"Families, and nations, and the mighty generations of mankind,which, in times gone by, peopled the earth, have all passed away.Nothing remains of them here below!

"But such is not the case in heaven,--I should rather say,--ineternity. There, all these nations still exist, no man can be absent,but must appear before the Sovereign Judge, to answer for the usewhich he has made of his time.

"How short that time is! Where are the years that David lived, andwhere are those which Methuselah passed in this world? their whomleduration seems, at this distance, in the words of St. James, 'Even asa vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.'