that is almost awful, when your affairs are all going happily, when your mind is clear and equal to its work, when your bodily health is unbroken, when your home is pleasant, when your income is ample, when your children are healthy and merry and hopeful,—­in looking on to Future Years.  The more happy you are, the more there is of awe in the thought how frail are the foundations of your earthly happiness,—­what havoc may be made of them by the chances of even a single day.  It is no wonder that the solemnity and awfulness of the Future have been felt so much, that the languages of Northern Europe have, as I dare say you know, no word which expresses the essential notion of Futurity.  You think, perhaps, of shall and will.  Well, these words have come now to convey the notion of Futurity; but they do so only in a secondary fashion.  Look to their etymology, and you will see that they imply Futurity, but do not express it. I shall do such a thing means I am bound to do it, I am under an obligation to do it.  I will do such a thing means I intend to do it.  It is my present purpose to do it.  Of course, if you are under an obligation to do anything, or if it be your intention to do anything, the probability is that the thing will be done; but the Northern family of languages ventures no nearer than that towards the expression of the bare, awful idea of Future Time.  It was no wonder that Mr. Croaker was able to east a gloom upon the gayest circle, and the happiest conjuncture of circumstances, by wishing that all might be as well that day six months.  Six months!  What might that time not do?  Perhaps you have not read a little poem of Barry Cornwall’s, the idea of which must come home to the heart of most of us:—­

  “Touch us gently, Time! 
  Let us glide adown thy stream
  Gently,—­as we sometimes glide
  Through a quiet dream. 
  Humble voyagers are we,
  Husband, wife, and children three;—­
  One is lost,—­an angel, fled
  To the azure overhead.

“Touch us gently, Time!  We’ve not proud nor soaring wings:  Our ambition, our content, Lies in simple things.  Humble voyagers are we, O’er life’s dim, unsounded sea, Seeking only some calm clime:—­ Touch us gently, gentle Time!”

I know that sometimes, my friend, you will not have much sleep, if, when you lay your head on your pillow, you begin to think how much depends upon your health and life.  You have reached now that time at which you value life and health not so much for their service to yourself, as for their needfulness to others.  There is a petition familiar to me in this Scotch country, where people make their prayers for themselves, which seems to me to possess great solemnity and force, when we think of all that is implied in it.  It is, Spare useful lives! One life, the slender line of blood passing into and passing out of one human heart, may decide the question, whether wife and children