treasures in heaven without the least fear of ever losing them. This thought not only takes away all fear from death .but makes it sweet and joyful, as I shall now prove.—Continues as above.
SIXTEENTH SERMON.
ON THE HAPPY END OF OUR YEARS.
Subject.
A wish for a happy end of our years. Firstly; what this wish means. Secondly; how it is to be realized by each one according to his state in life.—Preached on the Sunday in the Octave of the Nativity.
Text.
Ubi venit plenitudo temporis.—Gal. iv. 4.
“When the fulness of the time was come.”
Introduction.
These words have been used and will be used as long as the world lasts of all men: “When the fulness of the time has come.” Thus with the child the fulness of time may come in two or three years; that is the end of its years. The fulness of time for the youth or maiden may be in ten or twenty years, for the man or woman in thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty years; then comes the end of their years. The same words, my dear brethren, shall one day be used of us too; but we cannot say how many years must elapse till then. To-day all of us here present, when the fulness of the time was come, as the forty-third year of the century came to an end and the forty-fourth was about to begin, we all assembled in the church at Treves to hear a sermon; whether we shall be able to say that, when this year that is so near its end shall have fully run its course, we know not. Perhaps then or sooner the end of our years may have come for some of us. Let it be as God has decreed in His inscrutable designs. Happy shall we be if the end of our years is a happy one. And that is what I wish myself, you, and every one from my heart at the end of this year. Namely, I do not
