born of a woman is of few days, that he cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not."
Others there are on whom the interests of life have very strong hold, who relax their thoughts by pleasure, or enchain them by attention to wealth or power; and yet feel, with forcible conviction, the importance of futurity; in whose breasts pious intentions are often budding, though they are quickly nipped by secular desires. Such men suffer frequent disturbance from the remonstrances of reason, and the reproaches of conscience, and do not set reason and conscience at defiance, but endeavour to pacify them with assuasive promises of repentance and amendment. They know that their present state is dangerous, and, therefore, withdraw from it to a fancied futurity, in which whatever is crooked is to be made straight; in which temptations are to be rejected, and passions to be conquered: in which wisdom and piety are to regulate the day; in which every hour shall have its proper duty. The morning shall awake beneficence, and the evening still the soul in gratitude and devotion.
Purposes like these are often formed, and often forgotten. When remorse and solitude press hard upon the mind, they afford a temporary refuge, which, like other shelters from a storm, is forsaken, when the calm returns. The design of amendment is never dismissed, but it rests in the bosom without effect. The time convenient for so great a change of conduct is not yet come. There are hindrances which another year will remove; there are helps which some near event will supply. Day rises after day, and one year follows another, and produces nothing, but resolutions without effect, and self-reproach without reformation. The time destined for a new life lapses in silence; another time is fixed, and another lapses; but the same train of delusion still continues. He that sees his danger, doubts not his power of escaping it; and though he has deceived himself a thousand times, loses little of his own confidence. The indignation excited by
