The husbandman may sow his fields and prepare them for the time of harvest. He may do all that mortal skill and contrivance can do to ensure plenty and prevent defection; still the blight may descend, the tempest may scatter devastation around, and all his high-raised expectations at once be overthrown. We may trace similar possibilities through all the gradations of human undertaking, but the time does not permit me to pursue them further. The lesson which they furnish however is at once awful and salutary. "We know not what a day may bring forth, for who knoweth what is good for a man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow?" Notwithstanding that human existence is at best but" as a shadow that departeth ;" although it be crowded with disappointments, and every event of it, being uncertain, must be beyond our control; still it is to the life present that the cares of most of us are, almost exclusively, directed. Does this happen because it is more to be desired than the life to come? No! it is because we distrust God by placing too much trust in ourselves. We imagine, and after this we are constantly striving, that we may continually advance towards the perfection of our temporal condition by our own unaided endeavours; that we can render ourselves progressively happier by adding to our means of worldly enjoyment, and that we can constitute this a state of preliminary happiness, which was only designed to be a state of probation. I do not—I would not for a moment, suggest that this world should be made the constant abode of melancholy; that we are to indulge in no agreeable enjoyments; that we are to forget all the tender relations of kindred and social union, and devote ourselves to gloomy abstractions, to a religion of alarming terrors: but I do contend that all the interests of this brief existence, to a candidate for eternal communion with Christ, must be secondary to those which he hopes to perfect in futurity. If, as in the parable, the rich man should say, because his ground had brought forth plentifully, “I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry;” surely he must be any thing but wise unto salvation," if he devotes L'owed only to his pleasures upon the Eare premation of a long life; since he cannot but know that th voice of the Avenger may unexpertety wond in his ears these terrible tidings, this night shall thy soul be required of thee, then those shall those things be which thou hast provided?" I know of no subject more important, and none therefore that more deserves our attention, than the uncertainty of time with respect to us all; of our utter uncontrol over its events; of the certainty of its termination, and of our existence beyond it. These subjects indeed contain matter for constant reflection, and perhaps there is no period so well adapted, as the termination of a departing year and the beginning of a new one, for such a solemn employment of our minds. We are now about to enter upon a new year, but God alone can know how many among us shall reach its conclusion. I may safely affirm that before the expiration of the next twelve months some of this present assembly shall descend into the tomb; others shall suffer unexpected misfortunes; disappointments shall overtake some, and less happiness than we calculate upon shall, more than probably, be the portion of us all. We are looking through the dark glass of futurity into the coming time. We are possibly at least many among us-forming schemes of future enjoyment, of which this world is at once the object and the limit. They, who fancy themselves righteous, think they may look forward with security, because "God hath accepted their offerings;" and they, who still mean to continue in their sins, look forward perhaps with equal confidence, because they are assured that "the tender mercies of God are over all his works." But how can any one pre sume to calculate upon his own interests here so earnestly, when he sees every day, every hour, every moment, how human calculations are defeated! The good, the bad, the prudent, the incautious, the wise, the fool, the happy and the wretched, are alike called upon unexpectedly to bear reverses; some to exchange conditions, others to aggravated sufferings; others again to unexpected prosperity, for "all things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked, to the good and to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath." To look for good from the loving-kindness of God, and to hope for prosperity from his favour, are indeed laudable objects of expectation; but to look for success, comfort, enjoyment, solely from ourselves, is a direct violation of the principles of christian humility and a bar to the attainment of christian grace. Life temporal is only allotted to us to prepare for life eternal. All the interests of the one must consequently merge in those of the other. What therefore must be our fatuity in giving the whole attention of our minds merely to the concerns of this world? A new year is opening before us, let those then who are still unreformed make it the auspi R |