have been desolated by cruel but necessary war, and then with a full
and grateful heart humbly thanked the God who has not only spared you
these heavy inflictions, but preserved all near and dear to you.

Oh ye young and happy! have you looked around you and thought of all
this, and then knelt in thankfulness for the blessings spared you?
Remembering _all this_, have ye on bended knees prayed, and fervently,
that this day may be the epoch on which to date your resolves to be
and to do better. Oh, may the present period be eventful, greatly
eventful, for time and eternity.

Let us pause awhile ere we commence another year, and take a
retrospective glance at the past. Can we bear to do so, or will day
after day, and hour after hour, rise up in judgment against us? Can we
bear to bring them into debtor and creditor account,--what offsets can
we make against those devoted to sin and frivolity?

Has every blessing and every mercy been taken as a matter of course,
and every pleasure been enjoyed with a thankless forgetfulness of the
hand from which it flowed? If such has been the case, let it be so no
longer; but awake and rouse ye from your lethargic slumber, be true to
yourselves, and remember that you are responsible beings, and will
have to account for all the time and talents misspent and misapplied.
Reflect seriously on the true end of existence and no longer fritter
it away in vanity and folly. Think of all the good you might have
done, not only by individual exertion, but by the influence of your
example. Then reverse the picture and ask if much evil may not
actually have occurred through these omissions in you.

To many of you too, life now presents a very different aspect to what