MORAL REFLECTIONS. 211 



that, deeming, as most do, death the greatest evil, he 

 should yet joy at its approach. If an opening year 

 warned a boy of the toils which awaited him, it may 

 surely whisper to men of death. And it does ! Get one 

 of the most stupid of those who are revellers at this 

 season to make a single moral remark, and that one will 

 be that he is now by a year nearer his grave than he was 

 twelve months ago. Prom reflections like these, though 

 custom, by giving its sanction to the festivities of the 

 season, has, after its usual manner, obscured every cir- 

 cumstance of its own beginning and growth, I can re- 

 gard that loud huzza which has penetrated even to this 

 recess, as that of madness raised to drown the deep low 

 murmurings of thought. Many are the reflections which 

 a closing and opening year suggest, and yet the writer 

 who would set himself to collect and arrange these 

 would find that there is little to be said of the years 

 which commenced and concluded seven hours ago which 

 has not been already said (perhaps well said) of some 

 preceding ones. . . . But in morals, regarded as the 

 rules of life, there is nothing commonplace. Filled with 

 a desire of making new acquirements and a love of 

 novelty, man is generally moving onward in knowledge, 



there is a law in his very nature which urges him on ; 

 but for that which is morally good he has no natural in- 

 clination. Before he quit his vicious habits he must be 

 threatened with the horrors of eternal punishment, nay, 

 perhaps made to feel in conviction a foretaste of these 

 horrors. Before he commence a course of virtuous actions, 

 he must be presented with the strongest motives, assur- 

 ance of eternal peace and joy, and what is necessarily 

 superior to any motive, he must be powerfully assisted 

 by the Spirit of God. Ah, my dear friend, there can 



surely be no commonplace in morals, whether by the 



