FRIENDS’ *s ae 4 F al A Religions, Fiterarp and Misa Sora. eal A Vou. XVI. PHILADELPHIA, FIRST MONTH 10, 1863. ° We 9 | - EDITED BY SAMUEL RHOADS, To whom all Communications may be addressed. PUBLISHED WEEKLY, “At No. 109 N. Tenth street, Philadelphia. Price, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE, Two dollars per annum, or six copies for Tem dollars. Postage on this paper, when paid quarterly or yearly in advance, 13 cents per annum in Pennsylvania, and 26 cents per annum in other States. mr “-| >’ For Friends’ Reyiew. NOTICES OF DAVID COOPER. No. XLII. The following reflections which seem appro- priatesto the time of the writer’s life now under review, are without date; but from an eg reference to his hair being not whitened, (as it certainly was before his decease,) they were prob- ably penned some years earlier, They were left in manuscript (not copied into his diary) and were prolate designed facile for his own own benefit. ' _ Thoughts on Death. Every period or portion of time has its em- ployment; the most useful and necessary is that which tends to prepare us for the succeeding. The activity and -the busy scene of childhood and youth, fit us for the life employed to provide and lay up a store against the winter “of life, or old age, when we can no longer labor; so that then, being provided with thin; needful, we may bid adieu to the active world, and © prepare or our great and last change. I seem ‘to be marshalled in this class. Mine appears to be the serious and awful busi- ness of declining age: for though years have not whitened my head, yet my infirmities tell | me that I afi old, and point at the grave. How oft has it gaped upon me when I have. been tottering on its brink, and m: Paitarinie tongue ready to call for my windyug. sheet ! ow ge have’I been trembling on the verge of ernity, when the thin partition seemed ready to open upén me! yet have I béen snatched as it were from the jaws of death, andiny portion of action allotted to} young men, and the energies of manhood are} of time lengthened out. I am still a ce with the living; and, while one friend drops - here, and another there, Tam yet continued a time. Thus, in addition to my days, can rr thing be more rational,—can an be more awfully necessary, than serious thoughts ae an industrious preparation for my long or ; less home? Let me ever indulge thieee Teflec- tions, that pour themselyes upon me, in my : soli- Ss lonely hours. eiugute en I view the rest of mankind around, ne, I consider that as we are fellow-possessors time, so shall we be joint-heirs of eterr and that we all have some occasion ‘to p for that hour which is so awfully appr But I am often surprised to think that creatures should be so regardless of the e: which they were created ;—the important 7 $ awful end ag which time i is given jas te playing with straws and trifling with f while the momentous concerns of efern disregarded. Erernity! “Sea nt mendous sound, Eternity !—Eternit — that word reach? where shall Cae sen ts to find its extent? If I str oe through myriads of ages, I sha nearer its ss if I reach through P thousand y are grains of sand: | be, and. that dean multiplied into itself, shail be 2 i nearer its end than when I began. And what have we, poor pensioners’ of a mo ment!—who are but as of yesterday, and x a even be gone to-morrow,—what have we in readiness for this state of. unmeasurab > dura- tion? Is the last moment of our time here fix our happiness or misery forever, without possibility of our condition being reverse Ah! can the thought enter the stoutest mind, without striking the deepest awe ? And is this awful, en eternity so seldom in our minds that it occupies the least of cr. thoughts, while the bubble of life engrosses the whole of our attention? A bubble indeed! a — feather! yea, less than a feather i in one scale,— when the whole creation of God is not “equal to ~ eternity in the other. What pains a ‘labor | do we bestow to acquire the goo f this life, which we can enjoy but for : .