s may easily slip away, if
unwatched _will_ slip, and once past thy hand it will be borne off by the
rushing river and thou shalt never see it again, but if caught, held and
brought to the mint of the great King it will there be turned into
precious coin to serve in perpetuity the double purpose of enriching man
and recording the majesty of God. Seize upon thy days as they pass! The
heavens tell thee to do it; the dark and mantled earth tells thee; thy
drowsy faculties tell thee; thy weary limbs tell thee; all are saying
"numbered, numbered, numbered." Life is running away fast.

Not only for days but "for years." The days, as I have said, are short;
they pass rapidly, and we calculate that the days of our years are
threescore years and ten. And when you come to multiply 70 by 365 it
makes a very large number, and if we have lost a few handfuls of days,
well, cannot we make them up? Have we not been young, and are we not in
this pleasant watering place, where one must see life and have a little
pleasure, and if we do throw away a few days, why, cannot we recover
them? Can we say that of the years? Are the years so very
plentiful--such a large number assured to you that you can afford to
squander a few, to turn them not only to useless purposes but to bad
ones. Can you?--the years!--oh is not it wonderful, the way in which thy
Lord and my Lord, thy Creator and my Creator, marks out before our eye
the progress of the years?

Perhaps you may remember in childhood watching the day as it grew and
spread itself out, making conquests from the night and winning moments,
minutes, hours, till you began to think the day was going to do away the
night. You saw it stretching over the hours that once were dark till it
seemed as if the tips of the sunset touched the tips of the sunrise, and
still the light was gaining so that in a little time the darkness would
be all driven away and it would be day the twenty-four hours round. But
just then the night began to come back and the day grew shorter, dimmer,
colder, and the darkness spread itself over the light till it seemed as
if in its turn the day was going to be quenched and darkness to wrap up
the whole twenty-four hours. But then the day returned.

Was it an accident this first time? Would it ever occur again? You
watched it: just the same process and at the same time, and you began to
feel--it is a wheel! with its regulated, measured appointed movement;
steady, by r