A. D.
By Jesse B. Thomas, 1886
[p. 1]“To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19). “A.D.” -- the world writes the letters carelessly as it turns the page to record for the first time the new year, 1887; but in these letters is the “open secret” of the ages; for this, too, is a “year of Our Lord,” an “acceptable year,” a “year of grace.”
With the close of the old year a day of accounting comes. Letters and accounts are filed and housed away, having left their substance sifted into figures on the books. The stock in shelf and store-room, measured, counted and weighed, yields its quota to the reckoning, and the measure bearing the year’s harvesting is evenly stricken.
For some the heaped-up surplus falls into garners already well filled -- it is a year of triumph -- they say to their souls, “Take thine ease.” For others, it is a year of doom. Their shrunken resources fall far below the brim -- they “owe a thousand talents and have nothing to pay.” A
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year of doom -- for the secret will not lie silent on the page. Out of the figures, blurred in their anxious vision, seems to rise a hand which writes, not only on the record of the past, but on the white margin of the future, “Ruined” -- a hand that, with “flaming sword,” drives out wife and children from their inheritance, and keeps the door against them -- a hand of iron, that lays manacles upon themselves, and brands them in the forehead with the mark of bondage. The vision is true. In a few days counting-house and home are empty -- the wife is hiding even from the gaze of pity that burns like fire -- the children’s life is dwarfed in the cold shadow of a grief they do not understand, and the father, too proud to serve, too old to begin life anew, lingers in the margin of his former haunts, waiting for crumbs of fortune, until “heart and flesh fail.”Such as these are the parables of life, whose facts men see, but whose lessons they will not learn. They count failure a misfortune, and therefore not a fault; as though it were no fault to trust to the favor of fortune rather than the justice of law. The full-grown scholar, setting aside the lessons of his childhood, on his bigger slate, through all the problem persists in reckoning two and two as five, and “sells short,” “lives fast,” “over-trades” accordingly, and yet wonders at last that his figures are rubbed out as worthless. Doubtless there are exceptions, but as a rule the insolvent need not look to earthquake or tornado as the cause of falling walls, but to the carelessness of his own hand, that by uncounted expenditure or reckless venture has removed the first foundation stone.
THE WORLD AS WELL AS THE INDIVIDUAL FORGETS THE LESSONS OF ITS CHILDHOOD Lessons whose analogies reach into politics, morals and religion, as well as the social relations of men. From Agrarianism to Fourierism, from Plato to the blue-eyed dreamers of Brook Farm and the Susquehanna, there have been sentimentalists who attributed the misery of the race to the circumstances, rather than the character of men, and insisted that unchanged man in a changed world would find Paradise and keep it -- that upon a redistribution of estates, the establishment of a just democracy, and the leveling of social distinctions, pauperism, crime and cruelty would finally cease, and the newly adjusted ranks of men keep elbow-touch together in the fraternal march of progress. In this view of the case no “year of the Lord” is needed, since nothing is required which is not possible to man alone; no “year of grace” (since there is nothing to be forgiven), but only a year of reason.
Just this experiment was tried more than three thousand years ago, and to that trial and its issue those words of Christ refer.
Israel, rescued from Egyptian bondage, was established in Canaan, a free people without caste, and equal in inheritance in the land. Every man dwelling among his kindred, the owner of an estate whose fertility was security against want, owing no man and second to none in rank; the highest conditions for the realization and permanence of a perfect human society existed. Yet the law which established this order made provision for its certain failure. It was foreseen that men unrestrained would mar the harmonious fabric, and within fifty years the land be filled on the one side with capitalists and aristocrats, and on the other with paupers, vagrants and slaves. The history of this disruption of society is clearly indicated. Its first step in debt (not obligation simply, but in the narrower and more usual scriptural sense of the word, obligation beyond ability)— and debt is branded as sin.
Thus, in Matthew’s account of the Lord’s Prayer, “debt is used as equivalent to “trespass,” i.e., “transpas,” going beyond. And in Luke we are taught to pray, “Forgive us our sins: for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.” The Apostle also exhorts his brethren, “See that ye go not beyond, and defraud one another.” The debtor accordingly is represented as “poor,” not simply as diminished in property, but as having passed the line from positive to negative, from possession to want.
So long as every Israelite was content with the fruits of his estate, and limited his liabilities by his income, there could be neither pauper nor millionaire, and lord nor serf, the equilibrium of society must be unbroken. Dis-organization came from no outward necessity, making men its victims, but from voluntary transgression by the covetous and extravagant.
Honest traffic is the interchange of actual values -- it tends to frankness, maintains equality, and binds men in unity. It is within the law. Speculation abandons law to trust to fortune; dealing not in the actual but the possible, the gain of the one party is the other’s loss. It leads to subtlety and strife, and widens the chasm between men. Debt is a kind of speculation, a presumptuous going beyond law, and therefore against law, safe only to a miracle worker greater than law. Doubtless it is because of the specious form of this temptation in suretyship that Solomon so condemns it. The generosity which yields to it is too often unjust. From the lending of great names to lottery frauds, down to the commendation of patent medicines untasted, and worthless books unread, men have thus made themselves hopeless debtors of the credulous people. There is no form of indebtedness more thoughtlessly incurred, and in the end more keenly resented as unjust than suretyship. If the debtor can pay, why is a surety needed? If the surety can pay, why does he not lend to the debtor? If neither can pay, the creditor is defrauded at last.
Tempted in whatever form, it is the step “beyond,” which changes just dealing into debt, and plants the seed of the upas tree.
The step is irretrievable. It is going beyond his depth -- his struggles held to drown him. Debt is an elastic band that tightens as it stretches. The want of the borrower measures the extortion of the lender. As deserts are rainless because they are so dry, so the destruction of the poor is their poverty.” Debt runs while men sleep, as well as when they wake, and they can not overtake it. The debtor Israelite soon parts with his inheritance. It was his co-worker, multiplying the seed he sowed, and returning it in harvests; it was his home, a perpetual fountain of youth to his weary body and burdened spirit. His resources thus dwindle as the debt grows. Without capital, he is like a bird without legs, and cannot start to fly. Without home, he is a vagabond, broken in spirit and irresolute.
The down-hill stride is swift. He is soon the bondsman of the creditor. It is the last plunge into despair -- for not only the past but the future is now sold; the slave’s earnings are not counted; the possibility of restoration is cut off.
This is the history of transgression. Debt turns to slavery. Seeking to add to his gains, the creditor loses himself -- reaching beyond the safe verge, he topples into the gulf.
There is no hope of relief from man. The enslaved debtor at length ceases to struggle with his chains, and resigns himself to apathy and sullenness. The creditor grows fiercer with the taste of blood. The rugged mountains rise higher as the valleys deepen. The level “way” for “the people” seems less and less possible of realization. The tree will not land its strength and height to the vine to lift it into sunlight, but rather uses its thick foliage to stifle it. Men’s hands grow colder as they climb higher, and the care of great riches brings a perpetual frown -- so the poor are chilled, and creep away. The land of freedom, equality and plenty has become a chaos, its families scattered, its freemen wearing the yoke, giants sucking the blood of dwarfs, and the bitter waters of poverty submerging the multitude. On the side of the oppressor there was power; but they had no comforter.
Therefore comes the year of the Lord. The shrill voice of the trumpet rings throughout the land. It is a kingly signal. Starting as the shout of the
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royal herald, or the flash of the scarlet robe, it tells that “the Lord is come,” who “judgeth the poor with equity.” No man might interfere between creditor and debtor, but “the oppressed and the oppressor are His.” “The land is Mine,” He declares; “ye are but sojourners;” “it shall not be sold forever;” “the people are My servants;” “they shall not be sold as bondsmen;” “proclaim liberty throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof.” At the word, the gathered estates of the extortioner dissolve, the hands of the oppressor loosen; in clay-pit, and forest, and harvest-field, the bondsman shakes off his shackles and looks up and from every quarter “the redeemed of the Lord come with songs” back to their long-lost homes.It is a royal restoration. Whether the debt be large or small, the bondage long or short, there is no sordid calculation; every man is wholly free, and returns to his unbroken inheritance.
It is not without significance that this happy hour comes on the great day of atonement. The cancellation of debt is no arbitrary reasonless act. Debt is an offence against the law, and the law is just, therefore the people, “rich and poor, high and low together,” are reminded in the tabernacle of Him, to whom they alike owe all things, and recognizing their forfeited life in the substituted victim and scattered blood, and the certainty of purchased forgiveness in the welcome return of the high priest from the Holy of Holies, they are ready to yield to the justice of the demand that they should forgive as they have been forgiven. Justice and mercy alike attend the coming of “the acceptable year of the Lord.”
ALL THIS IS A PROPHECY OF CHRIST’S COMING AND THE WORLD’S YEAR OF GRACE God taught the world “in divers parts,” as we teach our children letters before words. Christ is “the Word,” gathering these fragmentary truths of the Old Testament into Himself, “the Truth.” That the vision might be narrow, and the outline distinct, the history of the world’s bondage and deliverance was thus epitomized in a single land and nation.
When Christ read these words in the synagogue at Nazareth, and declared their fulfillment, the world had fallen into disorder, as Palestine before the Jubilee. Nations oppressed and oppressing one another, society broken into castes full of mutual hatred, the rich surfeited, the poor famished, the rabble clinging to idols, philosophers despising them yet despairing of the truth the earth “filled with thorns and briars,” and the “whole creation groaning and travailing together.” To such proportions, sweeping away the inheritance of the race, and bringing them into bondage, grew the first debt of disobedience, the first transgression -- “going beyond.” The trickling rill has swollen to a roaring tide of blood -- “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” For a thousand years the “desire of all nations” had been awaited—some “Elias,” who should “restore all things” -- the Messiah of whom the Samaritan woman said, “He will tell us all things.”
“In the fullness of time” Christ did come, the Redeemer and deliverer, and from His coming even the world which rejected Him began to write “A. D.,” “the year of our Lord;” not the year of the beginning of His power or love, but of His coming to us and more perfect manifestation.
Democracy, in Moses’ time, thrust supernaturally into the soil of an unprepared age, took no root, and soon died, but now, in milder atmosphere, this thought of God appears again, unfolding this time from the earth, and coming to fruitage. God, in that day, must by a strong arm unlock the jaws of the sea, to let His people pass through, so delivering them from the “lion’s mouth.” But now the child taught of God “lays his hand upon the ocean’s mane,” and subdues the cruel forces of nature, making them his messengers. The lost crown of dominion over nature seems to be offered, ready to be restored, in fact, as it is in promise, to the ransomed, who “love His appearing.”
But the year of jubilee was for Israel only. Others dwelt in the land, but the silver trumpet left them unredeemed, their debt uncancelled. The mere progress of time can save no man. Generations are not born into Christianity; the saints of the Old Testament were saved by the Gospel, and sinners of the New Testament are lost under the law. All the figures of astronomy, and the perfectness of its lenses, cannot reveal the stars to me, except as the heavens are ensphered in my eye, and repeated in its measures. So you, who have repeated in your experience the world’s sad history, and by transgression been “sold under sin,” must also have a Bethlehem and Calvary in your heart, ere you can rejoice in this year as a “year of grace.” It is useless to inquire what and how heavy is the debt you owe to God. What if it be beyond your power to computation? The force of the blow does not always measure its destructiveness. The child’s careless stroke may shatter the slender statue, which genius has patiently wrought. The thoughtlessness of the world does not measure the limits of wrong done, or the price of reparation. It has blighted an innocent spirit, and robbed the world of a happy life. No lingering remorse, no studious tenderness henceforth can pay the debt. How then shall we measure the blow that mars that delicate and wonderful fabric, God’s perfect law! how, for example, comprehended the ruin wrought by a scalding oath dropped into the sensitive heart of a child!
It matters little whether the debt is great or small, if payment is hopeless. It is enough to know that, “made to have dominion” over God’s works, you are a stranger in your inheritance, and a “servant of servants,” instead of a “prince of God.” Yet your hopelessness is your only ground of hope, for the message of mercy is to the “poor,” the “captive,” the “bruised.” “As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God.”
At length another trumpet will sound, whose shrill voice wakes the dead, announcing that “the year of His redeemed is come,” and “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads.” The substance of the truth, which has cast so many shadows into the earth, will then be fully known, and “sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
Are you in Israel? Is this year of grace a year of grace to you? To the Christian as he writes “A. D.” beside the numbered years it is the king’s token of remembrance that the “year of release” is soon to come.
And to every man it is the king’s seal, the still extended offer of a covenant of grace. Receive it and “set to” your “seal that God is true.”
========== [From The Pulpit Treasury, December, 1886, pp. 481-485; via Milburn Cockrell, editor, The Berea Baptist Banner on-line, January, 2003, pp. 1, 6-7. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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