14 Critical days

I would not make Man worse than he is, nor his condition more miserable than it is. But could I though I would?

As a man cannot flatter God nor overpraise him, so a man cannot injure Man nor undervalue him.

So man must be reminded that those false happinesses which he has in this world have their times and their seasons and their critical days and they are judged according to the times when they befall us.

What poor elements are our happinesses made of if time, time which we can scarce consider to be any thing, be an essential part of our happiness?

All things are done in some place, but if we consider place to be no more but the next hollow surface of the air, alas how thin and fluid a thing is air and how thin a film is a surface and a surface of air?

All things are done in time too. But if we consider time to be but the measure of motion, with three stations, past, present and future, yet the first and last of these are not. One is not now and the other is not yet.

Even the present is not now the same that it was when you began to call it so. Before you sound that word present, or that monosyllable now, the present and the now is past.

If this imaginary half-nothing, time, is the essence of our happinesses how can they be thought durable? Time is not so; how can they be thought to be?

If we consider eternity, into that time never entered. Eternity is not an everlasting flux of time. Time is a short parenthesis in a long period, and eternity had been the same as it is though time had never been.

If we consider not eternity but perpetuity, not that which had no time to begin in, but which shall outlive time and shall be even when time shall be no more, what a minute is the life of the most durable creature compared to that?

And what a minute is Man’s life in respect of the sun’s or of a tree?

And yet how little of our life is occasion, opportunity to receive good in, and how little of that occasion do we apprehend and lay hold of?

How busy and perplexed a cobweb is the happiness of man? He must be made up with watchfulness to lay hold upon occasion which is but a little piece of that which is nothing, time.

And yet the best things are nothing without time. Honours, pleasures, possessions presented to us out of time in our decrepit old age lose their office and lose their name.

They are not honours to us who shall never come abroad into the eyes of the people to receive honour from them who give it.

They are not pleasures to us who have lost our sense to taste them, nor possessions to us who are departing from the possession of them.

Youth is their day that judges them, that denominates them, that makes them honours and pleasures and possessions.

When they come in senility they come as a cordial when the funeral bell rings out, as a pardon when the head is off.

We rejoice in the comfort of fire, but does any man cleave to it in midsummer?

We are glad of the freshness and coolness of a vault, but does any man keep his Christmas there?

Are the pleasures of the spring acceptable in autumn?

If happiness be in the season or in the climate how much happier then are birds than men, who can change the climate and accompany and enjoy the same season ever