be the last month in your last year, you have not an hour to lose. If this should be your last month, and if you find yourself wasting its first sabbath, entering upon, and getting advanced in its first week, without sorrow for sin, without prayer for the Divine Mercy, without looking to Christ, without flying to Him, and crying every day, "Lord, save me, I perish!" then there is scarcely any more probability that the Christian life will begin with you in this month, than there is that in the midst of the frost and snow in which all nature is locked up around you, there will open the softness of spring, and the tender grass and flowers of summer, and the ripening harvests of autumn; for it cannot but be that much depends on the manner in which you begin this opening month. The first sabbath in it may be the very dividing line between hope and hopelessness, between the possibility of salvation and the certainty of endless ruin. It may be the sabbath that contains the germ of your eternal destiny!

This may be the case, even if God should give you a year more; if this, instead of being the last month in your last year, should be the first month in one year more of God's kindly care about you. The first sabbath and the first week may contain the prediction of your last. Oh, then, close it not without God, and spend not another day in the heedless, prayerless, unrepentant manner in which you may have commenced it. Call home your thoughts, and fix them on the great decision. Go, though for the first time, perhaps, in all your life, to Jesus Christ in secret, and begin this year of sabbaths with sorrow for sin, with prayer for mercy, with faith and hope in your Divine Redeemer.

How happy for you, if this should be the case! and how happy the lot of the Christian who this year begins a new year for God! He looks back upon the past, he sees where God's tender mercy was at work upon him, pruning him, stirring up the earth about his roots. He remembers this and that special mercy. It was God's discipline of love, and, like that of suffering and sorrow, too costly to be wasted. He remembers this and that sore trial. That also was God's discipline of love. The Dresser of the Vineyard, was there, purging the tree, that it might bring forth more fruit. The trials of the year have been messengers of love and not of wrath. And have they gained their end? Is there now more fruit? Is the soul brought nearer to God, and has it made a delightful and manifest advance in holiness toward heaven? there more of the spirit of adoption, more of humility, a deeper and more constant sense of dependence upon Christ, a more settled and decisive habit of daily watchfulness and prayer? Is there more of self-denying benevolence, a more constant habit of seeking others' good, a truer love to souls, a deeper, more fervent desire for the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, a better practical effort to make others partakers of the grace of Christ? Is there more of the spirit of kindness and gentleness and tenderness in intercourse with others? Is there less of the spirit of the world, and more of the

Is

the fruits of the spirit more abundant, gracious discipline of God? Is the firm and tenacious, and its hold on Are its affections more set upon "the a-cess fondly cleaving to, less occupied As the soul gets nearer to heaven by a here and the spirit of heaven, more

examination, as we set out on a New endency, and important to be faithGod will continue his precious disciare himself can tell. This only a the fruits of the Spirit there are in his hes to heaven, the more surely and Kamez is set and shining upon him. He sa sep into God's blissful presence.

an be not growing in his likethe flight of time, he advances hm heaven. Time carries him *8*1 **mark him as the fruitless withered nga God's wasted mercies, you may to hebs as if it were carved upon d: For the fire.

Kva de màs voices of solemnity as well CANAN A Istraction and gratitude. Much is the rear on the manner in which

out with new vigor in his L'apérer day of this year with such Pa i del corte the of all years

year

8s &nd eternity. The beginning EN N062 & as it were, the corner-stone d in grace, let Christ be ony stue 24. sd afterward, every sucAnd with Him, sacred to Him, IN SA in a man's new year is PITLT IN I DAG mang the god prediction of all the HATES TAC IN A Nung & be evil habits, if there be REZIMET E ZPATRE, Fed dem of God's word, in the first Sarah and me is evil things almost always dress of death in the warp of

Let a man are god cine or ha dose Sabbath, and the first SabVach w... be key to take care of a. the year. Let a man begin with Chine, and go through it as if he were unrolling a prophecy of he character and habits has trains of thought and feeling, his apart of prayer, his dependence on divine grace, his religious habits This day will be the type of all your year, and I am commissioned If an angel should say to a man in the morning: to warn you of it, for every week and every day hereafter will be

in every way.

woven out of the threads of feeling and of action you fasten to this day;" with what care and solemn earnestness would such a man spend that Sabbath! How much of holy joy would he wish to concentrate in it, in what pleadings with God would he pour out his soul, how much would he strive to experience of the preciousness of Christ, what humble contrition for sin would he labor after, how would he endeavor to make the day a foretaste, or at least a gate, of Heaven, and what labors of benevolence and love would he put in fervid motion, what desires and efforts for the advancement of his Redeemer's kingdom! At the very least, with what care would he keep at the foot of the cross, striving to have his Saviour's strength made perfect in his own weakness!

Well! the first Sabbath is a prediction. Its tone generally speaks through the first week, its character colors the first week, and the first week ordinarily governs the year. Now, how solemn is this consideration. A man stands, as it were, at the loom of life, and ties the threads, and arranges the figures of the tapestry to be woven, and you will see that every day and week, as the shuttle flies and the piece grows, only shows what the man put in at first. Such are our habits. Every one of them has its seed, with the tree in miniature. And as every seed is a prediction, so is every habit. If then you wish for a happy New Year, put you the seeds of happiness into its first Sabbath and its first week. Put them in carefully, as if you were burying a precious charge for the resurrection. Put them in with much prayer, and, if you choose, with many tears, which are as good as a gentle rain in seed-time, and God will take care of them, and make them grow. So your Sabbath shall guide your week, and your week shall predict your year, and your happy year-happy, because holy; happy, because God is in it-shall be full of blessedness and praise as an anthem.

Let me bring it to God (a man should say) beforehand. Let me begin it for Christ, as I would have him end it. Lord, take thou the threads of my new life, and fasten and arrange them! None else can do it safely, and if thou do it not, Satan will be the weaver. Lord, let me live one year at least for thee! Every day, as thou renewest my life, renew thy life in my heart, and keep it clean and holy.

Death is still working like a mole,

And digs my grave at each remove;
Let grace work too, and on my soul
Drop from above.

Sin is still hammering my heart
Unto a hardness void of love;
Let suppling grace, to cross his art,
Drop from above.

III. THE, YEAR JUST CLOSED.

We spend our years as a tale that is told, Ps. xc. 9., said David, some three thousand years ago, and time has not paused in his

221 DIKT LUS The forces teaches a most solemn

and points them to eternity. e has driven his swift se in life's journey. We

We pass the ds of months and years

take note of latitude or se and well to pause, if we WOL 1 FRET DE SHEEP LST C de past, and form stronger of sale pcross i var hement for the future. But He siders of deur. His car-wheels roll on

Pies ToT, FLES DE eat or sleep. He hurries on smég man frozess pusselges to the last depot in life's

He who wood mar a biof years has ample matenai ir medan Wear Dom car neglects, and sigh over our wasted or move bus be never drives his car backwird The past is beyond reed Even while we resolve and reresolve to be wiser for the future, the car-bell may ring and toll the end of our joumer. Time seiners his passengers by the way-side rapady and profusely, yet few are aware when their own turn is to come, till they find themselves dropped in a moment, and prostrate in their last resting-place.

Thus suddenly do men end mortal life. A feeling of sadness is excited by the end of almost everything. The end of life, the end of time, the end of all things are somn thoughts It may, indeed seem trite and commonplace to moralize on the closing year; but it is not commonplace to die—to meet one's last hour on earth-to come to life's last mysterious boundary-to close up all concerns with earth, and have done with time. when the dislodged and immortal spirit shall be summoned to stretch its wings for the final flight. And yet the solemn end of the end of probation rapidly approaches to each and to all.

The last suns of another year have gone down for ever. Its day is spent, and its bright sun-light has faded into the darkness of by-gone ages. The year just closed has been to millions of our sinful race the end of life-the end of probation, and the closing up of their moral histories as prisoners of hope in a world of mercy. These millions have changed worlds, changed their modes of existence, gone to people eternity and swell the myriads that are assembling for the great day of judgment. What emotions of unutterable joy or sorrow have heaved the bosoms of these dying millions, as they found themselves in Heaven or in hell. What joy to some to find "life's toilsome day over"-to find an end to sorrows and to sins-an end of doubts and fears—an end of trials and conflicts with enemies visible and invisible, within and withoutto have escaped for ever beyond the temptations of an evil heart and the arch adversary of souls! What joy to find themselves across the broad river-beyond the dark valley, safe in the paradise of God.

But what unutterable anguish to others, to find life's brief journey ended-its probationary years all wasted-its privileges misimproved-its offers of mercy and salvation refused or neglected, and the door of hope and Heaven closed forever. They began the year in health and strength. The sun of life was up in mid Heaven. The afternoon of many years spread out in the distance, and it seemed a long journey to the grave. The glow of health mantled on their cheek. Hope sparkled in their eye. The rich blood coursed in crimson currents through their veins. They had much goods laid up in the store-house of hope for many years. But the scene suddenly changed. The curtain dropped. The bright visions of hope were dissolved and fled away. The sun went down at noon. The shadows of life's evening gathered suddenly over them. The lamp of life flickered in its socket and went out. The beating pulse stood still. Life's pendulum ceased its vibrations. The splendid machinery so fearfully and wonderfully made, suddenly collapsed. The warm currents became chilled in their courses and ceased to flow. The drama of life was over. Its brief story is told, and its history is recorded in the archives of eternity. But of the grand catastrophe of the soul ruined, abandoned of hope -lost, undone for ever-who shall depict the awful representation? That most fearful of all tragedies, the ruin of the soul, will be acted on the great stage of eternity, when the curtain of time shall rise and be rolled together as a scroll.

To that mysterious world-to that vast assembly—to that grand assize on the great day for which all other days were made, what multitudes have gone the past year! Gone unexpectedly-and some gone unprepared-gone to feel the keenest anguish and bitterest regrets, that life's golden hours and infinite privileges, so freely bestowed by an indulgent and long-suffering God, have been lost, and lost for ever! From that spirit-land, what voices of salutary admonition and warning come echoing back to these shores of time, to meet the crowd of travellers as they are hastening on to the world of retribution!

Dear reader! Listen to those still small voice as they whisper in solemn accents of the year-of the end of life-of invisible scenes, and the final judgment.

The days of the last year are numbered. They have gone before thee to bear their report to the recording angel, and to tell him how thou hast spent them-to what plans and purposes of good they have been devoted, and with what sincerity, and zeal, and solemn earnestness thou hast labored in thy work of preparation to meet God, and to accomplish life's great errand.

SECRET SUCCESS IN PREACHING.

Fletcher of Madely was one of the most earnest and successful of preachers. He was a man of prayer, much prayer, and herein