently. Light is falling from many a source and on many a fact. Neither do I mean to say that these old problems should not be considered, if for no other reason than that men may be reminded that some of them are insoluble by us, and that what we do know concerning them may be fairly and wisely stated. But I think it clear that they should not be allowed to burden us nor to keep us back from the performance of practical duty. For, mark you how progress has been made even while

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