ood
thing shall I do?' when Jesus set the eager young soul who asked it, to
justify to himself his courteous and superficial application to Him of
the abused and vulgarised title of 'Good,' and pointed him to God as the
only Being to whom that title, in its perfectness, could be given. If
'there is none good but one, that is God,' man's goodness must be drawn
from Him, and morality without religion will in theory be incomplete,
and in practice a delusion. If, then, men are made to need God, and
capable of possessing Him, and of being possessed by Him, then the great
question for all of us is, has life, with all its rapid whirl of
changing circumstance and varying fortunes, drawn us closer to God, and
made us more fit to receive more of Him? So supreme is this chief end
that a life which has not attained it can only be regarded as 'in vain'
whatever other successes it may have attained. So unspeakably more
important and necessary is it, that compared with it all else sinks into
nothingness; hence many lives which are dazzling successes in the eyes
of men are ghastly failures in reality.

Now, if we take these plain principles with us in our retrospect of the
past year we shall be launched on a very serious inquiry, and brought
face to face with a very penitent answer. Some of us may have had great
sorrows, and the tears may be scarcely dry upon our cheeks: some of us
may have had great gladnesses, and our hearts may still be throbbing
with the thrill: some of us may have had great successes, and some of us
heavy losses, but the question for us to ask is not of the quality of
our past experiences, but as to their effects upon us. Has life been so
used by us as to help us to become wiser, better, more devout? And the
answer to that question, if we are honest in our scrutiny of ourselves,
and if memory has not been a mere sentimental luxury, must be that we
have too often been but unfaithful recipients alike of God's mercies and
God's chastisements, and have received much of the discipline of life,
and remained undisciplined. The question of our text, if asked by me,
would be impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice
of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss
has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and
it is hard to make-believe to Him.

III. The best issue of the retrospect.

The world says, 'What I have written I have written,' and there is a
ver