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Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 2, Issue 27, 3 January 1850, Page 1

We have attained another of those stages, in the fitful journey of life, at which mankind are wont to pause; and, casting a backward glance at the doubtful past, to indulge in dreamy speculations of the anxious future. The close of one year anil the commencement of another must ever, to the thoughtful, prove a period of deep and spirit stirring solemnity ;—for who,—although with time there is no pause,— can contemplate the death of that year, with which, in sorrow or in joy, they have been so long familiar,—sliding as it were into the birth ot its unknown and untried successors, without experiencing a Jiang akin to that with which one parts from an old acquaintance for ever? The close of tile year is indeed a momentous, and it should be a startling epoch:—one not merely to all'cct the imaginative fancies of the enthusiast, but one, with a voice, as from the grave, to call upon the Christian to a review of hi* past life, and to prompt him, in a spirit of lowly gratitude anil devotion, to pour forth his fervent praises and thanks-givings to the Almighty and All merciful Creator who has so graciously vouchsafed to sustain and comfort him throughout its devious circuit. lint in New Zealand, or, indeed, in any portion oftlicSoutliern Hemisphere,tliefa'l of the year exhibits none of (hose features so striking to the European eye. It biings wiin it none ot those pauses of vegetation—presents none of those pictures of desolation, which, in the fro/.cn North, arc so emblematical of the decay of nature;—in such mournful keeping with the death of the the year: and so suggestive of the grave whither we are all hasting. To the European sojourner, the year, in these sunny lauds, displays a most tinnatural close. It is hard to reconcile the beauty and the brilliancy of unnner, to participate all the bounties and the blessings of that season, during the very mouths we have been wont, in Northern Europe, to bchoM earth wrapped as in her win iing sheet of genial snow. In bleak December, and ill hoary January, no leaf bedecks the tree—no herbage cloths the field. The forests are bare anil shelterless. The water is frozen ia the biooks, AH is misery and gloom—and man and the lower animals are pirn lied with hunger and with cold. Such a season of poverty and privation is well calculated for reflection. When earth and skies present but one a-spect of desolation and decay.—what but a practical munition nf the end and ruin of earth anil earthly hopes do tliev not impress upon the minil of man ? Who can feel, in a laud like tlii j , where fruits and flowers are rife and redolent of life and beauty, the wholesome moral which the annual death of nature conveys to the inhabitant of ilie Stormy .North . y . But God, can and will create a monitor in the virtuous heart. iMay it not be said of us, " We take no note of tiniß but by its loss."—but, as, we advance onward < in life's uncertain journey, may we lin:l time, at each such eventful stage as this, as well as during life's dai'y progress, to consider our ways and to seek and follow out the path tlmtleadetli to life everlasting—