Ah yes, is it not true, as one writes, that “men are ever beguiling themselves with the dream that they shall one day be what they are not now; they balance their present consciousness of a low worldly life, and of a mind heavy and dull to spiritual things, with the lazy thought that some day God will bring home to them in power the realities of faith in Christ. Who is there that has not at some time secretly indulged this soothing flattery, that the staid gravity of age, when youth is quelled, or the leisure of retirement, when the fret of busy life is over, or, it may be, the inevitable pains and griefs which are man’s inheritance, shall break up in his heart the now-sealed fountains of repentance, and make, at last, his religion a reality? So men dream away their lives in pleasures, sloth, trade, or study. Who has not allayed the uneasy consciousness of a meagre religion, with the hope of a future change? Who has not been thus mocked by the enemy of man? Who has not listened, all too readily, to him who would cheat us of the hour that is, and of all the spiritual earnings which faith makes day by day in God’s service, stealing from us the present hour, and leaving us a lie in exchange? And yet, this present hour is all we have. To-morrow must be to-day before we can use it; and day after day we squander in the hope of a to-morrow; but to-morrow shall be stolen away too, as to-day and yesterday. God’s kingdom was very nigh to him who trembled at the judgment to come. Felix trembled once; we nowhere read that he trembled again.” Habits are stronger when we are weaker. People forget this, and imagine that they can cast off fetters that have grown from silken to iron, and that with force that has dwindled from vigour to impotence. That they can lie fallow all the growing time of life, and cram clearing, ploughing, sowing, growth, harvest, all into the dark, few, shortening days of life’s decay. “A convenient season!” Ah! does this mean, then, _the end of the seasons_--the meagre leavings of life’s year? Is this the season convenient for God’s work--for the great purpose of our being? Is spiritual life likely to be then first lifting up its head, when all life is fading away? “Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lost.” This is a command exquisitely applicable to the gleanings of an old age, whose harvest has been given to God: “They shall still bring forth fruit in old age”; --not like the old age of the year--for the fruit of this, at the best, is hips and haws, and holly-berries. But can the command ever apply to a life of which the world, and the flesh, and the devil have had the harvest? Will God accept the mere gleanings?