REFLECTIONS FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR

1. Our highest acknowledgments are due to Him whose mercy endureth for ever, to Him who crowns each revolving year with the blessings of His goodness, who holds our souls in life, and suffers not our feet to be moved. He alone is worthy to receive the love of our hearts, the tribute of our lips, and the obedience of our hands; even to Him be praise and dominion for ever. “For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things.”

2. If we ought to kindle into gratitude under the sense of His increasing mercies, it is no less our duty and our desire to acknowledge and deplore the accumulating sinfulness which augments with every moment that swells our aggregate of time. Who can tell how oft he offendeth?

3. But if we are great debtors, we have also a still greater Paymaster. His infinite atonement has discharged the whole. While therefore we remember and feel our unworthiness, let it answer every purpose of humiliation, but not cherish the poisonous root of unbelief. Be the free grace of the Father, the redeeming merit of Jesus, and the sanctifying omnipotence of the Holy Ghost, our sovereign preservatives from distrust, the subjects of our song, and the strength of our joy, all through the allotted paths of our earthly pilgrimage.

4. Through the good hand of God upon us, another year dawns on the present generation. Time hastens to that grand period when, like a drop that has been severed from the ocean, it shall again be absorbed in that eternity out of which it was taken. Amidst the incessant changes incident to men and things previous to the final death of time, we rejoice that the Saviour of sinners and the blessings of His cross continue immutably the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever. Not less than 800 years before His incarnation He thus addressed His believing people by the mouth of His sub-limest prophet: “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath. For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner; but My salvation shall be for ever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished” (Isa. li. 6) — a sheet anchor in every possible storm!

5. What numbers were transmitted to their eternal homes in the course of the year now closed!

“How many sleep, who kept the world awake
With lustre and with noise! Has death proclaimed
A truce, and hung his fated lance on high?
‘Tis brandished still, nor shall the present year
Be more tenacious of her human leaves,
Or spread of feeble life a thinner fall.”

Many a lofty head will be laid low before the expiration of another year. But Providence, unerring Providence, governs all events: “He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest Thou?” (Dan. iv. 35). And grace, unchangeable grace, is faithful to its purpose: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom. viii. 28). May we live by faith on both.

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