She had not to regret that her best days were spent in riot and dissipation, in opposition or indifference to religion, by which so many debase their nature, offend their Maker, and ruin their souls: but while she contemplated the future without alarm, and perhaps with joy, she could review the past with satisfaction. As memory predominates over the other faculties of the mind in declining life, and as so much of our happiness or misery at that period must necessarily result from its exercise, it is of the utmost importance to lay up in store a good provision in the "sacred treasure of the past." Nothing can be more desirable than to leave the mind filled with pleasing recollections; and this can arise only from a life of holiness and purity. How awful is it to think that the last hours should be disturbed by images of crime unrepented of, the intrusion of which into the dying chamber no force can prevent! How lamentable to see the terrors of death aggravated by the remorse and horrors of retrospection! "Life," says a profound writer, [25] "in which nothing has been done or suffered to distinguish one day from another, is to him that has passed it as if it had never been, except that he is conscious how ill he has husbanded the great deposit of his Creator. Life, made memorable by crimes, and diversified through its several periods by wickedness, is indeed easily reviewed, but reviewed only with horror and remorse. "The great consideration which ought to influence us in the use of the present moment, is to arise from the effect which, as well or ill applied, it must have upon the time to come; for, though its actual existence be inconceivably short, yet its effects are unlimited, and there is not the smallest point of time but may extend its consequences, either to our hurt or our advantage, through all eternity, and give us reason to remember it forever with anguish or exultation." We may take occasion from the account of Anna to remark, that true religion is the most substantial support amidst the INFIRMITIES of age. This is emphatically the period of "evil days," when diseases prey upon the constitution, and the faculties both of body and mind decay. Then "the sun and the light, the moon and the stars are darkened;" the greatest change takes place in the outward circumstances of gladness and prosperity, the countenance of the man is altered, his complexion faded, and his intellectual faculties, as the understanding and the fancy, weakened. It is at this time "the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men how themselves; the grinders cease, because they are few, and those that look out of the windows are darkened;" the strongest members of the body fail, the limbs bend beneath the weight of decrepitude and the effects of paralytic distempers, the teeth drop away, while the eyes grow dim and languid; "the doors are shut in the streets when the sound of the grinding is low," the mouth becoming