Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1866-05-05
we may not Live to be Old.

yew reaches much greater age; a church
yard among our Scottish mountains boast
ing one, specially mentioned by Humbot,
under whose green canopy we have sat,
which dourished in the days Of Solomon,
and stood white with SHOWS or hoar frost,
mighty tree, that Ch istmas eve, on which
our Lord was born. In contrast with the
mighty forms end stubborn lives of trees
that, yielding slowly to their doom, look
down on the graves Of many generations,
ore their leaves. Fragile and fading
these are often uipped in the bud; they are
easily crushed; their lives does not extend
beyond few months; the cold Of autumn
is their death; and the SHOWS Of winter is
their shfond
For these reasons o leaf has been sa
cred emblem with poets both sacred and
profane, of man, or OF bis feebleness, oi
his,mortality. So, when stripped of all his
prosperity, his children suddenly whelmed
into a common grave, these dead griefs and
bis wife living one, his few friends the
miserable comforters, whose unskilful hands
widen the wounds they sought to close, so
spake job; turning to God, he plaintively
expostulates with Him, crying, wilt thou
break q leaf driven to and fro2 Thus
also spake the prophet who saw picture
of man, bis sins and sorrows, where the
wind at close of autumn tearing through
the tinted woods swept off their leaves in
showers, and scattered them whrlng aud
eddying along the ground-We all, he ex
claimed, do fade as leaf and our nquities
like the wind have carried US away.
We fade rs leaf! In one sense we do,
in another we do not. Most leaves live
out all their days, but not many men-few
men, th Shalf of them. Of all our race
nearly half die in infancy and are torn
from mothers bosoms to lie 10 tho cold
arms Of death Anotbor large proportion
drop into tie grave ere the summer of. lite
is past The woods retain their foliage
till days grow short, and fruits grow mel
low, and fields ripe to tie reaper's sickel,
but bow small the number of men who sur.
vive its gray hairs and stopping form, slow
steps and shuffIing gait, to wear the marks
Of age ere th' y follow their companions to
the tomb2 Ask the hoary old man where
are the boys who sat by him at the
desk in school; where the youth flushed
with health aud full Of hope. with whom
be started 10 the race of life; where the
guests OF his board, his competitors or his
partners in business? In the grave! moul
dering in the grave: save one and another
who, amid new faces now find themselves
to be strangers on this earth; and remain
the last vestages of their generation, cling
ing to life jnst as | have seen a few leaves
hanging on the tree, and whirling in the
winter wind when the skies were dark with
orms, aud fields were white with snow.
To the eye of faith, this survey, these
bills of mortality present nothing melan.
choly. An early death to those who are
in Christ, is but another expression for
early deliverence, aud if in place of being
| long becalmed, or tossed about by storms,
aud perhaps driven out once aud sguiu to
sea when their ship was in sight of land,
whose voyagers to make q short passage
couut themselves happy fortunate, are not
they rather to be envied than pilied
who, by al early death, escape m lch OF
the sin and sorrow Of this worid7 Like
birds of passage they just light GU it, rest
for little while, and then, as if they found
nothi G TO proloug their stay, take wing
again and soar up to heaven. Viewed ia
his aspect, but for the cold, the crucllies,
the hunger, the wants and sufferings which
springing to large extent from parental
| vices, account for the circumstance, there
is nothing melancholy in the shortuess of
many lives, aud that nearly the half of all
born, die under Eve years Of age; leaving
small fraction to see three score years
and len. But what more melancholy, more
marvellous, than to see thousands setting
at nought these well established facts; de-
laying their salvation, and where interests
of the highest moment are coDcered count.
ing on years which not one in hundred
of them shall ever reach 2 No wise man
acts with such infatuation in other and
far less important matters.