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The Future

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 18, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 11.

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The Future.

By Charles S. Pomeroy

Is IT not high time for all to learn that the future, whether here or hereafter, never creates any advance, improvement, progress, but only exhibits them, only intensifies them? The future is only, invariably, eternally, a resultant, a consequence. It is nothing but the outgrowth of the present. It is a casting in the mould of to-day. The future is the period when we reap what we have been sowing in the present. Many people imagine that the future has some charm which can reverse, neutralize, overcome the tendencies of the present. They think to shake off their sins, infirmities, unbelief, in the healthier atmosphere of the future. They regret those sins, wish they were subdued, but they will not grapple with them. They think “to-morrow shall be as this day, and yet more abundant”—more abundant in its opportunities, motives, relief from hindrance. Then they will be different; then they will advance. But such to-morrows never come to such people; for their yesterday has done nothing in the world to bring them. To-morrow or the coming year, or any number of years and to-morrows, are no moral alchemists to transmute sins into virtues, selfishness into charity, covetousness into benevolence, unbelief into piety, the lust of the flesh or the pride of life into purity and peace. It is only power of manifestation that is weakened in us by the passing time. When last year was the future for us, do we remember how we thought that coming time was going to bring us, somehow, a better life? Somewhere in it there was going to be a favorable opportunity to make Christ our Saviour, Friend, Master. Somewhere there was going to be a cessation of certain sins and a way out of certain injurious companionships and hazardous temptations. That vision, perhaps, was hopeful of some other easier, more magical method of escape from those enemies than the simple, old-fashioned Bible way of rising up and leaving them in settled penitence and trust. Now that the future has become the past, how stands the record? Has the blessing come? We need to discover that the future is only a result, not an actor. All that to-morrow brings us is the summing up of the actions and experiences of to-day.—Rev. Charles S. Pomeroy, D. D.