SATURDAY, January 4.  Go to Isaac Myer’s on Stony Creek, and stay at Louis Naselrodt’s all night.

SUNDAY, January 5.  Meeting in the Sulphur Spring schoolhouse.  Acts 3 is read.  Stay at Brother William Andes’s all night.

MONDAY, January 6.  Return home.  Snows all day.

THURSDAY, January 23.  Solemnize the marriage of David Hoover, near
Plain’s Mill, and Mary Zigler, of Timberville.

SUNDAY, January 26.  Attend the funeral of Mrs. Kootz, mother of our State Senator, Samuel Kootz.  Her age was seventy-three years, five months and twenty-eight days.

WEDNESDAY, February 12.  Attend the funeral of old mother Shultz.  Her age was seventy-five years.  I speak from Isaiah 3:10, 11.  Text:  “Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with them:  for they shall eat the fruit of their doings.  Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with them:  for the reward of their hands shall be given them.”

I regard these words of the prophet as being true, not only as applying to the world to come, but as applying with equal power to the life of man in this world.  A life of honesty, integrity, righteousness, in all we do, is not only policy or wisdom in respect to the world to come, but it is the best policy or highest wisdom in all the affairs of this life.  It secures the best results because it makes use of the best means to promote our own happiness here, and the happiness of all within the sphere of our influence.  Says the Psalmist:  “The leaf of the righteous shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.  He shall flourish like the palm tree.”  We are told that the palm tree, to which the righteous are here compared, is not only a very beautiful tree, but a very useful tree.  It casts a very delightful shade in the hot climates where it grows; from the abundance of its sap it affords water to the thirsty; and its excellent fruit supplies food to the hungry.

Whilst godliness, as Paul says, “is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and also of that which is to come;” still, the life to come is what should chiefly concern us here.  Our time in this world is so short, so brief, that it makes but little difference whether we are poor or rich, whether we weep or rejoice, whether we be sick or well, provided we have a clear title to a heavenly home, a clear title to an “inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.”  We may just as certainly get a true title to this heavenly possession by a proper course of life here as we can to a farm or any other property we may buy and pay for.  The difference, however, between the title to earthly possessions and that to a heavenly estate is that the first is visible to our natural eyes, and the last is not.  How justly the old adage, that “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” applies to the views and decisions of great numbers of people!  They talk of not risking a certainty for an uncertainty,—­the very thing they are doing.  Such make no preparation for death and eternity which are certainties; but all for life in this world, which is an uncertainty.