tations, and duties, without
seeking strength from the Holy Spirit; the Sundays that have come and
gone without having been improved, and sermons heard in vain, and
public worship joined in outwardly only, without reality; the little
help, or possibly great discouragement given to Christian ministers
and Christian members by your very coldness; the time lost never to be
recalled, and of all that could have been done for the ignorant, the
afflicted, the wicked, the sick and dying, for friends and relations,
which has been left undone, and never can be done in the other world.
Think of what your Master has said, who is to judge you--that "herein
is my Father glorified, that ye bring forth much fruit"--that "if any
man will be my disciple, let him take up his cross _daily_, and follow
me"--that "many will say in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not eaten
and drunk in thy presence? hast thou not taught in our streets? have
we not done many wonderful works in thy name? and I will say
unto them, I know you not; depart from me, all ye workers of
iniquity:"--think of this _now_, for think of it one day you must: and
if you do so with any degree of truthfulness, I am sure you cannot
enter another year without pouring out your heart in humble
confession, and laying down your burthen at the foot of the cross,
crying out, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" "Have mercy upon me, O
God, according to thy loving-kindness, and according to thy tender
mercies blot out all my transgressions!"

Allow me now to put what I have to say in a practical form:--

1. When you review your _mercies_, consider how you are affected by
them. It is easy, I know, to say, and to say so far truly, "Thank God
for them!" Yet the whole spirit in which they are possessed may be
intensely selfish. We may have been seeking our life in them to the
very exclusion of God from our hearts, forgetting that "a man's life,"
says our Lord, "consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he
possesseth." What things? Any creature things whatever! To make these
our _life_, that is, our happiness, or to esteem them as essential to
our happiness, is, as our Lord adds, for a man "to lay up treasures
for himself, and not to be rich towards God." This is that
"covetousness which is idolatry,"--the worship of _Self_, through what
ministers to Self.

2. As you remember your _sorrows_, remember not only how you were
sustained and comforted under them, but, what is of incomparabl