The number of interments which have occurred within the last ten years in the three burial grounds of this parish have included more than a fifth part of its population. Such is the sure and rapid way in which, day by day, and year by year, the sentence passed upon our fallen race is fulfilled. “_Dust thou art_, _and unto dust shalt thou return_.” {11b} And some of these events, if I could now place them in order before you, have been attended with circumstances so full of awakening instruction, they have proclaimed so distinctly the instability of all earthly ties, the vanity of all expectations that have not heaven for their object, and the love of Christ for their security and their motive, that no louder call could ever be addressed to those who have been most nearly affected by them. And as surely and as quickly will the same mortality proceed during the next decade of the world’s duration. Another like proportion, another fifth, yes, my brethren, one person in five, of those who are assembled here to-day, will be swept off from the engrossing cares and the unsatisfying frivolities of life into the great charnel-house which must ere long receive us all. How many more such ties will be loosened before the same interval recurs again! Those whom we love the best may be taken from us, or we from them, never more to meet until the resurrection of the last day. With such perpetual notices before us of the shortness of our time, and of the momentous nature of that work which it is given us to do, let us resolve to work while it is day. Let us neglect no call; let us abuse no warning; let us lose no opportunity which may assist us in making our “_calling and election sure_.” {12a} “_This I say_,” declares St. Paul, with a full conviction of the truth upon his mind, “_This I say_, _that the time is short_: _it remaineth_, _that both they that have wives be as though they had none_; _and they that weep_, _as though they wept not_; _and they that rejoice_, _as though they rejoiced not_; _and they that buy_, _as though they possessed not_; _and they that use this world_, _as not abusing it_: _for the fashion of this world passeth away_.” {12b} Suffer me now to advert to some topics of inquiry which such an occasion as this presents to us, as members of the same civil community, fellow-citizens of the same favoured land, or even as inhabitants of the same parish. There are other mercies for us to review, and there are other grounds of humiliation in the abuse of them, which we have to cherish beyond those which belong to us as private individuals. And to these we cannot safely be indifferent.