Macon Intelligencer

TIME. Time is the most indefinable yet paradoxical of all things; the past is gone, the future is not yet come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires. Time is the measure of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed. Like space, it is incomprehensible, because it has no limits, and it would be still more so if it had. It is more obscure in its sources than the Nile, and in its termination than the Niger, and advances like the swiftest torrent. It gives wings of lightning to pleasure, but feet of lead to pain, and lends expectation a curb but enjoyment a spur. It robs beauty of her picture, and builds a monument to merit but denies it a house; it is the transient and deceitful flatterer of falsehood, but the tried and final friend of truth. Time is the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing, is permitted to take all; nor can it be satisfied until it has stolen the world from us and us from the world. It constantly flies yet overcomes all things by flight, although it is the present only, it will be the future conqueror of death. Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of repose; it is the tenderest nurse of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; but like Cassandra, it warns us with a voice that even the sagest discredit too long and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, and repentance behind it; he that made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies; but he that made it his enemy will have but little to hope from his friends.

Rev. C. C. Colton.