January 1

First Sunday in Advent

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. Romans 13:11.

TAKE up your stand where ye are now, amid the temptations, cares, deceits, follies of the day, thence look forward anew to the vanities of the world, its schemes and pleasures, its strifes, wealth and honours, the praise of men, the gaining of all your wishes out of God. Hold in your grasp all that your minds ever pictured of good out of God. Add pleasure to pleasure, gain to gain, self-indulgence to self-indulgence; stretch out your sight, month after month, year after year. Be it that each step, instead of weariness and loathing, should but satisfy your hearts the more! We will look on with you, if you will look on with us step by step through all the years of time; grant all you claim, if you will look on with us beyond all time to eternity. Imagine what you will do, enjoy, or sin, next and next; so you still ask on, But what next? And what afterward? "What afterwards?" belongs to time; ask on beyond all time, What is that "afterwards" which has no "afterwards"? Do what you will, so that those words, "What afterwards?" ring in your ears, and you with truth will answer them. When you are tempted to sin, pause, ask yourself steadfastly, And what afterwards? Await the answer (sin has but one "afterwards," deep penitence or hell), and through God's mercy on your soul, you will sin no longer. Those words, "What afterwards?" have by God's mercy converted souls to Him, for surely no things of time can satisfy a soul made to outlive all time; nothing created can fill the soul made for its Creator.

Reader and writer on that morn must meet; Thrice happy, could this theme arouse but one To hide his brow on his uplifted hand, Recalling his past life in silent prayer.

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