Alexandria Gazette, Commercial And Political

From the Boston Patriot
ETERNITY.

"Eternity—amazing incomprehensible thought!—The more we strive to grasp the mighty object, the more it repels our efforts. Can man, frail man, arrest the orbs of heaven in their mighty course? Can he number the sands around the shores of ocean? Vain attempt! but even so, is the effort to fathom eternity. The mind of God himself, alone, can comprehend the mighty idea. We find ourselves placed (if I may be allowed the expression) in the centre of the great ocean of eternity.—This present point of time has an eternity past, and to come, of equal duration, On either side the verge is boundless, and far beyond the utmost ken of mortals. Let us then leave the awful subject to that being, with whom a thousand years are but as a day, and with whom an Eternity past, and to come, are as time present with ourselves.

But know, O man! that thy soul is commensurate with eternity. This frail tenement of clay, is the being of an hour; but that something, which guides, directs and animates the whole—by which we think, reason and compare, is the child of immortality. "So let us number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom." So let us live, as we should desire to exist through the great hour of death, and through a boundless eternity.

Mortal, thou art even now on the verge of that vast ocean, on which thou must shortly launch. Art thou prepared for the great voyage? Worlds unknown, from whence no visitant can return, are before thee.

The dark strait of death thou must surely pass Beyond, and on the one side, is despair, whose thousand whirlpools and boiling eddies have dashed the barks of millions on the rocks of misery; on the other is the gentle sea of peace. The mild zephyrs of spring, breathing on all the fragrance of Arabia fill the silken sails of the righteous, and waft their barks to the harbor of felicity Thou hast thy choice in this life: thou hast ample time to prepare for the voyage Pause, reflect, and oh! be persuaded,

"To put good works on board, and wait the wind,
Which wafts us shortly into worlds unknown."
YORICK.