Saturday Evenings; A Series of Moral and Religious Essays

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845. Excerpt: ... SATURDAY EVENINGS. SATURDAY EVENING. How pleasantly do the subdivisions of time diversify our existence. The birth of the year, the grateful change of day and night, and the revolving week, vary agreeably the monotony of life, and form as it were so many rests, from which we may look back on the way we have come, or throw a wishful glance towards the future--that future through which we so passionately long to pierce,--in whose uncertainty we build so many baseless fabrics. No evening is to me more welcome, than that which closes in the week; the hurry and rush of business seem to pause, the anxious cares that occupy us are hushed or suspended, our six days' work is done, and we gladly prepare to take our rest. To those who think at all, the reflections which the last evening of the week suggest, must partake of a serious character. "Whose day so bright, that its rapid flight Leaves not a trace of sorrow?" Few can review, even a week, whose events have been unruffled in their course. An unkind look from a friend, the taunt of an enemy, the regretted folly, the unguarded word,--who so wise as not to commit the one, or so fortunate as always to escape the other 1 Whose cup is so unmixed as not sometimes to taste of these bitter ingredients 1 The flight of time, too, the swiftness with which the winged hours (an epithet too true for poetry) pass by, if we would pause to note it, might well sober the most heedless. Inconsistent as we are, we allow and feel the force of this truth, and yet by our passions and follies, "shake with mad haste the golden sands of life." The hopes, enterprizes and novelties of a new existence, veil its termination from the eye of youth; but as the stream bears us on, these intervening objects lessen or disappear, and the tomb stand...