What will happen during this year to ourselves and to those whom we love? Life or death--health or sickness--joy or sorrow--good or evil? What will the coming twelve months bring to me and mine? What _may_ be--what _must_ be--what _ought_ to be? Such questions, multiplied a hundredfold, or broken up into every variety of anxious inquiry, often fill the heart and mind on the first day of a new year. Now, is it possible for us to find rest and peace for our spirits as we steadily contemplate the future, with its darkness and light, with all the duties and trials which it contains, and with all that it may and must bring forth? Is there any secret of strength and comfort by which we can with courage and hope encounter all the possibilities of the future? There is. Let us only _trust God_, and we need not fear anything, but welcome everything! Let us consider this; and, first of all, understand what is meant by trusting God. To trust God, remember, is to trust _Himself_--a living, personal God. It is not to trust to any means whatever whereby He makes Himself known; but to look through them, all, or to go by them all, to the living God himself. This is more than trusting to any truth even revealed in the Bible, for it is trusting the Person who spoke the truth, or of whom the truth is spoken. To trust God is to trust Him as He is revealed in all the fulness of His glorious character. It is to trust Him as true, and therefore as faithful in keeping every promise, and in fulfilling every threat; as wise, and therefore as never erring in any arrangement made for the well-being of His creatures; as righteous, and therefore as doing right to each and all; as holy, and therefore as hating evil, and loving good; as merciful and therefore as pardoning the guilty through a Redeemer;--it is, in one word, to trust Him "whose name is Love!"--love which shines in every attribute, and is the security for every blessing! Trust and obedience are therefore, from their nature, inseparable.