I therefore beg leave to move,
That henceforth, prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its
blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning
before we proceed to business; and that one or more of the clergy of
this city be requested to officiate in that service.
* * * * *
From his "Essays."
=_16._= THE EPHEMERON. AN EMBLEM.
"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race,
who lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the
Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I
think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent
motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in
my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end
of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the
waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness,
necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived
seven of those hours--a great age, being no less than four hundred and
twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen
generations born, flourish, and expire ... And I must soon follow them;
for, by the course of nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to
live above seven or eight minutes longer.
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