its passage then is one of the causes of our insensibility to the flight of time. It does not draw our notice to its departure by impressive alarms or affectionate entreaties; it makes no outcry to drown the din of an enthralling world; it tolls no knell to awaken the sleep of the indolent, or rouse the fears of the giddy, or quicken the remorse of the sinful. It moves on in profound, unbroken silence, and mingles with eternity with such stillness, as the last breath of the expiring mortal mingles with the vapors which surround his couch.

A still more powerful cause of our insensibility to the flight of time is our own unwillingness to mark it. The unwillingness to be called or thought old is something more serious than merely the foible of personal vanity. It often results from secretly lurking causes, of a nature far from ridiculous, though very blameable. The aversion to being thought or called old by others, is however more than surpassed by the reluctance we are all apt to feel towards the marking of departed days. In time we all feel rich; and poverty is what most are not willing to expose or to realize. But to feel poor in time is more painful than the sense of any other poverty. We are, in regard to the passage of time, like a man on the eve of bankruptcy, unwilling to be told the worst, or to look approaching ruin in the face. In fact, time, however we may waste its smaller portions, however we may even squander some of its most important periods, still has such a value in every one's eyes, that he would be loath to know how much he has actually lost of it. The limit of life is hidden in clouds,

and few are disposed to throw aside the veil, if they could. We are unwilling to notice seriously the passage of time, because we cannot bear to look back on past enjoyments with a realizing sense that they are past forever: we shrink from such reflections as would remind us of how much we have left undone, while it shows us the space in which we are to do what we must, continually narrowing. We do not like to be reproved for our indolence and our sloth, by too frequent a glance at the declining shades and too sober a gaze at the departing day. Our dread of those separations, which the flight of time must hasten, makes us backward to watch that flight. Finally, the fear of death, and that sort of uncertainty about futurity which even good minds are liable sometimes to feel, make us unwilling to mark the swiftness of the passage whose close must tear us away from all that we have known, and carry us to unknown and untried scenes of being. These two include the

most important causes of our of time.

insensibility to the flight

Let us now inquire, by what methods may we make ourselves more sensible to this subject? It has been said that the silence of its passage is one cause of our insensibility to the flight of time, but though time passes away thus silently, yet it does not leave us without some tokens of its departure. And it is by bringing ourselves carefully to notice these, that we shall correct the insensibility here complained of. Reflection on the days of our childhood and youth will impress us with the ra

pidity of the flight of time. The difficulty which we

meet with in calling back the lively image of these periods may make us feel the distance to which they have receded. How few of the events of the earlier stages of his being can any one recal. Even those whose sun has but just climbed to its meridian height, can scarcely picture to themselves the half of the scenes on which it dawned. And to their elders the most vivid recollections of that first period of life, are but faint and broken shadows. Reference to the days of childhood is one method then of awakening a sensibility to the flight of time. Another is, to review the changes we have witnessed. The passage of years is marked by changes which speak to us as loudly as would the most solemn language of admonition or entreaty. Time changes ourselves, our persons, our condition, our places of abode. It changes our friends and acquaintances. It changes society. It changes the world. Let him who has counted many days, recollect the changes he has witnessed in those around him and mark those of which he has himself been the subject. Altered fortunes, altered health, altered families, altered friends. The rising of one, and the falling of another; the growth of the young and the decay of the aged; the disappearance of one generation and succession of another. The changes in public opinions and customs, or private sentiments and manners;-the increase and improvements of the state; the variations of the world; and the fashion of it which passeth away. There are themes enough for the employment of any one's reflections. And by reflecting on these any one may impress himself with the flight of time. As year

hastens after year in every man's life, he becomes the subject and the witness of multiplied vicissitudes. If he were to confine himself to the enumeration of the hopes and wishes which had alternately risen and departed in his own bosom, he would start at the strides he has been taking in the march toward eternity. If we would affect our minds seriously on this subject, there should be given some seasons to the express purpose of contemplating and reviewing the past. The returns of such seasons as one's birth-day, or the anniversary of any particular event in our lives, or the first and last days of every year, afford opportunities which the pious mind will gladly improve. These seasons are each of them associated in our minds with innumerable circumstances which ought not to be forgotten, and which, if properly considered, would not only give rise to the affections of gratitude or piety to God, but touch our hearts with the useful, though melancholy impression of the rapid flight of time.

A proper sensibility to this subject is necessary both to the duties and happiness of life. He who does not enter into it, cannot act with propriety in any period of life. The youth, who thoughtlessly overlooks the rapidity with which these best days of life flee away, will squander them in folly, and neglect to make that improvement of them which alone can secure usefulness and dignity to his future years. And in the aged, who should by experience have learned to mark with seriousness their successive advances to the grave, it is the more criminal and hazardous to neglect it. To be

thoughtless of time's value and unmindful of its departure, while life is yet new and the race just commenced, is less strange, and more excusable. But to stand on the very verge of eternity, with the sands of life fast declining, when every day and hour assumes an increased importance from the probability that so few of them remain, is a presumption hard to be excused as to be accounted for. Certainly no one who is insensible to the flight of time can have properly realized that it is a talent for which he must give account. Nor is it to be expected that he will be diligent to fill it up with the full measure of duty. We should also be not less hap

ру for the most serious attention to this subject. There is no happiness in levity; none in squandering upon idleness or pleasure the period given us for our probation for eternity. To feel with what certainty and swiftness we are advancing to the inevitable hour, when we can no longer keep our hold on any thing below, may serve to moderate our desires and give sobriety to our enjoyments, but it will not deprive us of one solid comfort. To the pious mind, at least, it will not give a lasting pain to indulge in those reflections which awaken a sensibility to the flight of time; for the rapid departure of the present period is only bearing it onward to the goal, where its highest wishes are continually going before. And after all, since the flight of time is inevitable alike to one as to another, and none can stay its course or return upon his steps, it were wisdom in any one to impress his mind with the fact so seriously, as to prepare himself to meet the event to which he is drawing