My dear sisters, it now devolves upon me to resign the office necessity rather than choice compelled me to accept, and I feel that in so doing, I shall best promote the interests of the Association.  I thank you for your kind forbearance toward my short comings, which have been many.  I regret that I have served you so inefficiently, and hope the better offices of the succeeding year may tend to the greater promotion of the holy objects of your Association.  And while we meet together, and pray together, and together wait for the harvest, may we be bound together in the love of Christ, and each succeeding year add new supplies of grace.

Yours, affectionately, in Christ,

A. S. Hanna.

Improvement of Time

There is nothing more necessary for our future welfare than the improvement of time.  Our time is too valuable to be spent in idleness.  If we wish to be respected, we must be industrious; and to be industrious we must know how to value our time.  Every moment must be spent as we should wish it had been when we come to years of discretion.  There are many things that we can busy ourselves in doing that will fill up a few leisure moments, and perhaps it will do some good.  If we are poor, we can relieve our parents in trying to assist them in the daily labors and toils of life, for hard must be the lot of that toil-worn father, and care-worn mother, who have a numerous family to maintain by their daily labor, all careless and indifferent of their hardships and fatigues.  If we are rich, we can make those happy around us by the thousand nameless attentions which the hand of industry alone can supply.  Therefore, whatever our situation in life may be, the good improvement of our time will not only tend to promote our usefulness, but our happiness.  Take for instance a man who has indulged in habits of indolence from his childhood, and see what it has brought him to.  He has been in the habit of lounging about the streets unemployed, or perhaps watching for opportunities for mischief; step by step he descends in his moral degradation; vice succeeds folly, till a dark catalogue of crimes brings him to a drunkard’s grave.  State prison, or the gallows.  While, on the other hand, take a man who has been accustomed to labor and toil for his daily food, and see how much more he is respected, and what a difference there is in the lives of those two men.  The one is beloved and respected, and the other is miserable and degraded.

The industrious man begins life, and perhaps has no better prospects before him than his companion; but see how much better he ends life than the other.  He begins to climb the ladder of science, and by perseverance, he will soon reach the top round, and he can not do this unless he improves his time.

We have ample proof that unless we improve our time we can not be happy or respected, and when we have a feeling of indolence come over us, we must shake it off and try to arouse our energies, and we must bear in mind that for every idle moment we must give an account at the bar of God on the judgment day, before God and man.