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    sake of the thorn by which it was attended , and the joy , when it is reaped , will be rendered more precious for having been purchased at a price so dear . The retrospect of the past year is , therefore , on the whole , a scene replete with incentives to gratitude ; and , while we look back upon its various and eventful course , —while we contemplate the many and mournful events by which other lands and homes have been desolated while our own

    have been spared , —while we trace through the progress of each successive season the mercy which has enabled us to enjoy its blessings , —can we withhold from our Maker the tribute of thankfulness which the bounties of the departed year so justly demand , and for which its voice so eloquently calls ? At such a period .

    and amid such thoughts , can we refuse , can we neglect , to remember our Creator ? To let our praise arise like incense , and the lifting up of our hands like the evening sacrifice before the Throne of Omnipotent Love ? Oh , rather let the voice of the past awaken us to grateful devotion and to solemn praise ! In the house of the God who , in the words of the Psalmist , has crowned another year with His goodness , let the memory of that " goodness" _ pass before us , and excite within us emotions of sacred love towards Him , from whom every good and perfect gift cometh down , which the children of mortality are privileged to enjoy . The God who has remembered us in the spirit of his mercy —who enables us to assemble in health and peace , and to look back upon the scenes of another of those annual periods , threescore and ten of which are specified by the Psalmist as the

    average limitation of human life—that God , my brethren , it is our duty to remember , and that love it ought to be our happiness to praise . Let then the bounty of the Creator be unforgotten by His creatures , —let the love of our Father in Heaven be requited by His children ;—and let the requiem which we breathe over the grave of buried time , be a heartfelt hymn of thanksgiving and praise , to the benign and pitying spirit who inhabiteth eternity .

    Such are the sentiments which the past is calculated to awaken in the present . Its lessons , however , are not limited to the present—they have also an important relation to the future . Looking back , as we are , upon another portion of human life departed , the moral which it conveys will be imperfectly developed , if we

    only learn from it that we ought to be grateful for the various mercies which have distinguished its course . The voice of the buried year delivers , as it were from its grave , prophetic oracles for the guidance of the future ; and the period which is opening upon us may be spent more worthily and wisely , if we act upon the instructions of that which is gone . The first lesson which it inculcates is that of trust in God . We have seen once more the promise of the Almighty to the infant world made good , and the seasons , in their resplendent order , renewing the covenant which was sealed by the bow of God over the waters of the Deluge ,

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    Devotional Thoughts on the JSTew Yea ** t 3

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1832, page 13, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1804/page/13/