“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 sinking into darkness? So declines the day of life, the hours of labour, and the seasons of grace; oh may I finish my appointed work with honour ere the light is fled! May I improve the shining 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 measuring 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 twinkling glories of them! These are all but the measures of my time, and hasten me on towards eternity. Am I walking in a garden, and stand still to observe 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 daylight shortly: so my hours and my moments move onward with a silent pace; but they will arrive with certainty 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 the end of it. Does a new year commence, and the first morning of it dawn upon 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 the less to travel through the 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 unready 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 awful day which shall determine the number of my months on earth? Am I fit to be born into the world of spirits through the strait gate of death? Am I renewed in all the powers of my nature, and made meet to enter into that unseen world, where there shall be no more of these revolutions of days and years, but one eternal day fills up all the space with Divine pleasure, or one eternal night with long and deplorable distress and darkness? When I see a friend expiring, or the corpse of my neighbour conveyed to the grave: alas! their months and minutes are all