THE OLD AND THE NEW

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 52.

THE OLD AND THE NEW.

The old year is rapidly passing to its close. It will soon be numbered with those which have gone before. Its calendar will be cast aside, and a new one will take its place. Yet it will live for weal or woe forever in the lives and destinies of those who have used it. For all time, as men measure it, is but a segment of the great circle of eternity.

The year has been a startling one in many respects. It is too early, when within its confines, to review its great general outlooks in their physical, political, social, religious aspects. This we will leave to a later time. But it is not too early for each reader of these lines to take a retrospective view of his own past, and to consider seriously what sort of foundation that past is laying for future character-building; what sort of seed has been sown for future reaping; what sort of harvest it has gathered from the sowing of previous years. It is good to consider all this day by day, week by week. It is good to have a balance-sheet in life's account struck each evening. But even then it is well to take larger, broader views, when tests of sowing may be seen in the harvest.

It is a tendency in these days to discard the old and accept the new. We frequently hear of “old fogy” ideas, but never of “new fogy” thought, largely perhaps because the “new” has not been tested. But there is a sure test, praise God, for the Christian, by which he may test both old and new. That test is “the law and the testimony;” if men “speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them.”

No things are new with God. Every right principle, every truth, are as old as God, as enduring as eternity; and every wrong principle, every error, whatever form it may assume, are but perversions of the right and the true. Hence it is true from the divine standpoint that “there is nothing new under the sun,” yet from the standpoint of men there are things “both new and old.”

Not all the old, therefore, is bad. In fact, the truly good is from the days of eternity. The good old, however, is ever new. The bad old ever waxes and wanes to decay. The ways of righteousness are old ways. The true prophet of God ever calls: “Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.” Jer. 6:16. The good way is found in the old paths, and there only is rest. Men may seek to break them up, to destroy the foundations, but every true reform seeks to build “the old waste places” of righteousness, to “raise up the foundations of many generations;” and we are assured by the Word that those who do this shall be honored by being called “The Repairer of the breach, The Restorer of paths to dwell in.” Isa. 58:12.

God's law of righteousness is old, very old; but it is filled with the potency of perennial life; it is the expression of His everlasting righteousness. Its past is therefore eternal; its future can not be otherwise than unchangeably eternal. Then, dear soul, choose the eternal precepts of God for your rule of life and character. “Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”

Sin—transgression of God's law—and error—perversion of God's truth—are very old; but they are among the old things which wax and wane to decay and death, and which blast with blight and destruction everything they touch. All the evil which is in the world came from the usurper, the perversion of the good. Sin's protean forms and aspects are myriad and novel, and some of them to every carnal heart taking, but all are perversions of the true, and tend always and forever downward.

Yet there is healing from the bruise; there is remedy for the disease. There is a balm in Gilead, there is a Physician there. And this is old, even before sin entered, before error sprang from truth's perversion. The infinitely wise God is not subject to change. There can be no surprise to His plan, no rout to His forces, no defeat to His government. It was “in the beginning” all sufficient to meet all that could come against it, and to turn the efforts of evil to everlasting victory. And thus there comes to us the Creator with the Father, the everlasting Son of God, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, and brings healing full and free through righteousness and abundance of life. And the dying old may find healing and health in the eternal new. They may find in it the new mercies and blessings, a “new covenant,” “new heart,” “new spirit,” “new name,” and a “new song” of everlasting joy, which shall end only when the eternal new heavens and new earth shall pass away. If not in the past, why not let the year begin with these blessed old new things of the everlasting God?