This life of ours is made up of beginnings. After the rest of the night we have on each succeeding day to begin again our round of work, and then comes the night again, when our work must be laid aside. So, too, does the life of our souls consist in great part of beginnings, though in the great work of saving our souls there should be no such thing as rest. This work must be unceasing, until that night comes wherein no man can work, the night of death, when our great Master shall demand of us an account of our labor. On this day, then, which is the beginning of the Church's year, it is well for us to pause and ask ourselves how we are fulfilling the task that is set before us. Are our souls asleep? Have our consciences been lulled into a false security concerning the state of our immortal souls? Are we careless or indifferent about the one thing needful for us--our soul's salvation? To each and every one of us to-day come the warning words of the Apostle, "Brethren, know that it is now the hour for us to arise from sleep." Now is the time for us to shake off our slothfulness, to rouse ourselves from our dangerous state of idleness and inactivity, to cast off the works of darkness and clothe ourselves in the armor of light, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and, arrayed in the strength which he gives, to walk honestly as in the day. "The night is passed," says St. Paul. {15} God grant that for each one of us the dark night of mortal sin may be for ever past and gone; that its terrible gloom may never again settle down upon our souls, shutting out the light of heaven, the pure and radiant light of God's grace. For "the day is at hand," the day of reckoning, the day of wrath and terror, when we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. The Church to-day warns us of the approach of that time. Year by year, day by day, hour by hour it is drawing nearer. "For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."