"When I call in my laborers, on a Saturday night, to pay them, it often brings to my mind the great and general day of account, when I, and you, and all of us, shall be called to our grand and awful reckoning, when we shall go to receive _our_ wages, master and servants, farmer and laborer. When I see that one of my men has failed of the wages he should have received, because he has been idling at a fair; another has lost a day by a drinking-bout, a third confesses that, though he had task-work, and might have earned still more, yet he has been careless, and has not his full pay to receive; this, I say, sometimes sets me on thinking whether I also have made the most of my time. And when I come to pay even the more diligent, who have worked all the week, when I reflect that even these have done no more than it was their duty to do, I can not help saying to myself, Night is come, Saturday night is come. No repentance, or diligence on the part of these poor men can now make a bad week's work good. This week has gone into eternity. To-morrow is the season of rest; working-time is over. 'There is no knowledge nor device in the grave.' My life also will soon be swallowed up in eternity; soon the space allotted me for diligence, for labor, will be over. Soon will the grand question be asked, 'What hast thou done? Give an account of thy stewardship. Didst thou use thy working days to the end for which they were given? With some such thoughts I commonly go to bed, and they help to quicken me to a keener diligence for the next week." SOME ACCOUNT OF A SUNDAY IN MR. BRAGWELL'S FAMILY. Mr. Worthy had been for so many years used to the sober ways of his own well-ordered family, that he greatly disliked to pass a Sunday in any house of which religion was not the governing principle. Indeed, he commonly ordered his affairs, and regulated his journeys with an eye to this object. "To pass a Sunday in an irreligious family," said he, "is always unpleasant, often unsafe. I seldom find I can do them any good, and they may perhaps do me some harm. At least, I am giving a sanction to their manner of passing it, if I pass it in the same manner. If I reprove them, I subject myself to the charge of singularity, and of being righteous over-much; if I do _not_ reprove them, I confirm and strengthen them in evil. And whether I reprove them or not, I certainly partake of their guilt, if I spend it as they do."