05/06/62

“Then cometh the end.”

(1 Corinthians 15:24)

It was years ago that I first heard of the wild scramble for the Garrett millions. A friend of mine, who was one of the heirs claiming the fortune, told me the story. Henrietta Schaefer Garrett, possessor of a large share of the Garrett snuff money, died without leaving a will, “in testate”, as the lawyers would say. There was a considerable estate. The smell of money stirred up the amazing number of 26,000 persons who claimed, for one reason or another, to be the legal heirs to an estate valued at some $30,000,000 dollars. The case dragged on for years. People lied, forged, stole, even murdered to get hold of this money. The State of Pennsylvania entered the melee and passed laws in its legislature because of the Garrett case to assure the state of getting 80 percent of the fortune, regardless of how the case might be decided, proving, I suppose, that a state, if it chooses, can shame the most rapacious of its private citizens in the business of being greedy. This story of facts stranger than fiction all streamed from the one simple fact that Henrietta Schaefer Garrett died without leaving a will.

What’s the moral to the story? Certainly this: “Make a will. Be ready for the end which comes in everyone’s life so you can dispose of your material possessions in accordance with your own wishes and desires and designate your own heirs, without leaving to chance and the vagaries of the law courts the settlement of your estate.

But the Garrett story also raises this question in our minds: Are we living in such a way, day by day, that whenever the end comes for us, individually, we shall have all our affairs as ready as we would have our financial matters when our wills are drawn?

An emergency call came to a minister. Would he please hurry over to the hospital to see a man who was dying? A sudden seizure had struck the man down in the prime of life without any warning. He had never given much thought to God or the church. Now the doctors said there was no hope. The end was near. Friends and relatives clustered about to urge the calling of an attorney and the signing of a will, but the dying man wanted, most of all, someone to come pray with him.

Yes, when we knowingly draw near to the end of life, there are matters more meaningful to us than an orderly assignment and satisfactory disposal of our material possessions, important as that is. Have we made secure, by the necessary decisions and the witnessed commitments, not only our material possessions, but our eternal spiritual inheritance?

For we do know that the end does come for each one of us in this life. St. Paul, in his Corinthian letter says: “Then cometh the end.” The inspired writer is thinking of the end of world history, the consummation of this earth’s drama in the eternal plan of God; but how truly are these words applied to the span of your life and mine on this earth. For you and me, surely there cometh the end, though we know not when. In Commenius’, Labyrinth of the World, God says to man: “Be sure, therefore, that you live well, and I shall consider how long you should live.”

There’s a second question the Garrett story, in the light of this text, raises in my mind: Are we living up to the fullest our opportunities for bequeathing whatever spiritual and educational inheritance we have to our children, our relatives and friends?

In Anthony Trollope’s absorbing novel, Barchester Towers, all the children of the Stanhope family have turned out to be rotters — lazy and immoral spongers. Trollope accounts for it thus: “As Dr. Stanhope was a clergyman, it may be supposed that his religious convictions made up a considerable part of his character; but this was not so. That he had religious convictions must be believed; but he rarely obtruded them, even on his children. This abstinence on his part was not systematic, but very characteristic of the man. It was not that he had predetermined never to influence their thoughts; but he was so habitually idle that his time for doing so had never come till the opportunity for doing so was gone forever. Whatever conviction the father may have had, the children were at any rate but indifferent members of the church from which he drew his income.” Dr. Stanhope missed his chance. He did not bequeath to his children their rightful spiritual inheritance before the end for that opportunity had come.

But on the other hand, Charles Kingsley’s eldest son, looking back on his early homelife and remembering his father, wrote: “‘Perfect love casteth out fear’ was the motto on which my father based his theory of bringing up his children; and this theory he put in practice from our babyhood till when he left us as men and women. From this, and from the interest he took in all our pursuits, our pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of our everyday lives, there spring up a friendship between father and children that increased in intensity and depth with years.”

Some of my own earliest recollections are stories which my father told me, in much gratitude and delight, of his own boyhood, when his father, a country doctor, would take him along in horse and buggy across the countryside to make his calls. On those long, leisurely drives the doctor taught his little son to say from memory some of the masterpieces of the great poets which were his favorites and in the calls at humble farm homes the little boy learned a sympathy and tenderness which the years have only served to broaden and mature.

My memory of my own boyhood is of a father who always had time to teach me a new craft and, being a man of technical training, my father took delight in imparting to his sons something of an understanding of the laws of the physical universe and tracing them all back to the Almighty, the Great Architect and Engineer of the Universe, thus buttressing our dawning boyhood religious faith and knowledge. My father did not leave to caprice or chance the moral and spiritual inheritance he wished to bequeath his boys. He saw to it that they should inherit their birthright.

On Assembly’s Youth Day, the burning question forcibly obtrudes itself, demanding our serious concern: What are we doing in church — at home — to guarantee the transference, the bequeathing of our spiritual heritage to the youth of our church — our home — the children of the covenant? God cannot keep His part of the covenant, He cannot bless them and enrich their lives spiritually, unless we, the adult members of the church, keep our part of the covenant, unless we act as His agents in teaching and advising with our youth.

On numerous occasions I have expressed to this congregation what I’m going to say again right now: The greatest lack in our youth program is not in equipment — we have a beautiful building and adequate equipment; our lack is not in personnel — a corps of devoted and skillful workers are faithfully on the job; our lack is not in constructive and enjoyable youth activities — proof of which you’ve just heard this morning from some of our own young people. The greatest lack in our youth program is attendance by the young people of our own Presbyterian families. How can we transmit — endow with — our spiritual heritage the youth of our church, of your home and yours and yours, if they do not personally become a part of the program?

Then cometh the end — a sure end — of our opportunity to bequeath our intellectual, moral, and spiritual heritage to our children. Let us make the most of the precious present, that we shall be ready with our spiritual will, signed, sealed, and delivered, when cometh the end.

Finally, I think there is this message for our young people from our text and the Garrett story: There cometh an end to the time in which you are free to determine your future fortune. In the fairy stories the young man always sets out from home to “seek his fortune”. There is an element of truth in the old fairy story formula — for parents, teachers, friends cannot insure, entirely of themselves, that youth will receive the moral, intellectual and spiritual inheritance they wish to bequeath. Youth has a part in qualifying for it. He must set out to seek it and make it his own. And there cometh an end to the time of that opportunity for determining your future fortune.

“What strikes me more and more,” wrote Dale of Birmingham, “is the permanence of one’s early life — the identity between youth and mature manhood. I do not mean that God has not lifted me out of many unsatisfactory things which surrounded and entangled me in youth, but that very habit — good and evil — of those early years seems to have affected permanently my whole life. The battle is largely lost or won before it seems begun.”

“There is no blotting out in life. What we have written, we have written; the record stands. This life of ours slips past; soundlessly for the most part. We sleep and rise; and our days glide away full of the little incidents of which their web is woven. And always our character is forming. More and more naturally our feet turn of themselves into the customary paths: firmer and firmer the shackles of our habits tighten on our wrists. For every word that we have spoken, every thought that we have harbored, every deed, mean or magnanimous, that we have done have been depositing themselves under the surface of our personality, and there building up the character, which out of the infinite possibilities within our reach, we chose to be. And one day it will be matured and finished; and we will be ready for the destiny which is inevitable for that into which we have made ourselves.” — Arthur John Gossip

In ancient shadows and twilights

Where childhood had strayed,

The world’s great sorrows were born,

And its heroes were made.

In the lost boyhood of Judas,

Christ was betrayed.

The mere observance of Family Week and Month is a most dramatic way of calling to our attention the truth of our text: “Then cometh the end.” Young people look at us older folks and see that there does most surely come an end to the opportunities, freedom, privileges, malleability of youth. We, of mature years, look at our young people, our best hope for the future, and then at ourselves, and there is borne in upon us the realization that all too brief is the time of opportunity for affording our youth the best possible advantages in church and home to receive whatever spiritual and moral heritage we have to impart to them.

Now is the time of decision. For surely there cometh the end. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation.”

• Scripture Reference: 1 Corinthians 15:24-0 • Secondary Scripture References: Matthew 7:21-29 • Subject : Timeliness; the Importance of proper use of Time; the Importance of passing on our Spiritual Inheritance; Character Formation; 607 • Special Topic: n/a • Series: n/a • Occasion: Assembly Youth Day • First Preached: 11/14/1948 • Last Preached: 5/6/1962 • Rating: 3 • Book/Author References: Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope; , Arthur John Gossip; Labyrinth of the World, Commenius