and to your passing, emancipated from the bitterness, into the year
that lies before you.

But even if there are none of us to whom such remarks would specially
apply, let us summon up to ourselves the memories of these bygone days.
In all the three hundred and sixty-five of them, my friend, how many
moments stand out distinct before you as moments of high communion with
God? How many times can you remember of devout consecration to Him? How
many, when--as visitors to the Riviera reckon the number of days in the
season in which, far across the water, they have seen Corsica--you can
remember this year to have beheld, faint and far away, 'the mountains
that are round about' the 'Jerusalem that is above'? How many moments
do you remember of consecration and service, of devotion to your God
and your fellows? Oh! what a miserable, low-lying stretch of God-
forgetting monotony our lives look when we are looking back at them in
the mass. One film of mist is scarcely perceptible, but when you get a
mile of it you can tell what it is--oppressive darkness. One drop of
muddy water does not show its pollution, but when you have a pitcherful
of it you can see how thick it is. And so a day or an hour looked back
upon may not reveal the true godlessness of the average life, but if
you will take the twelvemonth and think about it, and ask yourself a
question or two about it, I think you will feel that the only attitude
for any of us in looking back across a stretch of such brown barren
moorland is that of penitent prayer for forgiveness and for cleansing.

But I dare say that some of you say: 'Oh! I look back and I do not feel
anything of that kind of regret that you describe; I have done my duty,
and nobody can blame me. I am quite comfortable in my retrospect. Of
course there have been imperfections; we are all human, and these need
not trouble a man.' Let me ask you, dear brother, one question: Do you