Look back, then, my brethren, on this first day of the new year, at the one which has just gone never to return, and see if you are satisfied with the way you have spent it. Ask yourselves if you have not been trifling away enough of the short time which was given you to be spent in the service of God, and if there is any too much left to make some recompense to him for all that he has done for you; and say, with the church in the Epistle of this Sunday, that now it is indeed the hour to rise from sleep, from this fatal sleep of indifference and ingratitude, and go to work in real earnest on the business of your salvation, and not rest again till the time for rest has come. God will surely give that eternal rest to those who labor during life, but he has not promised it to sluggards and traitors, as those certainly are who care only for themselves and not for him, and who expect their reward without doing anything to deserve such a favor at his hands. ---------------------------- Sermon III. _Heaven and earth shall pass away._ --St. Luke xxi. 33. By the word "heaven" our Lord does not mean that heaven to which we shall be admitted if we are faithful, for that, as we know, is eternal. No; he means some part of the visible heavens with which our earth is immediately connected. {23} The earth, and to some extent the visible heaven also, we do not know how, will pass away as to their present state--they will be so changed that it may be said that the old earth and the old heaven have been destroyed. It is to remind us of this second coming, or advent, of our Lord, when the world and all that it contains shall pass away, as well as of his first coming, which we are to celebrate at Christmas, that the church keeps this season on which we have just entered, and calls it by this name of Advent. This truth, that the heavens and earth which we see shall pass away, or be destroyed, is a matter of faith. We cannot, probably, prove by science that this must take place, certainly not that such a change is so near as the Scriptures seem to indicate; but we do not need the light of faith to show us that they shall pass away from _us_, and that, perhaps, very soon. In a few years--perhaps in a few months or days--we shall close our eyes in death, and the heavens and earth which we now see shall disappear from our sight for ever. There are two lessons which we may learn from this evident and certain truth, and which the church wishes us to consider at this time.