ter waits to count your sheaves. There
is no time to lose, brother; set about it as you have never done before,
and say, 'This one thing I do.'

And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be
fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our
anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as
certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for
us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and
recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste,
with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. Let us
listen to our Master, 'I must work the works of Him that sent Me while
it is day; the night cometh.' And let us listen to the words of the
servant, which reverse the metaphor, and teach the same lesson in a
trumpet call which anticipates the dawn and rouses the sleeping
soldiers: 'The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us cast off
the works of darkness and put on the armour of light.'

GROWTH

'But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ....'--2 Peter iii. 18.

These are the last words of an old man, written down as his legacy to
us. He was himself a striking example of his own precept. It would be an
interesting study to examine these two letters of the Apostle Peter, in
order to construct from them a picture of what he became, and to
contrast it with his own earlier self when full of self-confidence,
rashness, and instability. It took a lifetime for Simon, the son of
Jonas, to grow into Peter; but it was done. And the very faults of the
character became strength. What he had proved possible in his own case
he commands and commends to us, and from the height to which he has
reached, he looks upwards to the infinite ascent which he knows he will
attain when he puts off this tabernacle; and then downwards to his
brethren, bidding them, too, climb and aspire. His last word is like
that of the great Roman Catholic apostle to the East Indies: 'Forward!'
He is like some trumpeter on the battlefield who spends his last breath
in sounding an advance. Immortal hope animates his dying injunction:
'Grow! grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour.'

So I think we may take these words, dear friends, as the starting-point
for some very plain remarks about what I am afraid is a neglected duty,
the duty of growth in Christian ch