The aim of Transcribe Georgian Papers is to produce useable text documents of the manuscript materials and not critical editions. Please be aware this document may contain errors in the transcription.
Found an error? Please report errors and issues in the transcription to transcribegpp@wm.edu.
of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that, after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever? There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. We are complaining of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements, or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it. Now let us consider what happens to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest: Do we stop our motion, and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no
