A certain ancient writer remarks: "Were some explorer to discover the real elixir of life by which life and health and youth might be made perpetual, with what shouts of triumph and songs of joy would the discovery be heralded forth!" Friend would rush to bear the glad tidings to friend, over hill and mountain; across valley and plain would the joyful tidings roll, until there were no solitary inhabitant, be his dwelling ever so remote or concealed, but would have found it out. Beloved, here is the true elixir of life, in Bethlehem's manger; there is the fountain of perpetual health and youth. Let the glorious truth, then, receive universal proclamation; let the tawny African in his dark jungle, the Eskimo in his icy, squalid hut, the dweller in the most distant isle, and the man, woman, and child that lives with you and next to you,--let one and all hear the glad news that God's unspeakable gift has come to earth. Yes, let this blessed truth spread till every sinful and sorrowing brother may rejoice with us, and that from earth and sky may echo forth in grateful refrain: "Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable Gift," now on these present Christmas festivals, and then when these earthly celebrations will have passed over into the celebration of heaven, we shall see and adore Him who was once a babe in Bethlehem, but now sitteth upon the throne, God blessed forevermore. Amen. LAST SUNDAY IN THE YEAR. We all do fade as a leaf.--_Isaiah 64, 6._ There is perhaps no truth which is more generally admitted and which is more frequently referred to than that life is short and time is fleeting, that--"man born of a woman," as Job expresses it, "is of few days and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down." Every tolling knell that resounds its muffled voice from the church's spire, every painful sickness that casts us upon a weary and dreary couch, every change of season in nature's annual round and tearing off one leaf after the other from the calendar, until the present date, the 31st day of its last messenger, bids us discard the whole,--all these are just so many solemn and constant monitors reminding us of the brevity, the rapidity of time's flight. And yet, with all these numerous and unmistakable evidences of the transitoriness of all earthly things, how little of an abiding impression they produce! Who of us, in thoughtful reflection, does not admit the necessity of asking in this matter for divine instruction and of preparing ourselves for the time when time shall be no more, and when we shall be called upon to give account of how we have used our earthly days, and to leave this world and all its concerns? It is to this that I would invite your thoughts on this day which marks the concluding day of another chapter of life's calendar. May God's Holy Spirit teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom, as I endeavor to explain and apply the words of our text.