the thoughts, the
talents; the improvement we might have made, and made not; the good we
might have done, and did not; the health, and strength, and intellect,
that may not be our's to-morrow, and have not been used to-day; will not
conscience whisper of it ere they sleep to-night? The days of man were
shortened upon earth by reason of the wickedness the Creator saw.
Threescore years and ten are now his portion, and often not half the
number. They pause not; they loiter not: the hours strike on, and they
may even go, for it seems they are all too much."

The young, with minds as yet unstored, full of error, full of ignorance
in all that it behooves them most to know, unfit alike as yet for earth
or heaven--the old, whose sum of life is almost told, and but a brief
space remaining to repair their mistakes and redeem the time they have
lost--the simple and ungifted, who, having from nature but little, need
the more assiduity to fulfill their measure of usefulness, and make that
little do the most it may--the clever and highly talented, who have an
almost appalling account to render for the much received--they all have
time to waste. But let them remember, time is not their own; not a
moment of it; but is the grant of Heaven; and Heaven gives nothing
without a purpose and an end. Every hour that is wasted, fails of that
purpose; and in so far as it is wasted or ill-spent, the gift of Heaven
is misused, and the misuse is to be answered for. Methinks I would be
allowed to whisper nightly in the ears of my young friends as they lie
down to rest, "How many minutes have you lost to-day, that might have
been employed in your own improvement, in our Maker's service, or for
your fellow-creature's good?"

NOVEL-READING.

Novel-reading produces a morbid appetite for excitement. The object of
the novelist, generally, is to produce the highest possible degree of
excitement, both of the mind and the passions. The object is very
similar to that of intoxicating liquors on the body: hence, the
confirmed novel-reader becomes a kind of _literary inebriate_, to whom
the things of _entity_ have no attractions, and whose thirst cannot be
slaked, even with the water of life. And as intoxication enfeebles the
body, and engenders indolent habits, so this unnatural stimulus
enfeebles the intellectual powers, induces mental indolence, and unfits
the mind for vigorous efforts. Nothing less stimulating than its
accustomed aliment can rouse