faith for the future. As you "let your requests be made known to God
with prayers and supplication," do not forget the "_thanksgiving_" for
this will help you henceforth to "be careful for nothing." He who has
led you out of Egypt, through "the depths," and across the desert,
will never leave you nor forsake you.

3. As you remember your _sins_, consider how very ignorant you are of
their number or their heinousness. But if you could enumerate each
sinful thought, word, and action committed during the past year and
during your past life, there is something in you _worse than sins_,
and that is _sin itself_, _the evil heart_, the wrong mind, out of
which sins proceed; for the corrupt tree is worse than any definite
quantity of fruit which it has produced; the ever-flowing bitter
fountain is worse than any definite quantity of water which has come
from it. But whatever you have been or done in time past, what do you
intend to be and to do _now_? Is it your intention to continue in
sin? However dreadful the thought is, yet many, if such is your real
intention, will sympathise with you. For many _do_ continue in sin,
and resolve to do so, for the present at least. Will you, then, permit
the year to close, and with an unconcerned eye behold all its sin and
sins added to those of other impenitent years, finally sealed up for
judgment? How will you then stand the reading of your autobiography?
Read over any page now, peruse the life of any day, and ask, Has
this been the life of one who believes there is a God to whom he is
responsible? Point out one solitary proof, and such as you think
Christ will accept, in all these twelve chapters of the past year,
of a heart which loved God, or had one mark of a sincere though an
imperfect follower of Jesus Christ. And if you cannot do so, will you
permit the volume to close for ever without a cry for mercy, without
imploring God to wipe out or destroy in the atoning blood of Jesus
these pages, which cry "Guilty" in every line? Will you not resolve
rather, through the grace given to every honest man who wishes it, to
begin and write a new volume, which shall witness to a changed life,
and be inscribed no longer with all that is selfish, and of the earth
earthy--"without God or Christ in the world." Let it be so, I beseech
of you, my reader. Have done, now and for ever, with this shocking
_mutiny_ against your God. End the weary, shameful strife. Be, then,
at peace with God, and remember