must be a breadth of contemplation in which this world shrinks-I will not say to a point--but to the narrow span that it is. There must be aims, which reign over the events of life, and make us feel that we can resign all the advantages of life, yea, and life itself; and yet be conquerors and more than conquerors through him who has loved us.

There is many a crisis in life when we need a faith like the martyr's to support us. There are hours in life like martyrdom--as full of bitter anguish, as full of utter earthly desolation-in which more than our sinews-in which we feel as if our very heart-strings were stretched and lacerated on the rack of affliction-in which life itself loses its value, and we ask to die-in whose dread struggle and agony, life might drop from us, and not be minded. Oh! then must our cry, like that of Jesus, go up to the pitying heavens for help, and nothing but the infinite and the immortal can help us. Calculate, then, all the gains of earth, and they are trash--all its pleasures, and they are vanity-all its hopes, and they are illusions; and then, when the world is sinking beneath us, must we seek the everlasting arms to bear us up-to bear us up to heaven. Thus was it with our great Example, and so must it be with us. In him was life-the life of selfrenunciation, the life of love, the life of spiritual and allconquering faith-and that life is the light of men. Oh! blessed light! come to our darkness; for our soul is dark, our way is dark, for want of thee-come to our darkness, and turn it into day; and let it shine brighter and brighter, till it mingles with the light of the all-perfect and everlasting day!

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The epochs of time, are among the most powerful teachers of religion. One of those epochs we are now again approaching. We are assembled in the Sanctuary, my friends, on the last Sabbath evening of the year. How short is the period, since we were last assembled, at a similar epoch? Truly, the time is short the time of life is short. Well, that it has its periods, its pauses for reflection! Let the dying year then teach us. It would argue a kind of brutish insensibility to take our leave of another such periodso large a period of our lives-and to ask ourselves no questions about life, its course, its great design, its solemn close. The departing year is the emblem of departing life; and these last hours have solemn thoughts to offer us, like to those which will visit us

in the last hours of our stay on earth. Let us meditate upon time, then, while to meditate may profit us -before it be said, not of the departing year only, but of departing life, "it shall be no longer."

In particular, I shall, for the present, invite you to meditate on the shortness of time-that is, of the time of life; its shortness in relation to time absolutely considered; the shortness, still more, of that portion of life which can be rescued from the unavoidable demands of the body, and devoted singly, in contemplation and prayer, to the soul; and its shortness, in fine, and yet more emphatically, in comparison with the work we have to do, and the consequences that are depending on it.

First; the brevity of life, compared with time absolutely considered.

It is common I know to make the reflection that life is short, but I do not think it is common to feel it. Least of all is it common in the earlier periods of life. Its termination is, then, contemplated as afar off, amidst the shadows of age, amidst the dimness of an uncertain future; and life seems to be almost boundless. The indefinite is all that we mean by the boundless; and life possesses that indefiniteness, that it imposes upon the young mind almost the feeling that it has no end. There is another influence, tending to produce the same result; and that is worldliness. To the worldly mind, life is every thing. And if life is every thing, it must be something vast and immense. For we were made to grasp interests of infinite magnitude; the intellectual comprehension of a immortal mind must be of this nature. It must feel that the objects

which engross it, are vast and momentous. And therefore, although we fix our minds upon the little interests of a day, these interests instead of appearing to be the little things that they are, do rather swell out and expand, in our view, to an importance and durableness corresponding to the vastness of our capacities, to the reach of our desires, to the extent of our hopes. So that the greatness of our nature, instead of going out, as it ought to do, to the divine objects and enduring ages of a future life, often makes to itself a greatness of this world, and an immortality of this frail and fleeting life. So it must be. The feelings, the desires, the fears and hopes, the interests and the objects, that are wrapt up in the soul of man, must expand to an indefinable magnitude, and run onward to an indefinable duration.

If we would correct this erroneous estimate of things, let us, for a moment, compare our life with the generations that have gone before us. How many thousands and millions of human beings have lived and died, within the compass of known and recorded history! How many millions, just like ourselveswith just as many and capacious feelings and desires, with just as strong fears and hopes, with just as weighty interests and dear objects, have had their hour upon earth, and have passed away from the sum of human existence! How many generations have passed, like the passing clouds upon the face of the earth-how many generations, I say, have thus passed, of which, and compared with which, our life is but a vapor! What then is the stability or the permanency of our earthly being? What is it, when the lives or unnum

bered and innumerable millions, have all been included in the brief space of this world's duration? Look around upon your objects, and magnify them to the utmost, and, then, tell us what they are. You are a merchant. Your ships are traversing distant oceans. Your property is spread abroad, perhaps, on the waves of two hemispheres. Your plans, your expectations a re great, and life, in your account, is, also, something great. It seems to you, to have many treasures, and many long years in store for you. Life seems to you, it may be, to have a range sufficiently extensive to sat. isfy your desires. The world, you say, is enough for you. But where are the princely traders of Tyre and Tarshish? Where are the merchants of Babylon, that were the great men of the earth? And where are all their treasures? Is the breath of existence that was breathed in Babylon, three thousand years ago, and that you are breathing again, as soon to pass away-is this enough for you? Was the taper of shining prosperity, that was kindled in many a house in Rome, and went out ages since--that was kindled in the morning and died away at evening-was it a thing bright and enduring enough to satisfy all your desires? Nay, where are the men whose footsteps resounded on yonder pavements fifty years since ?-busy, active, prosperous, and perhaps, rich-where are they? A few years hence, another preacher will ask the same question concerning us, and the answer will come from our graves!

Or, you are a man, with the objects of ambition before you. You would be distinguished in your occupation, or pursuit, or profession, or in the style of