LUKE Xiii. 24.-Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto HEBREWS xii. 1.- Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with SERMON I. 86 EPHESIANS iv. 22. [That ye] put off concerning the former conversation the old man." GOD's mercy, my brethren, has broken up our time into portions, to enable us to see how quickly it passes; they serve as milestones whereby to note how far and how fast we have gone on the journey of life. Thus from the very beginning He has divided the light from the darkness, and bid night succeed to day, and day to night, that by their change they may draw men to observe how rapidly, though so silently, the stream of time flows by. "There is neither speech, nor language, but their voices are heard among them; one day telleth another, and one night certifieth another1." They tell one another, for want of fitter listeners; for of men few are so 1 Ps. xix. 2, 3. B watchful as to catch the warning voice which day utters after day; they come and go so quickly, yet so constantly, that we scarcely note any difference between them, nor remember at the close of each, that another day has gone, never to return again. So God has set up marks of time at wider distances, so that even the most thoughtless cannot fail at times to observe them. He has bound Himself, that "while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, shall not cease?." As these succeeding to one another, summer on spring, autumn on summer, winter on autumn, make up the year, they remind us that though we may live many days, we can live but few years; that another of those few is passing, and that therefore still fewer must remain behind. If we will not listen to the warning each day gives us at its close, because it is so often repeated, we cannot make this excuse for refusing to listen to the warning of the closing year, for we can hear their voice but seldom; they may, indeed, have spoken thousands of times to man's different generations, but the same man can hear their voice but a poor fourscore times at the utmost, then he goes his way, and another takes his place. To the threshold of one of these larger portions of 2 Gen. viii. 22. time we are now fast approaching; next midnight will toll the knell of the departing year: it becomes us, then, my brethren, to make a fitting use of so solemn a season; to remember that for certain we have now one year less to live; if we will not listen to its warning, but pass it by as a thing of course, not worth a thought, be sure we shall have missed a lesson God intended we should learn. But God intended these divisions which mark out our time not only as warnings but as opportunities: not only to remind us how quickly our day of service is passing away, but also as occasions when they who have been standing idle or working badly, (and where is he of whom one or the other may not be said more or less,) may set himself in earnest, and as it were afresh, to the real business of life. The close of the old year is the time of all others, for "putting off concerning the former conversation the old man," looking backwards, that is, to see what we have been about, searching for any bad habits, evil tempers, cold or worldly feelings, which may have been forming in us; just as the beginning of the new year is the time of all others for "putting on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness 3," forming fresh resolutions, new plans, and, with God's assistance, |