Still you are certain of some duties or trials before you.  This sickness, you say, must end in death; or this journey must, if you are in life, be taken to a foreign shore, and last farewells be spoken; or this year you must enter upon this new profession so arduous and so full of risks.  And thus each one, with more or less degree of certainty, chalks an imaginary outline of his future course.  But supposing all your anticipations to be well-founded, yet, oh! believe that when your day of trial or of duty comes, a Father, if you know Him and trust Him, will come with it.  You will have on that dark day a Father’s unerring wisdom to guide you, a Father’s omnipotent arm to uphold you, a Father’s infinite love to soothe you, comfort you, and fully satisfy you.  Hear these precious commands and promises:—­“fast your confidence, which hath a great reward!” “Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which passeth understanding, will keep your mind and heart through Christ Jesus!”

Once more, Do you fear the future, lest you should sin and depart from God as you have done in the past?  Trust God, and fear not!  For how did you depart from God before?  From want of trust.  You lost confidence in your Father’s teaching, and leant on your own understanding, or listened to the voice of strangers; you first lost confidence in your Father’s love and goodwill to you, and in His power to satisfy all your wants, and to give whatever was best for you out of His rich and inexhaustible treasures, and then you demanded the portion of your goods, and departed from Him, and ceased to pray to Him or to think of Him at all, but gave your heart, soul, and strength to the creature.  But you had no peace.  You left the cistern of living waters; but the cisterns hewn out by yourselves held no water to assuage your soul’s thirst.  You found it to be “an evil and a bitter thing” to forsake God.  Hear, then, His invitation on the first day of a new year:  “Return to the Lord thy God!” Arise, and go to thy Father; “abide” with Him; and never more lose thy confidence in Him as thy strength, thy peace, thy life!  Trust His mercy to pardon the past; His grace to help in the present; and His love to fill up thy being at all times.  “Fear not:  I am with thee:  I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness!” Your only strength and safety are in God.  Daily seek Him, daily trust Him, and you will daily serve Him.

But perhaps you fear the future lest you should not “redeem the time” as you ought to do to the glory of God?  Trust God, and fear not!  Lost time is a sad and oppressive thought to the child of God.  What might he have done!  What might he have been!  How might he have improved his talents, and cultivated his spirit, and done good to relations, friends, neighbours, and to the world, had he only redeemed days, hours, minutes, which have