sions of time; but it is the last Sunday
after Trinity. Now, then, we are at the beginning of our year; and well
it is that, as our trial is now become shorter by another year, as
another division of our lives has passed away, we should fix our eyes on
that which makes every year so valuable,--the Judgment, for which it
ought to be a preparation. In fact, if we observe, we shall see that
these Sundays in Advent are much more regarded by the Church as the
beginning of a new year, than as a mere prelude to the celebration of
the festival of Christmas. That is, Christmas-day is regarded, so to
speak, in a two-fold light, as representing both the comings of our
Lord, his first coming in the flesh, and his second coming to judgment.
When the day actually arrives, it commemorates our Lord's first coming:
and this is the beginning of the Christian year, historically regarded,
that is, so far as it is a commemoration of the several events of our
Lord's life on earth. But before it comes, it is regarded as
commemorating our Lord's second coming: and wisely, for his first coming
requires now no previous preparation for it; we cannot well put
ourselves into the position of those who lived before Christ appeared.
But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second
coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the
Church services is intended to be the representation.

There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which
we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true
type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes
of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no
outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any
striking change in the state of things around us. The Christian Spring
begins ere we have reached the half of the natural winter. Nature is not
bursting into life, but rather preparing itself for a long period of
death. And this is a type of an universal truth, that the signs and
warnings which we must look to, must come from within us, not from
without: that neither sky nor earth, will arouse us from our deadly
slumber, unless we are ourselves aroused already, and more disposed to
make warnings for ourselves than to find them.

If this be true of nature, it is true also of all the efforts of man. As
nature will give no sign, so man cannot. Let the Church do all that she
may; let her keep