Transcript
MACARTNEY: Beautiful, autumnal day, and this holy Sabbath day, which now draws to a close, and the night has come down upon us, that night which has been so faithful coming after the faithfulness of the day.
As Thou didst say in the beginning that seed time and harvest, summer and winter, heat and cold, day and night should never cease. Of old, Thou didst come Thyself or send Thy messengers, Thy ministering angels, to speak
unto Thy servants in the night, to invite them to do Thy will, to warn them against evil, to strengthen their faith. Thou didst come to Adam in the cool of the day and evening; and unto Abraham,
when Thou didst tell him to look up and see if he could count the stars; and unto Jacob at Bethel, when he saw the ladder with the angels of God ascending and descending; and at the fort of the [Jabok?] when the angel wrestled with him, and he became a prince of God; and unto Joshua before
the walls of Jericho; and unto Samuel in Shiloh's holy house; and unto Solomon at Gibeon, when he chose wisdom and the fear of God rather than riches and earthly dominion; and unto Joseph, when the angel told him of the coming
birth of the Messiah; and unto St. Paul at [Croath?] when he dreamed the dreams of that man who called him to come and help them of Macedonia; and still Thy messengers come. May they speak to some of us this
night, O Lord. As we dwell upon this high and sacred theme of heavenly opportunity, we pray for the presence and assistance and the potent aid of Thy Holy Spirit. If there are those who are failing to show piety and kindness at home,
to their own, then wilt Thou speak to them and move them so to do, ere ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden ball broken, or the pitcher broken at the fountain, or the wheel at the cistern, and man goeth to his long home,
and is beyond our ministry. If anyone is moved to break with some evil habit let him not postpone it, but act. When Thou speakest, if anyone tonight is out of Christ, and therefore without hope, then wilt Thou
send Thy messenger to speak unto that soul, and even now in this night, fallen unto repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And this we ask in His name, and for Thy glory everlasting. Amen.
In the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy, the fourth chapter and the 21st verse, "Come before winter". The two most renowned prisoners of history were Napoleon Bonaparte
and St. Paul. One was in prison because the peace of the world demanded it, the other because he tried to give the world that peace, which the world cannot give, and which the world cannot take away. One had shed rivers of blood upon which to
flout his ambitions. The only blood the other had shed was the blood which flowed from his own wounds for the sake of Christ. One could trace his path to empire by the ghastly trails of the dead which stretched all the way from the Pyrenees to Moscow and from the
pyramids to Mt. Taber. Napoleon once said, "I love no one living not even my own brothers. Perhaps Joseph a little." Not strange, then, that at the end of his life, standing on his lonely, wave-washed rock in the south Atlantic, Napoleon wondered if there was anyone in the world who really
loved him. But this other prisoner, from his lonely dungeon beneath the Capitoline Hill at Rome sends out messages that flow with love and throb with hope immortal. When you get into real trouble in life, it's a great thing if you
have a few friends upon whom you can count to the uttermost. Paul had at least three such friends. The first, need I mention his name? If you are not now His friend, you can be His friend forever before you leave the church this night. The second friend was that one
whose face we see almost the first when we come into this life, and almost the last when we leave it, the face of the doctor. Paul [hands his?] doctor down to immortality with that imperishable [anconium?], Luke the beloved physician, "And again, only Luke is with me."
The third friend was this young [Litheonian?] youth, half Greek and half Hebrew, whom Paul had converted at Lystra in Asia Minor. Perhaps after Paul had been stoned that time by the mob and dragged out of the gate of the city and left for dead,
it was Timothy who, when the mob had dispersed, made his way out through the gate of the city and searched among the heaps of debris and awful until he found Paul and put his arm around him and poured the cordial down his lips and then carried him off to the home of his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois.
If you make a friendship in the time of danger, fire, or shipwreck, you never forget that friend. Here was a friendship that was formed for adversity, and the hammer of adversity welds human hearts, as it did in this case, into an [indisputable?] amalgamation.
Paul had left Timothy in charge of the church at Ephesus, but now in the present at Rome he wants Timothy by his side, so he sends him this letter, Paul's last letter, and in the letter he tells Timothy to come. He wants him to bring three things with him. First of all, the books and the parchments, and then the old cloak that he had
forgotten and left behind him in the house of Carpus at Troas. What a cloak the church would make for Paul now, if we could do it. But then, that was the only cloak he had. It had been wet with the brine of the Aegean, and yellowed with the dust of the [Agnacian?] way, and white with the snow of Galicia, and
crimson with his own heart's blood. It was cold and getting damp in that Mamertine dungeon. It was cold and damp on a blistering hot August day, the last time I went down into it. "Bring the old cloak." But most of all, he wants Timothy to bring himself. He says to him,
"Use thy diligence to come unto me," and then at the very end, as if perhaps Timothy might not understand the urgency of the matter, he says, "Do thy diligence to come, and come before winter." Why before winter? Well, because in that ancient day, when winter came on, ships were laid up. Navigation ceased in the open sea.
How dangerous it was to sail then. The last shipwrecked voyage of Paul himself was the illustration. If Timothy waited until winter, he would have to wait until spring, and Paul has a premonition that when spring comes, he will be gone. We like to think that Timothy needed no
further urging, no second letter, but that he gathered together the books and the parchments and then went over to Troas and picked up that old cloak at the house of Carpus, took a vessel across the Aegean to Neapolis and Macedonia, and then across Macedonia to the Adriatic, and across the Adriatic Sea
to [Brundisiam?], on the heel of Italy, and then by the Appian Way up to Rome, where he sought Paul out in the dungeon, put the old cloak about him, read to him from the books he had brought with him, the Scriptures, wrote for him his last messages, walked by his side to the place of execution, by the Pyramid of Cestius, outside the walls of Rome, one of the few
monuments of that day still standing, saw the headsman's sword flash in the sunlight, and Paul put on immortality. Well there's the sermon, plain and unmistakable, "Come before winter." There are some thing which you can do now, but if you leave them undone until winter comes, they will never be done. The winter will
come and pass, and spring will come and deck with the earth its flowers, and also the graves of some of your opportunities. It may be the grave of a dearest friend. There are golden gates of opportunity that are standing wide open tonight. A year from tonight those gates will be closed. There are tides of fortune and of destiny
which tonight are flowing at the flood. Next October, they will be flowing at the ebb, their voices earnest, wistful, affectionate, speaking to you tonight. A year from tonight, those voices will be forever silenced. I like all seasons of the year.
I like winter, with the crunching snow beneath my feet and the clear, cold nights, with the stars like silver-headed nails, riveted to the vault of heaven by the hammer of an archangel. I like the spring, with its mysterious reverescence [sic] of life, and I like summer,
with the litany of the winds in the tops of the trees. But best of all, I like the autumn. I like its cool, crisp mornings. I like its golden sunlight. I like its fields, strewn with the blue aster and the goldenrod. I like the radiant livery of its forests, yellow
pale and hectic red. But how soon that glory passes, the rains fall, the wind blows, and lo, the trees are stripped, the leaves are gone. Autumn is the parable of everything that fades, and so it is that every recurring autumn has filled me with a desire
to say something, not only something that shall move men towards God to do what they ought to do, but move them to do it now, tonight, before winter, so [that is listened?] to that voice of Paul, as he flings this message across the seas to Timothy there in Ephesus, "Come before
winter," and first in it I hear the voice that calls for the amendment and reformation of character. There isn't anyone in the church tonight whose character is all that it ought to be, or what the Lord Jesus Christ wants it to be. Your character can be changed, but not at any time. One of the vivid memories
of my boyhood is that of passing on the winter nights the wire mill in our town. We could see the streams of molten metal coming out of the furnaces, writhing and twisting, like tortured spirits, and before the furnaces, because that was the way they did it then, stood men in
leathern aprons, with great tongs in their hands, waiting to receive the metal and convey it to the mold. But if that metal was permitted to cool beneath a certain temperature, it refused the mold. There are times when life's metal is, as it were, molten, and you can hammer it and fashion it
into any design that you please. But if that moment is permitted to pass, then it tends to a state of fixation in which it is not possible either to plan or to do a good thing. You remember that story of the angel and the pool at Bethesda, around which the sick lay, waiting to be healed. When
the angel came down and agitated the water and troubled the pool, then the sick could go down and be healed, but only then. There are times when the pool of life is bubbled, stirred, by the visit of the angel. Then is the time to act. Some years ago, a man was sitting
in his room in an hotel in Atlantic City. For an hour or more, he had been battling desperately with a shameful appetite. He was about to yield to the temptation, and had just but brought his hand to ring the bell for the waiter when he said it seemed to him that an angel stood before him,
and he heard a voice which said, "This is your hour. If you conquer this temptation now and refuse it, you're its master forever. If you yield to it now, you are its slave forever." He said he obeyed the angel. Now, the visit of that angel is not unique. The angel comes and knocks
on the door of your heart, and waits to see what your answer will be. Sometimes he comes in the awakening of conscience, in the conviction of sin, "Thou art the man." Sometimes, he comes in a mysterious urge for a better and higher life. "Oh, for a man to rise in me, that the man I am might
cease to be." Sometimes he comes in a wave of sorrow which washes the eye of the soul, and through the thick rinds of the visible, you can discern the fair outlines of the invisible. But however he comes, and whenever, that is a precious moment for the soul. Then golden goals can be glimpsed.
Then, chains of besetting sin can be broken. Then, decisions made which shall bless the soul long after the stars have ceased to burn. One of the most brilliant senators who ever sat in the senate was John Ingalls of Kansas. He presided over the senate as president
after the death of Vice President Hobart. A greatly gifted man, and yet he seems to have cast his own life, in a sense, in rubbish to the void. The last I heard of him was reporting a price fight. He wrote the finest lines on opportunity ever written, "Master of human destiny am I. Fame, love, and fortune on my
footsteps wait. Cities and fields I walk. I penetrate deserts and fields remote, and passing by hovel and mart and palace, I knock unbidden, once, at every gate. If sleeping, rise. If feasting, wake before I turn away. It is the hour of
faith, and they who follow me gain every state that mortals desire and conquer every foe save death. But they who wait or hesitate condemned to failure, penury, and woe, seek me in vain, and uselessly implore. I answer not, and I return no more."
You know that's true in the affairs of life. How true then it must be with regard to these heavenly opportunities which God grants us. You can kindle a bonfire any time, a few sticks and a match or two, but this finer fire of the spirit you cannot kindle
when you will. We cannot kindle when we will the fire that in the heart resides. In mystery the soul abides. The Spirit gloweth, and is still. When the Spirit glows, arise and act. Again, in that
message of Paul to Timothy, "Come before winter," we hear the voice of affection and friendship. Suppose for a moment that when Timothy received that message from Paul he said, "Yes Paul, I'll come, but you must not be in too great a hurry. I have some matters to attend to here in Ephesus, some deacons to install
over in Philadelphia, and some elders to ordain down at Miletus." So when he has attended to those matters, he picks up the books and the parchment, goes up to Troas, gets the old cloak in the home of Carpus, and then goes down to the waterfront and says to the seamen, "I want a ship sailing for Italy." They tell him, "No ship
for Italy until spring." Then I suppose he would go way down the coast 100 miles to Miletus, and there ask the same question, "A ship sailing for Italy?" and gets the same answer, "No ship for Italy until spring." All that winter, if that was the history, Timothy must have wondered as he went about his pastoral duties
how it fared with Paul. "Does he think that I have forgotten him and forsaken him?" And when the winter breaks up, he is down at Troas, takes the first ship for Italy, lands at Brundisiam, goes up the Appian Way, goes to the [pretorium?], the palace of Caesar, and asks one of the
soldiers, "Where can I find Paul the prisoner?" The soldier looks at him, "Paul the prisoner? What do I know about these criminals and brigands who have been brought here to be tried before Caesar? Get out, be gone, or I'll let you feel the butt end of this lance." Then he looks up some of those Roman Christians with their beautiful names, Mary, Prudence,
Rufus, [Ampreatus?], Narcissus, and asks them, "Where is Paul?" And one of them looks at him and says to him, "Paul? Why don't you know? Paul was put to death in the ides of January, beheaded. And are you Timothy? Then you are the one about whom he was always asking. And when the jailer put the key in the door
of his cell, he would be saying, 'I'm sure that will be Timothy now.' But you never came. And his last message was for you. 'Tell Timothy, my beloved son, to meet me at God's right hand.'" If that was the history, then how Timothy must have wished that he had gone before winter. Before winter
or never. When Judas, and some of the other disciples too, found fault with Mary because of that beautiful offering, that costly ointment with which she anointed the head and the feet of Jesus shortly before His death, and said the money ought to have been spent on the poor, Jesus said, "Let her alone. She hath done what she could.
The poor, ye have always with you, but Me, ye have not always." I can't see it now, but here tonight within your homes and in your family circles, as surely as I am standing in this pulpit, there are those across whose brow are written those words,
"The poor ye have always with you, but me ye have not always." No. A competent critic has said that the most moving, the saddest sentence in English literature is that sentence from the diary of Thomas Carlisle concerning his oft neglected wife, Jane Welsh, "Oh that I had you
yet for five minutes by my side, that I might tell you all." And if there are any here tonight who are living with those close to you as if they were fixed, always by your side, then hear those other words of this sage of Chelsea, "Cherish what is dear
to you while it is near, and wait not till it is far away. Oh, blind and deaf that we are, if thou yet loves anyone living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust clouds and dissonances of the moment, and all be so beautifully plain and clear, when it is too late."
The first sermon on this text was preached on the evening of October 3, 1915, 37 years ago. There were many medical students from the medical colleges of Philadelphia present that night. One of them, the next morning, on his way to Jefferson Medical College stopped in Wannamaker's stores
and bought a postcard and sent me a few words about the sermon. There was another there, either that night or the next year. He went down the aisle with the rest of the students, up [Barth?] Street to his boardinghouse, into his room, and sat down to read a magazine, but the refrain of this text kept sounding
in his mind and in his ear, "Come before winter." He flung aside the magazine and said to himself, "I think I'd better write a letter to Mother." He sat down at the desk and wrote a letter to his mother, the sort of letter that every mother likes to get from her son. He went out on the street, dropped it in the box, and then to bed. The next day at the medical
school, he was handed the yellow envelope of the Western Union, and tearing it open he read, "Come at once. Mother is dying." He caught the night train to Pittsburgh, another train out to New Galilee, PA, where his brother met him, and drove him rapidly to their farm home. Through the door, up the stairs, into his mother's
chamber, and he was in time to see that smile upon his mother's face which, if a man has once seen, he can never forget, until with the morn those angel faces smile which we have loved long since and lost a while. And there, under her pillow, her heart eased,
her viaticum, as she went out into the dark waters of death, was the letter he had written her. Not strange, was it, that when he met me on the street a few days after in Philadelphia, he said, "I'm glad you preached that sermon, 'Come before winter.'" He was not the first, and he was not the
last. Perhaps someone here tonight will be glad that he heard this sermon. When Jesus came and found the three disciples sleeping, James and Peter and John, He wakened them and said, "What, could you not watch with Me one hour?" When He came the second time and found them asleep again, He said the same words,
but when He came the third time and found them asleep, He looked down upon them and said, "Sleep on now, and take your rest. Behold the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners." One of those three, Peter, undoubtedly, was crucified for his Lord. John, we know, was
in prison on [Pratmus?] for the sake of Christ. James was the first of the apostles to gain the martyr's crown, but never again did any one of them have the chance that he lost that night to watch with Christ in His agony. Oh, you say, I saw him last Wednesday on the corner of Wood and 5th Avenue, yes, you did.
But you'll never see him again. You were going to do this or that, but now the vacant place, the empty chair, the unlifted book, will speak to your soul with a rebuke which you can hardly endure. Sleep on now.
Sleep, sleep forever. Last of all, in this voice of Paul to Timothy, we heart he voice that calls for repentance and faith, the voice of Jesus, the most yearning, the most wistful of all. You know, I wish He had been there one of those times when He called those disciples,
Peter and John and Andrew and the rest of them, because they rose up immediately and left all and followed him. There must have been the note of immediacy and urgency, the most important theme upon which any man or angel or the Holy Spirit Himself can speak to you, is the welfare of your immortal soul,
and when the Holy Spirit speaks on that theme, He always says, "Today, never tomorrow." If you can find any place in the Bible where the Holy Spirit says, "Repent when you feel like it. Come to Christ tomorrow," then I shall come down out of this pulpit, because I will have no message to preach. But now.
He always says today, never tomorrow. Now is the accepted time. [Fly to His?] call today, harden not your hearts, today. The reason for that urgency is twofold. First of all, the obvious uncertainty and transiency of life. Why, a spider's most attenuated web
is like a cable of steel compared with your hold upon life. David, in great distress, said to Jonathan one day, "As thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death." Was that true of David alone, or is it true of you and me also? What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue. There was an old preacher who used to conclude his sermons by saying, "Repent the day before you die." And his people would come up to him and say, "But we do not know the day of our death." "Then," he said, "repent today." The other reason for this urgency and immediacy
is the fact that the disposition and mood of the heart changes. The soul, like the soil, has its favorable seasons. I can still hear the accent of his voice as he said to me, sitting in my study, speaking of a brother who was out of Christ and whose little girl had died,
"Speak to him now. His heart is tender now." Someone might hear a sermon like this tonight and be ready to act, almost persuaded, but he says, "No, not tonight." He might come here next October and hear the same message, but it would make no
impression upon him. I might as well sow the seed on that marble pavement beneath this pulpit. His hour had passed. Oh, if the history of this church could be told, if the stones should cry out of the wall and the beam out of the timber should answer, what a story they could tell of those who were not
far from the Kingdom of God, but tonight are far from it because when God said, "Today," they said, "Tomorrow." And tomorrow never came. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. So once more, in the rich providence of God,
and for the 37th time, I am permitted to throw out this great text, "Come before winter," and as I do so, I am sure that the angels of heaven, that those who love you and pray for you, that the redeemed in Heaven, that the Holy Spirit, that the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself are with me, and speaking with me and for me, "Come before winter." Come before the haze of Indian summer has vanished. Come before the winds send the leaves whirling over the lawns. Come before the winter wheat is covered
with the snow. Come before the heart is cold, and life is over, and you stand before God to give your account of the use you have made of the precious opportunities which He presented unto you. Come before winter. Come to thy God in time. Youth, manhood, old age passed.
Come to thy God at last. Come to thy God in time, storm billow, whirlwind pass. Come to thy God at last. Let us pray. Now while every head is bowed there' something else that I want
to say. No one should ever preach a sermon like this without giving an opportunity for someone to act upon it, and while we wait silently now and in prayer, if there is anyone who feels that he wants to come to Christ tonight, we give you that opportunity.
Anyone who has never come, anyone who came and then wandered away from Him and would like to come back, if you would like to come, we give you an opportunity to signify that great desire and great decision, just for a moment now, by the uplifted hand,
are those here tonight that want to do that. Who would like to have our prayers for the welfare of their spirits? If so, just raise your hand a moment, and we will know and pray for you. Let us pray. Heavenly Father,
wilt Thou send Thy spirit to reap the truth and the seed which He has sown. Be with those hearts who have it in their desire to come to Thee. May they not turn back, but come to Him who has said, "Him
that cometh unto Me, I will no wise cast out." We ask it for His sake, Amen.