If you will go into the forest at the autumn period of the year, or go into the orchard and examine where the leaves are about to drop off, you will find that at the base of the stem of each leaf, already there appears the budding of the leaf which is to be unfolded next spring, and even though the leaf withers and falls to the ground, leaving the barren limb alone to battle with the winter storms, yet there is the promise and the evidence that when the gentle breath of spring shall come and break open the icy sepulchres of the winter, these little buds will feel the genial warmth and unfold their green beauty in a radiant springtime of beautiful foliage. So one generation of men may die and pass away, to have their work continued and completed by those who are to come after them. But these leaves also teach us of our mortality. For, as Isaiah says, "We all do fade as a leaf." We are all very apt to forget that we must die. And so each year, when the summer is over and the fruit is gathered, the leaves begin to wither, and the early frost tinges the forests of the closing year, like the sun oftentimes makes the clouds all crimson and glory at the close of the day. These things should teach us that as advancing years come, we also must fade and die. God spreads out before us this great panorama along the valleys and on the hillsides each autumn to teach us that as the leaves perish, so we must also fade and droop and die. But there is one great encouragement, and that is, that although the leaves fall, the tree stands. The leaf perishes, but the tree abides, and year after year, sometimes for centuries, it goes on increasing in stature and in strength, abiding as the giant of the forest. So also, when at last each of us must die, that which we have built shall abide, and what we have received from others and to which we have added our efforts and our labors, others shall receive from us, and they also shall carry on the work in which we have been engaged. So each generation receives and carries on the work of those who have gone before. As the poet has well said, "Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withered on the ground; Another race the following age supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise; So generations in their course decay So perish these when those have passed away." The tree stands a monument of strength and beauty at the grave of all the dead leaves which lie buried at its feet. So what each boy and girl, each man and woman, shall have accomplished of good or evil, will remain after they have perished and passed away, to tell of their lives, and God will note the result. He who says that not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without His notice, and who tells us that the very hairs of our heads are all numbered, He will note our deeds, and He will be our reward.