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What an awful alternative — if it were true! Who, where are they who would not choose life, if the choice were really offered them? The martyr has chosen death, but we shudder at the cruel times which have demanded such self-sacrifice; the devotee has chosen death, and chooses it today, but we pity his fanatic faith; the maniac has chosen death, but only because bereft of reason; the suicide is the remaining exception — and his example "proves the rule." But this alternative is not true. Life and death, in this physical sense, are not matters of rational choice. We are started on our journey, and spontaneously and rightly we do all that we can to keep in the way until the bodily machinery either breaks down at some weak point, or wears out generally, and all our endeavours are at an end. Duty and instinct compel us in the same direction; there is no choice here. Let us pass from the physical to the spiritual, which is also the scriptural sense. I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose the inner life of goodness on which the blessing is pronounced, and not the inward deadness which destroys your true being. And again we say — What an alternative, if it were true! What a crowning choice — if it were indeed ours! But actual life — spiritual life — this true inward life, cannot be chosen or cast aside at once and forever, with our eyes wide open, and our minds made up, and our wills prepared to take all the consequences — the blessing or the curse. For us life does not concentrate its chances and hazard all its prospects at one only point; it is not even a series of points, at each of which this chance is renewed. It is not a single, nor yet an occasional, game of "touch and go." Rather is it an ever-varying, many-winding river, its course now this way, now that; its waters muddy or clear, shallow or deep, at one time swollen and turgid, at another peacefully gliding through quietest scenes — but never at rest, always advancing resistlessly on, and often luring us by its motion into drowsy content. We wend our way through "the everydayness of this weekday world" attended by associations, painful or pleasant, which touch us at every point, surrounded by interests of varying import, and more numerous than we can name, with our plans in one direction, then new hopes in another — before, behind, on either side is this ever-shifting scenery, this crowded landscape of circumstance, through which we float for evermore — this is what life means to us. Where is there space, or chance, or stopping point for that single choice between two things only, as though all the rest would vanish at a word? This is a very plausible plea, especially for busy men. But however admissible in a general sense, there are several cases which it does not cover. There are times in human experience when the vast difference between these two only things is brought so bluntly before men — when that unlovely blank between what has been and what might be seems to cover so completely their whole horizon, that they are impelled to "pull up," to face a choice of two conditions, and to decide abidingly for one or the other. Then the single, final alternative — "life or death" — is placed before them, and it is, moreover, felt to be absolute and exclusive. When Paul heard the voice say, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" and straightway transformed himself from persecutor to preacher; when was stayed by the childlike tones chanting, "Tolle, lege," and opened at words which to him were salvation; when Bunyan was suddenly stopped at his game by the warning appeal in his heart, "Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?" this difference was realised, this alternative accepted. But if these times, in which we are compelled to face an inner alternative, are rare, there are other times, happily less rare, when we are not compelled, but quietly prompted to face our choice. We are not forced, but asked, to look into our hearts. Our better self makes a secret suggestion that all there is not as it might be, that the lower self is allowed far too much prerogative, that one can only triumph by the other's fall, and that, in fact, we must know our own mind and say deliberately which it shall be. "Choose," whispers the secret voice: "shake off all seeming, put away your coloured spectacles of prejudice, strip yourself of every proud thought, whether of wealth or position or ability, lay aside your little worldly triumphs, pray to be shown your transgressions as they truly are; and then look at yourself in the light of heaven, as a child of God." Such a time, surely, is the opening of a New Year. It is no mere return of habit, but a resistless instinct that invests this time with a special significance. A New Year, if it means anything beyond an altered almanac, means new life to everyone amongst us, but it will mean that only so far as we are faithful to our inner light. It may mean, and ought to mean, the awakening of holier desires, the birth of higher ideals, the death or defeat of a whole army of little sins and shallow ways, the oft-convicted traitors to our true being. It may be — let it be — "a secret anniversary of the heart" on which we take stock of ourselves, clear our accounts if we can, and start afresh. It is indeed a charge upon our weak wills that we need such outward promptings to attempt utterly the thing that is in us to be. The true Christlike life is an even progress towards perfection, not a series of jumps, or starts, or sudden ascents. But so long as our very weakness itself cries out for these helps, so long as these times of renewal are offered to us, let us not pass them by without hearing their message. "Take them lest the chain be broken, ere thy pilgrimage be done."

(F. K. Freeston.)

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KJV: See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;

WEB: Behold, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil;