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    hour , than the critical scholar can confer on the world through years of varied labours , for then it is that just measure is taken of human strength and weakness . The grand object of living stands out in bold relief , and the coming years u T > 0 take a sober colouring from the eye That hath Icept watch o'er man ' s mortality . *'

    The dawning of a New-Year ' s Day is one of those periods when , if ever , the spirit may be supposed to be awake to contemplations like these . We open our eyes upon a world which looks indeed just as it did yesterday , but to our minds it cannot seem the same . Last night , we think , another of those rolling years which swell the grand account between the world and its Creator was completed . The balance of last year ' s good and evil was struck . We , too , a portion of God ' s family , with our ° responsibilities to him and to our fellow-creatures , -have , each in his individual capacity , fulfilled one more of those portions of time allotted to us for the work he has given us to

    do . We look behind and before . Either way there are unperishing things . Our memory may trace out many actual delusions in our past pursuits , but , let them have been as empty and unsubstantial in reality as possible , still their traces on the character may be deep and permanent . Though the friends we have loved may be gone from us like a cloud , and experience has taught us that riches take to themselves wings and fly away ; though the grand and beautiful of nature or art may have been given to our eyes but

    for a few hours , yet the feeling has been awakened , the lesson learnt , the memory stored . And again , though the immediate ill effects of many of bur faults may have been done away , yet some of the spiritual evil probably remains deep in our hearts . Habits have been contracted which must be broken through , —a weary work for the coming year . Happy for us , if , even from these bitter roots , we learn to extract some nourishment for our better nature , some lesson of self-denial , some fresh convictions of the

    infinite value of an Everlasting Friend and a Comforter who can neither be unfaithful nor weary . But we look too at the less humiliating sources from whence good has come to us . Kind arrangements of Providence have often rendered duty sweet in all its stages . There have been visitings of cheerful thoughts ,

    sights of childish happiness and peaceful old age ; we have had the evervarying aspects of nature , the view of all that fair progeny which deck our gardens or nlossofn in our hedge-rows , constantly directing our hearts into the love of him who made them all so beautiful . We have had some pleasant associations with our earthly houses of prayer , some seasons of comfort in approaching the memorials of our Saviour ' s love , and more than all , if we have duly sought them ,

    " Some source of consolation from above , Secret refreshings , that repaired our strength , And fainting spirits upheld . " These and a thousand other influences have been po > ured out upon us from

    the fountains of jpercy and love . We have had them at morning dawn and evening close . How touching is the remembrance of them ! How dreadful the thought of standing in a world so rich in mementos of its Creator , unrebuked and unimproved ! Well may we bow down our heads in the dust and say , " From all blindness and hardness of heart , God , in his mercy , deliver to ! But " , during this portion of life , we have not been merely acted upon ; we

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    2 New Year * s Morning ,

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1830, page 2, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2580/page/2/