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As 2019 comes to a close, and a new year dawns, we at Log College Press want to thank all of our readers for all of your support in the past year. We are most grateful for your interest, appreciation, feedback and encouragement. It is a joy for us to dust off old Presbyterian works and make them accessible to a new generation, and we, along with our readers, are learning much along the journey as well. As we round out this year and prepare, with the mercy and blessing of God, to enter another, we wish to highlight some special sermons from the past which are worthy of consideration.

Henry Augustus Boardman (1808-1880) - Mottoes For the New Year, as Given in Texts of Sermons (1882);
George Barrell Cheever (1807-1890) - A New Year’s Sermon (1843);
Samuel Davies (1723-1761) - On January 1, 1760, he preached "A New Year's Gift" (see Sermons on Important Subjects, Vol. 3, Serm. 59, pp. 309 ff), using Rom. 13:11 for his text: "And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed." On January 1, 1761 (his last year of life), Davies preached "A Sermon on the New Year" (see Sermons on Important Subjects, Vol. 2, Serm. 34, pp. 139 ff), from Jer. 28:16: "This year thou shalt die";
Elias Harrison (1790-1863) - New Year’s Day Sermon (1817);
Erskine Mason, Sr. (1805-1851) - The Approach of Death: A New Year’s Sermon (1845) and New Year’s Sermon for 1848: Dependence on the Future (1848);
Benjamin Morgan Palmer (1818-1902) - Century Sermon (1901), preached on January 1, 1901; and
Gardiner Spring (1785-1873) - Something Must Be Done: A New Year’s Sermon (1816).

Each of these sermons has a message that is good for 21st century readers to consider as we stand at the same point on the calendar between years that Christians have done before. New Year’s is always an appropriate time to review the past and consider our resolve to walk closer with the Lord in the future. We close with this meditation and resolution from Gardiner Spring’s “Reflections on the New Year” in Fragments from the Study of a Pastor (1838):

In entering on another year, I know not from what unexpected quarter, or at what an unguarded hour, difficulties and dangers may come. O that I could enjoy more of the favour of God, more of the presence of the Saviour, more of the sealing of the ever blessed Spirit! O for more of a calm, approving conscience, and more of the delightful influence of the peace-speaking blood of Jesus Christ!

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Known as a “country preacher,” Cornelius Washington Grafton (1846-1934), was a long-serving faithful pastor (see the link to the Log College Press edition of his A Forty-Three Year Pastorate in a Country Church here and below) at Union Church Presbyterian Church in Jefferson County, Mississippi. Appended to the end of an August 1871 sermon we find written by Rev. Grafton his personal resolve to live a godly life. It is recorded by his biographer Allen Cabaniss in Life and Thought of a Country Preacher (1942), pp. 111-112:

As a member of the redeemed family of God and a traveller to eternity it is my desire to live above the world, devoted heart and soul to the service of God. To this end I would use every lawful means and employ every agency that I may be a good workman in the great vineyard. I would make every faculty of my body, mind, and spirit and my whole life, domestic, social, and public, subordinate to the same end and flow in that channel whose end is perfect peace. The body and mind with all their members, thoughts, and affections must be controlled and yield implicitly to well-regulated laws. With good motives the following are presented for my own consideration and conduct.
The body being the medium through which the mind operates, a mere instrument, should be taught implicit obedience to the will. Hence all the avenues of ingress and egress must be closely guarded and strictly watched that no enemy may come in and none of its powers withdrawn. An enemy coming in will poison and defile — its power withdrawn, it is left weakened, and in either case disqualified from performing its functions as a ready servant.
All those natural propensities, half-physical and half-mental, which act through the mind, must be held with an iron grasp and chained under the power of reason. Otherwise the body as the instrument will take the government, and the will and reason will totter from their thrones. Semper vigilate. In vitii primordia bellum gerito.
The law of analogy is found to prevail in the world of mind as well as in matter. As the body and soul must be governed, so must the mind. The will, the motive power, must sway the mind as well as the body, and any triumph of the faculties over the will weakens the mental discipline. Hence all the avenues leading to the mind must be closely guarded, or the enemy will come in and poison and defile.
In the province of the sentiments reason must control all except the sentiment of love. Nothing must rise superior to the divine passion, yet prayer must be made that this passion sanctified may not run counter to reason, but that each to the other may be a mutual help. Reason must rule all the faculties, but love may sit upon her head and pour over her the sweetest incense and perfume all her acts. Esto perpetua dulcis sententia.
In domestic life let my heart never indulge a drop of bitterness for my faithful love. My heart is her home. Let her dwell there in peace and happiness and preserve it pure. Avoid the slightest symptom or approach to infidelity in the solemn betrothals, and let me never indulge one thought or feeling which would stain her bright name and bring pain to her love. In the future I will inscribe in the sanctum of our chamber Parvulum Coelum and in feeling and affection make it a reality. Deus salvator, gratium habeamus.
Te Deum laudemus. Tibi laus, gloria, honorque mortalium et immortalium, Pater noster, hinc atque in sempiterno, …

Here we have the resolutions of a Southern Presbyterian pastor who strived to keep body and mind under that he would not be disqualified as a servant of Christ (1 Cor. 9:27), and aimed to keep all his thoughts captive to God’s glory (2 Cor. 10:5). In this way, his heart was to be the home of divine love, that is, a small heaven, while on his earthly journey to heaven above. May it be so with each of us who are also travellers to eternity.

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