We are all very apt to forget that we must
die. And so each year, when the summer is over and the fruit is
gathered, the leaves begin to wither, and the early frost tinges the
forests of the closing year, like the sun oftentimes makes the clouds
all crimson and glory at the close of the day. These things should teach
us that as advancing years come, we also must fade and die. God spreads
out before us this great panorama along the valleys and on the hillsides
each autumn to teach us that as the leaves perish, so we must also fade
and droop and die.

But there is one great encouragement, and that is, that although the
leaves fall, the tree stands. The leaf perishes, but the tree abides,
and year after year, sometimes for centuries, it goes on increasing in
stature and in strength, abiding as the giant of the forest. So also,
when at last each of us must die, that which we have built shall abide,
and what we have received from others and to which we have added our
efforts and our labors, others shall receive from us, and they also
shall carry on the work in which we have been engaged. So each
generation receives and carries on the work of those who have gone
before. As the poet has well said,

"Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withered on the ground;
Another race the following age supplies;
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay
So perish these when those have passed away."

The tree stands a monument of strength and beauty at the grave of all
the dead leaves which lie buried at its feet. So what each boy and girl,
each man and woman, shall have accomplished of good or evil, will remain
after they have perished and passed away, to tell of their lives, and
God will note the result. He who says that not even a sparrow can fall
to the ground without His notice, and who tells us that the very hairs
of our heads are all numbered, He will note our deeds, and He will be
our reward.

If I were speaking now to older people I might call attention to the
fact that the autumn leaves are more beautiful than the summer leaves.
And so boys and girls, it seems to me, and it has always thus seemed to
me, that there is something more beautiful in manhood and womanhood,
during the later years of life, than during the earlier years. Always
honor and respect the aged whose heads are gray, whose