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relation from us, nor birth added any to us; fortune may not have altered either for the better or for the worse; we may be living as we have lived, and in the same place where we have lived. But surely, if this is so, it is in itself something to remember; if it be so, this very pause and evenness in a life so full of change as ours, is in itself remarkable. Assuredly it cannot last; some change, great or small, must be expected soon. while, in this congregation, we are justified in supposing, that a state which has known no change must be, generally speaking, a state of considerable comfort and enjoyment; a state of great outward peace; a state, therefore, in which we might have served God thankfully and without distraction. If it still continues, let us now at last consider it, and remember how great a claim it is upon us for our grateful service.

And so, if changes have happened, that also can be easily recollected; and every such change brought with it an opportunity of good, which we might have used, although perhaps we did not. Blessings unthanked for, warnings unheeded: these things should be recalled to mind, that we may be thankful or careful now. For probably the change still continues, so that it is a thing which still reads its lesson to us; and we shall not doubt I think, in any of our own particular cases, what the lesson is.

Again, we can remember whether any change has happened to our very selves: such as a change of stature, a change of health and strength, a change of tastes and pursuits, a change, in short, of any rememberable kind, in our bodies or in our minds, in our natural and intellectual part, or in our spiritual. Can we do more than we could do a year ago, or can we not do so much? Is there any pursuit which then we were very fond of, and which now we do not care for; or, contrariwise, for which we are very eager now, and a year ago were wholly indifferent to it? Are our hearts harder or tenderer? Are we nearer to God or farther from Him? Gather up now all such consciousnesses and recollections, and consider to what they urge us. Surely this everchanging being of ours requires to be watched carefully; in one year it has been brought, and brought unconsciously, to a state different from what it was a year ago;mightier changes than these will be wrought in us; changes too most certainly for evil, if they too are allowed to come as they list, without our thought or labour. Remember, in this one year, we see a type of our whole existence, for ever growing or for ever decaying; laying aside or learning to feel some aversion or some love for evil or for good.

Yet, again, we may look beyond ourselves and our own families, and see whether, if we have not

experienced ourselves, we yet have witnessed in others any remarkable change: and here the view will be to each of us wider or narrower, according to our knowledge, yet it will offer, I think, some objects to all of us. To all of us here it must certainly; for we have all seen serious changes occurring within our own observation: it is impossible that the last year can be to any one of us devoid of events well deserving to be recalled to our memories. And here, too, the lesson spoke loudest, perhaps at the time when the events happened, yet they remain now and will remain for ever unrecalled, and their lesson is still with them. It is still as true as it was some weeks or months ago, that those have died within the last year, who last Advent Sunday were sitting among us as full of life and as full of happy prospects as the most sanguine of us can be now. It is still true, that since that time they have gone, not one or two only, but several, to that place where the fragments of God's grace, which have not been gathered up before, must now be lost to us for ever.

Let us take the words then in their second sense as Christ's command to His holy angels to gather up and record in their books of judgment whatever fragments of spiritual life may have manifested themselves in any of us, during the course of the last year. Yet, what a condition is

it, if fragments of spiritual life are all that have appeared in us. For in Christ's servants, their true life, their life which they derive from Him, is not a faint spark seen here and there, a mere light in a dark place which it cannot enlighten; but it is a brightness clear as the brightness of the sun, which shines through the whole nature, the abiding sign of God's presence. What, therefore, is our state if there be nothing of this in us, but only a few sparks, or at the most a few flashes, which went out in an instant? What must it be even more, if not so much as these fragments are to be found in us?

This, surely, is a consideration of the greatest importance to us all. If we were to be called now as others have been called, what would the year past, the last year of our lives, as it would then have been, which determined our state for ever; what record would it have to present to us? Much, it may be, which has passed within the last twelve months, we cannot now remember; there is no other record of it in existence but God's only. Yet, much also we can remember; much we can at this moment feel, quite enough to enable us to say whether our actual condition claim our most earnest thankfulness, or our lively hope, or our fear and shame, or our repentance and confusion of face, stopping short only of despair.

For those whose spiritual life is predominant in them and habitual, who feel that sin is more hateful to them than it was twelve months since, and Christ far dearer; who feel, too, that sin is overcome by them more frequently and more easily; who, assured by the testimony of their conscience that their faith was stedfast, might hear without alarm the call which has been heard by some of their brethren; and might lie down on their beds to rise no more in this world, with an assured hope that they were Christ's in death as in life; for them there has been more than a gathering up of fragments; it is for them only to follow the example of the apostle, to forget the things which are behind, and to reach forth unto the things which are before, and so to press forward for the prize of their high calling in Christ Jesus. But for those who are far less blessed, with whom sin has striven far more successfully, who have not won their victory, nor seem yet to be winning it; for them it is an anxious question, what fragments of life could be gathered up from the past year; what signs that, if they were not victorious, they were not yet wholly vanquished, but were still struggling against their enemy. Do God's angels, as they watch this struggle, regard it now with more of hope or of fear, than they regarded it a year ago?

What has been the effect of all that has hap