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What more appropriate motto can we select for a new year? Counsel such as this is in itself a kind of revelation. It reveals us to ourselves! Is our way such that we can commit it to the Lord? Now, such committing of our way to God means —

I. MEDITATION BEFORE PRAYER. "Meditation," says St. , "is the eye wherewith we see God, and prayer is the wing wherewith we flee to Him." Prayer is not an accidental expression that comes suddenly to the mind; it is the soul's recognition of its need. And to pray aright we must have been alone with ourselves before we are alone with God. Bunyan said, "In prayer it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart."

II. CONSCIOUSNESS OF IGNORANCE. We say to God, "Thou and Thou only knowest the true path of life." Our ignorance is at times very humbling to us. We want to know all, and in reality we know so little. How terrible it would be if we could not commit our way unto God. How glad, then, should we be that God invites us at all times to come to Him. As Quarles says, "Heaven's never deaf but when man's heart is dark."

III. CONSCIOUS OBEDIENCE AND CHEERFUL ACQUIESCENCE IN HIS WILL. Dependence must end in obedience. Owen says, "He who prays as he ought will endeavour to live as he prays." Can there be a more miserable man on earth than he who knows the hypocrisy of his prayers, who is inwardly conscious of his wrong state, who knows that he is living without God, and yet feels tremulous and sad about it all? He has not really returned to God. He has not realized again the value of the Saviour's friendship; he cannot forsake the indulgence of some secret sin; he cannot quite quit fellowships that are risking his immortal weal. The reverences of religion still touch him with awe, the piety of the early child-home is still a memory in his manhood; he despises men who have no religion. But his will is not obedient: it cannot be said of him that he is a follower of the Lamb. Let us not slight this aspect of the subject — committing our way means conscious obedience unto God. And not merely endurance, nor passive submission, but cheerful acquiescence. This lights the smile on the sufferer's face; this gives sunlight to the gloomy Catacombs. When the soul comes away from communion with God in this spirit, the ravens of anxiety and care forsake the heart. The world may know how to provoke mirth; it may amuse with sallies of wit; it may excite with sensuous joys; but all through the ages cheerfulness has been the child of faith, and has seldom forsaken the sufferer even in life's last hours.

IV. COMMITTING THE END TO GOD. When and where belong to Him. Life has been quite other than most of us thought it, and so probably will death be. It would be a mean thing to wish to commit the end to God and not all that leads to it,-to rely on some mere death-bed repentance. So to live as to feel sure that when the evening comes we shall have nothing to do but to die, this is the Christian's heritage. And then let the curtains be rent suddenly, or taken down gently; let the light go out in a sharp gust, or burn down in the socket slowly; this surely is what we all wish to be able to say, "Father, not as I will, but as Thou wilt."

(W. M. Statham.)

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KJV: Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

WEB: Commit your way to Yahweh. Trust also in him, and he will do this: