As the annual harvestings are completed and the material occasions for thanksgiving are being stored, every earnest Christian will be led to inquire, What of my spiritual gains? what of the treasures laid up this year in the chambers of character "unto life eternal"? Thoughtfulness here will lead all to see that while men have planned and anticipated that their business activities shall bring them an annual increase of wealth, and been much exercised if these legitimate expectations have not been realized, the great majority have been singularly content to have the years go by without bringing them any appreciable gain of spiritual understanding and power.
A quieting solace has been found in the assurance of the attainment, at some indefinite time, of the fulness of the stature of Christ; and, in the atmosphere of this unexpectant hope, they have lived on, year after year, without any conscious spiritual growth. For the average religious man, life has thus passed, and the completion of his threescore has found him no more Christlike in the apprehension of Truth and in his supremacy over the manifestations of evil than he was at twenty. Indeed, men of maturity are often heard deploring the fact their garners are empty, that their religious experience has lost rather than gained in zeal, earnestness, and daily accomplishment, during the forty years, perchance, of their identification with the church, and with Cowper they take up the plaint,—
Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and his word?
