The Highway Forums Announcements What's New on The Highway website? "A New Year's Gift!" - by Samuel Davies

TIME, like an ever-running stream, is perpetually gliding on, and hurrying each of us into the boundless ocean of eternity! We are now entering upon one of those imaginary lines of division, which men have drawn to measure out TIME for their own convenience; and, while we stand upon the threshold of a new year, it befits us to make a solemn contemplative pause; though time can make no pause—but rushes on with its usual velocity. Let us take some suitable reviews and prospects of time past and future, and indulge such reflections as our transition from year to year naturally tends to suggest.

The grand and leading reflection is that in the text, with which I present you as a New-Year's Gift: ”Knowing the time—that it is now high time to awake out of sleep!”

The connection of our text is this—The apostle, having enjoined sundry duties of religion and morality, subjoins this consideration, namely—that the time remarkably required them, as if he should say, “Be subject to magistrates, and love one another, and that because, knowing the time, that it is now high time, or the proper hour, to awake out of sleep. A sleepy negligence as to these things is peculiarly unreasonable at such a time as this!”