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 been spent in sloth or folly! And not one
second can be restored. Shall the future be a similar record to the
past? You fear to think of it! But be assured that till the last hour
of the best spent life, you will need th