Remember the myriad shafts of death which have hailed thick around you, striking down friend and kinsman, yet sparing you another year. Remember these things; and remember, too, that that deadly hail is still sweeping, driving, drifting across the very path you have to walk in the opening year before you. Remember, that as you "trip the light fantastic toe" along the path of life, ten thousand graves are yawning in your track; graves for the young and graves for the old-graves for the rich and graves for the poor; graves for the strong man, with his brawny arm, and for the healthy maiden, with her ruddy lip; and graves for the weak and haggard, with the pallid cheek and sunken eye; and, remember, that one of these graves is yours! Even that thought might be of little worth if you could give yourself to the heyday of the passing hour, and whistle off the future “Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die ;" but you dare not do it; you know that there is something after death: you know that after death comes the judgment. O, libertine, you may laugh at these things now. So long as hot-flushed passion hurries you away from thought, you may sneer at all that methodist remonstrance which reminds you that you have a soul, and urges you to think of it; but the time will come when that voice of prayer, which now in your delirium you despise, will pour from your lips with the energy and vehemence of dread despair. If you will not come to that God, whose mercy you now contemn, you will pray to the rocks and to the hills to cover you from the wrath you durst not despise. And though now in "the day of visitation," you heedlessly "play fantastic tricks before high heaven;" yet, when "the great day of His wrath" shall come, O then will be the time to tremble, and cry, "who is able to stand."

O my brother! O my sister! if you never gave car to the Gospel of God's love before, hearken to it now, as this dying Sabbath of a dying year floats its music to your ears once more. The arms of God are open still-the cross of Jesus is accessible

to the chief of sinners still. It is true now, as when the oath was taken, "As I live saith the Lord God, I delight not in the death of a sinner, but rather that he would turn from his wicked way and live." Will you take him at His word? There is not time to be making up your mind, to be framing and unframing resolutions, and to be hesitating where and when to turn. Conscience tells you where and when. A mother's grave tells you where and when. The passing hearse, the tolling bell, the thick-strewn cemetery, the myriad epitaphs, which measure yielded lives by months or by fourscore years; these things tell you where and when. Time: Eternity: the Bible: Earth: Heaven and Hell, all tell you where and when. They point you to Jesus, and there is your refuge; they speak to you to-day, and now is your accepted time. O, these are solemn moments, while this Sabbath day is slipping by! The last sands of the hour glass of the old year are falling upon many a grave. O hear the sound of mercy in the message of the season, and "to-day if ye will hear that voice, harden not your heart."

From yonder belfry, midnight
Tolls out with solemn knell,
Up, brothers, in your circle
And bid the year farewell!
'Mid seasons long since past
It takes its place at last;

It brought us joy and sorrow too,
And placed the grave in closer view.

Through stated changes circling,
The time rolls swiftly on,

It blooms, matures, and ages,
And is-oblivion !

The storied pages glimmer,

But make the rest seem dimmer,

And beauty, riches, fame, and might,

Sink deep with time in empty night.

This Christmas finds us living,
But who-a year ago-
This night with friends enjoying,
Seem'd yet in health's full glow?

Ah! to his rest departed,

Is many a true hearted!

Join voices while we drop a tear-
"Peace to the loved one's silent bier."

Who knows on whom the summons
Of death this year may wait?
Without one moment's warning
May come the call of fate!
While May her garland weaves,
Drop withered laurel leaves;

Those who remain e'en while they weep,

Shall whisper "Peace to them that sleep!"

The Christian's eyelids only

In peaceful hope may close,
And heaven with blissful visions
Shall sweeten his repose.
His slumbers shall be brief,
Released from this world's grief,

And God shall raise him, crowned with light,
To conscious bliss in realms more bright.

Take courage, brothers! courage!
What tho' we yield our breath,
The good shall yet find blessings,
Alike in life or death!

There we shall meet each other,
And hymn our bliss together;

Then "blessings on you while yet here,"
Shall be our prayer for this New Year!

Time's restless tide has flowed and ebbed once more, and now we stand upon the sands to watch the rising of another billow from that ever-moving ocean. The wave which has just lapsed away for ever was, for the most part, swollen and sad; it was a more than commonly heavy heaving of the great ocean's breast. It surged in with the troublous wail of war, and it has moaned somewhat drearily as it rose and fell. Its earliest ripple carried a cry from Southern Europe, and was tinged with the blood of patriots grappling to be free. The war-cry deepened on the wave as the west wind swept over it, and Britain heard the voices of the sons of her own soil in angry outcry and in fratricidal strife, and the rising billow showed the deeper and more shuddering tinge of the blood of brethren spilt. And its last roar, as it retired and left its surf behind it on the rock, was vocal with the noise of challenge and defiance, not only between brethren of one state and country, but between mother and child of one blood and birth. And that surf which 1861 leaves behind it, both on the shores of Albion and Columbia, may be likened to the rabid foam around the lips of the maddened dogs of war.

The wave has beaten heavily on thrones. In some cases it has surged to the highest step, and washed away the monarch