. And so in every Sunday of the year we
trace the golden thread of God's loving mercy lying along the narrow
way, the path of duty. If we have tried to keep in that path, then we
can look back joyfully over the year that is gone, and for the future
we can, like S. Paul, "thank God, and take courage."

They tell us that the fishermen of Brittany, when going forth on a
voyage, offer this prayer--"Save us, O God, thine ocean is so large,
and our little boat so small." That may well be our prayer as we begin
another year. "Gather up the fragments." For some of us that will be
a sorry task; we are like children crying in the midst of the broken
pieces of some costly vase, shattered by our carelessness. The
fragments that _remain_! How many remain of the lessons and warnings
of the past year? How much of the good seed remains undestroyed by the
choking thorn? Some of us made good resolutions last Advent, we
started well with the beginning of the Church's year, we girded on our
armour, we determined to make a fight for the true faith, and we took a
firm stand on the promises of the Gospel. And now nothing remains of
those good resolutions except the broken fragments to witness against
us and upbraid us. As for the good fight, we have fled from the battle
beaten, our shield has been left disgracefully behind, we have turned
ourselves back in the day of battle. My brother, what is that dark
stain upon the white robe of your purity? It was not there a year ago.
Last Advent you could look father and mother, aye, the whole world, in
the face. And now you have a guilty secret spoiling your life. You
may cry with Macbeth--

"Had I but died an hour before this chance
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant,
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left."

You cannot wash away that stain, even though you could "weep salt
oceans from those eyes." To look back mournfully will not help to undo
the past. To lament over the fragments of a misspent year, or the
memory of broken resolutions, vows unfulfilled, and chances lost, will
not bring back "the tender grace of a day that is dead." The thought
would be maddening if we did not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. The
knowledge that we cannot recall one lost day, nor alter one past page
in our life's story, would bring a remorse cruel as the fabled vulture
which ever fed upon the vitals of the chained Prometheus. But thanks
be to God, Jesus s