January 4

First Week in Advent.—Wednesday

Barabbas or Jesus. S. Matthew 27:17.

LET us now bring home to our hearts the solemn responsibility which by our creation and redemption it has pleased God to lay on us the greatness of the alternative which of necessity is proposed to us, Barabbas or Jesus, the Saviour or sin. The choice is continual and unceasing. The alternative is sometimes pressed upon us with immeasurable weight. At other times it seems to rest upon us lightly, but it is not the less surely and seriously recurring. In every, the least thing as well as in the greatest, in the common daily round of life, in our deeds, in our words, in our thoughts, in our friendships, in our labour and in our amusements, in society and alone, in our gesture and our raiment, in our very meat and drink, we must be always taking one side or other of the alternative, and forming or ripening in ourselves by every such act that abiding choice or love which makes our character and determines our prospects through all eternity. For right and wrong attend on everything; Christ is the law of right in all things. It is by a repetition of right choice that through God's grace we grow holy, by a repetition of wrong choice that we grow unholy.

If we now the soul surrender

Unto all that Christ doth say,

Grace and Mercy shall defend her,

While so many go astray;

With pride and lust unheeding are they led,

And know not that they tend to city of the dead.

See throughout the swarming city

Countless multitudes that throng,

Unto whom celestial Pity

Calls to pause—yet calls not long;

For, one by one, full fast they disappear

Into the silent grave, where none her voice can hear.