ONE DROP AT A TIME by Smith

Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Dec 12, 1854

ONE DROP AT A TIME.

By Smith

"Life," says the late John Foster, "is expenditure; we have it, but are as continually losing it; we have it, but are as continually wasting it. Suppose a man confined in some fortress, under the doom to stay there till death; and suppose there is there for his use a dark reservoir of water, to which it is certain none can ever be added. He may suppose the quantity is ever great; he cannot penetrate to know how much, but it may be very little. He has drawn from it, by means of a fountain a good while already, and draws from it every day. But how would he feel each time of drawing and each time of thinking of it? Not as if he had a perennial spring to go to. Not, I have a reservoir, I may be at ease. No! but I had water yesterday—I have water to-day; but having had it, and my having it to-day, is the very cause that I shall not have it on some day that is approaching. And at the same time I am compelled to this fatal expenditure! So of our moral transient life! And yet men are very indisposed to admit the plain truth, that life is a thing which they are in no other way possessing than as necessarily consuming; one that even in this imperfect sense of possession, it becomes every day a less possession." Smith.