For the sustentation of our bodies it is needful that the blood should ever be in circulation. If the heart were to cease beating only for three or four minutes (perhaps less) life would be extinct. In this short time the whole framework of man, beautiful in its proportions, perfect in its parts, would pass into the state of dead matter, and would simply wait the decay that follows death. The eye would become dull and glazed, the lips would turn blue, the skin would acquire the coldness of clay--love, hope, joy, would all cease. The sweetest, the fondest ties would be broken. Flowers might bloom, and yield their fragrance, but they would be neither seen nor smelt; the sun might rise in its brightest splendour, yet the eye would not be sensitive to its rays; the rosy-cheeked child might climb the paternal knee; but there, stiff, cold, without joy, or pain, or emotion of any kind, unconscious as a block of marble, would sit the man _whose heart for a few moments had ceased to beat_. How wise, then, and how good of God, that he has not placed this vital organ under our own care! How sudden would be our bereavements--how frequent our deaths, how sleepless our nights, and how anxious our days, if we had to keep our own hearts at work, and death the penalty of neglect. And yet, before we were born, until we reach life's latest moment--through days of toil, and nights of rest--even in the moments of our deepest sin against the God who at the time is sustaining us, our hearts beat on, never stopping, never wearying, never asking rest.