that is notoriously not the fact. Generally, the mind is made up on the subject of religion early in life, and, when made up, there is rarely a reconsideration of the question. This is specially true of those who enjoy the advantages of a religious education, or the faithful ministrations of the Gospel. If, then, men grow worse as they grow old-are farther removed from a disposition to repentance as they are carried forward in life, why should they live longer? If they will not repent at seventy, would they at seven hundred? But why does any one complain that he has not space enough for repentance? It is because he wishes to employ the time he has in something else than repentance.

THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT.

Ir it is worth while to labor to be happy for the first seventy years of your existence, why should you not make equal provision for the second seventy, and for the third, and for as many as your existence may be divided into? Does the fact, that the second septuagenary term of years is to be passed in another world, make the happiness of it less desirable and less worthy of your labor, than if the period of your earthly existence were extended to twice threescore and ten? If there is a something that is capable of diffusing comfort and happiness through that second period of years, is it

not as deserving of human attention, and study, and toil, as that is which makes the first seventy comfortable and happy? How much more, if the second division of our existence is a duration absolutely without end? It is hard to be accounted for, even in a depraved creature, that he should be so exceedingly anxious about himself until a certain day and hour of his existence, and perfectly regardless of his interests beyond that-that a being who is more certain that he shall live forever, than he is that he shall survive another year, should be so eager to labor and lay up for that which is both brief and uncertain, and at the same time so indifferent about providing for a certain immortality-so assiduous to lay up something for the soul so long as it may preserve its connection with the body, and perfectly careless what becomes of it so soon as it leaves its miserable clay, and begins to exist in another state, and with its capacities of enjoyment and suffering far more exquisite than they even were before.

TIME AND ETERNITY.

Is it not strange, that the only things we do not prepare for are those things which will inevitably occur; while those things which, besides that they are of inferior importance, only may occur, it is our aim and endeavor to be fully prepared for. We are so engaged,

so absorbed in preparing for an uncertain life, that we omit to prepare for a certain death.

Heaven sees no spectacle on earth so melancholy, as the sportiveness of souls on the brink of an unblest eternity.

If men make so much and so rapid progress in evil here, where there exist so many restraints and hindrances to evil, and so many means of good, what must be the progress of the impenitent hereafter; how swift, how awful! In hell there will be no restraint from evil, and no means of good; no Sabbath, no Bible, no good Spirit, no Saviour. He will be in the midst of such company, and surrounded by such examples, and uninvited to any effort at restraint, much less reformation, by any ray of hope that would in the least avail.

Tell me what is behind you, and I will tell you what is before you.

If, in time, men become so vile as to be the incarnation of evil, what must they not be in eternity.

ETERNITY.

How near, Oh! how very near are the eternal realities, judgment, heaven, and hell-as near as deathnearer than the grave. The soul reaches home before the body does.

Even the tick of a watch may sometimes shake and trouble an immortal spirit, when he reflects how swiftly it is numbering off the calculable records of life, telling off the little moments of this short preface to his eternity; and he thinks how, in a little while, when its tale shall be told, and himself shall be where there is no year, month, day, nor hour; because no sun, or moon, or mechanism to measure, but all is one unmeasured, immeasurable eternity. Time is to man, in some respects, a more serious season than eternity. Eternity is absolutely the creature of time, derives all its cost and character from time; is troubled or serene, inviting or revolting, happy or miserable, a blessing or a curse, as time, omnipotent time, ordains it.

Seventy centuries, even seventy millenaries, will not be worth as much to an inhabitant of eternity as seventy years are to an inhabitant of time.

How will the mind brighten and expand while it basks beneath the beams of eternity! What an influx of ideas, new and grand, will the spirit receive on its first liberation from the confinement of the body! Oh! who can preach a sermon with eternity for his text!

A NEW YEAR'S WISH.

My wish for all my friends, on this day of good wishes, I would thus express :-"My heart's desire and prayer to God for you all is, that you may be saved.

The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ; and the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all his saints."

NEARNESS OF DEATH.

WE sometimes seem to be nearer death than at others, but the whole progress of life is in the closest proximity to it. We are not merely tending towards a brink, over which ultimately, when we arrive at it, we must plunge. Even then, our condition would be fearful. But, in all our progress, we are travelling upon that brink. Our way winds along the perilous edge of the precipice. This makes our condition more fearful -this perpetual insecurity-this ever present and imminent peril. It is not the certainty of the fact in regard to death, that is so very appalling to the soul. It is the uncertainty of the time. It is not that ultimately we must die, but that presently we may. It is the thought of being always near to that last great evil, always adjacent to the judgment, always close upon the borders of eternity, and always within a little of our everlasting abode the journey from every point of