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The soul of the intelligent Christian reflects the natural world from all sides. The year is to him a great temple of praise, on whose altar, as an offering, spring puts its blossoms, and summer its sheaf of grain, and autumn its branch of fruits, while winter, like a white-bearded priest, stands at the altar praising God with psalm of snow, and hail, and tempest. The summer season is the perfection of the year. The trees are in full foliage. The rose — God's favourite flower, for He has made nearly five hundred varieties of it — flames with Divine beauty. Summer is the season of beauty. The world itself is only one drop from the overflowing cup of God's joy. All the sweet sounds ever heard are but one tone from the harp of God's infinite melody. But that summer wave of beauty is receding. The sap of the tree is halting in its upward current. The night is fast conquering the day. Summer, with fever heats, has perished, and tonight we twist a wreath of scarlet sage and China asters for her brow, and bury her under the scattered rose leaves, while we beat amid the woods and by the water courses this solemn dirge, "The summer is ended!" There are three or four classes of persons of whom the words of my text are descriptive.

1. They are appropriate to the aged. They stop at the top of the stairs, all out of breath, and say, "I can't walk upstairs as well as I used to." They hold the book off on the other side of the light when they read. Their eye is not so quick to catch a sight, nor their ear a sound. The bloom and verdure of their life have drooped — June has melted into July. July has fallen back into August. August has cooled into September. "The summer is ended." I congratulate those who have come to the Indian summer of their life. On sunny afternoons grandfather goes out in the churchyard, and sees on the tombstones the names — the very names — that sixty years ago he wrote on his slate at school. He looks down where his children sleep their last sleep, and before the tears have fallen, says, "So much more in heaven!" Patiently he awaits his appointed time, until his life goes out gently as a tide, and the bell tolls him to his last home under the shadow of the church that he loved so long and loved so well. Blessed old age, if it be found in the way of righteousness!

2. My text is appropriate for all those whose fortunes have perished. In 1857 it was estimated that, for many years previous to that time, annually there had been 30,000 failures in the United States. Many of those persons never recovered from the misfortune. The leaves of worldly prosperity all scattered. The day book, and the ledger, and the money safe, and the package of broken securities, cried out, "The summer is ended." But let me give a word of comfort in passing. The sheriff may sell you out of many things, but there are some things of which he cannot sell you out. He cannot sell out your health. He cannot sell out your family. He cannot sell out your Bible. He cannot sell out your God. He cannot sell out your heaven! You have got more than you have lost. Instead of complaining how hard you have it, go home tonight, take up your Bible full of promises, get down on your knees before God, and thank Him for what you have, instead of spending so much time in complaining about what you have not.

3. The words of the text are appropriate to all those who have passed through luxuriant seasons of grace without improvement. You remember the time — many of you do, at any rate — when the engine houses were turned into prayer meetings; when in one day, to one of our ports, there came five vessels with sea captains, who had been brought to God in the last voyage. Religion broke out of church into places of business and amusement. Christian songs floated into the temple of mammon, while the devotees were counting their golden beads. A company of merchants in Chambers Street, New York, at their own expense, hired Burton's old theatre, and every day, at twelve o'clock, the place was filled with men crying after God. Some of you went through all that, and are not saved. It required more resolution and determination for you not to be saved than, under God, would have made you a Christian. But all that process has hardened your soul. Through all these seasons of revival you have come, and you are tonight living without God, on the way to a death without hope. "The summer is ended!"

4. The text is appropriate to all those who expire after a wasted life. There are two things that I do not want to bother me in my last hour. The one is, my worldly affairs. I want all those affairs so plain and disentangled that the most ignorant administrator could see what was right at a glance, and there should be no standing around about the office of the surrogate, devouring widows' houses. The other thing I do not want to be bothered about in my last hour is the safety of my soul God forbid that I should crowd into that last, feeble, languishing, delirious hour questions momentous enough to swamp an archangel! If you have ever slept in a house on the prairie, where in the morning, without rising from your pillow, you could look off on the prairie, you could see the prairie miles away, clear to the horizon: it is a very bewildering scene. But how much more intense the prospect when from the last pillow a soul looks back on life, and sees one vast reach of mercies, mercies, mercies unimproved, and then gets upon one elbow, and puts the head on the hand to see beyond all that, but seeing nothing beyond but mercies, mercies, mercies unimproved. The bells of sorrow will toll through all the past, and the years of early life and mid life wail with a great lamentation. A dying woman, after a life of frivolity, says to me, "Mr. Talmage, do you think that I can be pardoned?" I say, "Oh, yes." Then, gathering herself up in the concentrated dismay of a departing spirit, she looks at me, and says, "Sir, I know I shall not!" Then she looks up as though she hears the click of the hoofs of the pale horse, and her long locks toss on the pillow as she whispers, "The summer is ended."

5. The text is appropriate to all those who wake up in a discomfited eternity. I know there are those who say, "It don't make any difference how we live or what we believe. We will come out at the golden gate." No! No! The good must go up, and the bad must go down. I want no Bible to tell me that truth. There is something within my heart that says it is not possible that a man whose life has been all rotten can, in the future world without repentance, be associated with men who have been consecrated to Christ. What does the Bible say? It says that "as we sow we shall reap." It says, "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, and the righteous into life eternal." Does that look as though they were coming out at the same place? "And there was a great gulf fixed." "And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever." Now, suppose a man goes out from Brooklyn — a city in which there are as many religious advantages as in any city under the sun — and suppose he wakes up in a discomfited eternity — how will he feel? Having become a serf of darkness, how will he feel when he thinks that he might have been a prince of light! There are no words of lamentation sufficient to express that sorrow. You can take the whole group of sad words — pain, pang, convulsion, excruciation, torment, agony, woe — and they come short of the reality.

(T. De Witt Talmage.)

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KJV: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

WEB: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.