to recollect ourselves...

Boston Unitarians like their New Year's sermons...duty, progress, perfection, moral improvement all being key themes and all naturally fitted to the occasion.  This New Years, today and tomorrow, we will hear from Henry Ware Jr. from his:

"The Duty of Improvement:  A New Year's Sermon"

Phillipians 3:  13,14
"I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do:  forgetting the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus my Lord."

"As we pass onward in this unceasing progress,  Time numbers our steps, and marks the advancement we have made.  As he rapidly strides on, he holds out to us his glass that we may note the running sands.  Today as he turns it for another year, he bids us pause to look at the things that are behind and the things that are before, and to recollect ourselves before we go farther.  It is well for us, a thoughtless and giddy race, that such moments arrive; that the sun runs a circle around the earth; and when he turns back from the extreme limit of his course, gives warning..."

Blessings