SM THE WORLD TO COME. treasure! Go, and venture the loss of your souls, and the hopes of heaven, and your eternal happiness, in wasting away the remnant hours or moments of life : But remember the awful voice of the angel is hastening towards you, and the sound is just breaking in upon you, that time shall be no longer. IL 00 A due sense of time, hastening to its period, will furnish us with perpetual new occasions of holy meditation." Do I observe the declining day, and the setting sun, sink- ing into darkness ? So declines the day of life, the hours of labour, and the season of grace : O may I finish my appointed work with honour ere the light is fled ! May I improve the shin- ing hours of grace ere the shadows of the evening overtake me, and my time of working is no more ! Do I see the moon gliding along through midnight, and fulfilling her stages in the dusky sky ? This planet also is mea- suring out my life, and bringing the number of my months to their end. May I be prepared to take leave of the sun and moon, and bid adieu to these visible heavens, and all the twink- ling glories of them ! These are all but the measurers of my time, and hasten me on towards eternity. Aus I walking in a garden, and stand still to pbserve the slow motion of the shadow upon a dial there ? It passes over the hour lines with an imperceptible progress, yet it will touch the last line of day -light shortly : So my hours and my moments move onward with a silent pace ; but they will arrive with cer- tainty at the last limit, how heedless soever I am of their motion, and how thoughtless soever I may be of the improvement of time, or of the end of it. Does a new year commence, and the first morning of it dawn open me? Let me remember, that the last year was finished and gone over my head, in order to make way for the entrance of the present : I have one year less to travel through this world, and to fulfil the various services of a travelling state: May my diligence in duty be doubled, since the number of my appointed years is diminished ! Do I find a new birth-day, in my survey of the calendar, the day wherein I entered upon the stage of mortality, and was born into this world of sins, frailties, and sorrows, in order to my probation for a better state ? Blessed Lord, how much have I spent already of this mortal life, this season of my probation, and how little am I prepared for that happier world ? How un- ready for my dying moment ? I am hastening hourly to the end of the life of man, which began at my nativity: Am I yet born of God ? Have I begun the life of a saint ? Am I prepared for that atsful day, which shall determine the number of my months on earth ? Ani I fit to be born into the world of spirits through the straight. ;ate or lead' ? Ain I renewed in all the powers of
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