A Meditation - On Finding Many Passengers on Shore, by James Meikle (1730-1799) [James Meikle was a surgeon’s mate on a British Man-o’-War Ship. These are meditations that he wrote before and during that voyage.] Before I came from home, I knew not of a single person but myself that was to set out from the same port to the same place; but on my arrival here, I find a great many from every corner of the land, waiting a fair wind to forward them in their intended passage. And may not this call to my mind that, though only now and then, one here, and another there, departs this life; yet on the confines of endless ages, on the borders of the invisible world, what numbers of departing souls are daily passing from every part of the inhabited globe, to appear before the tremendous bar! If we glance the mortality-bills of well-peopled cities, the numbers that daily die are astonishing. And though nothing be more common than death, yet nothing is more affecting than dissolution. I have taken one step, which may remind me of another that shall overtake me, and that, being my last translation, shall never be succeeded by a future. Let me not, then, delay any repentance lest, if my delay be perpetuated, my repentance come too late. This article is taken from: Meikle, James. The Traveller. Edinburgh: J. Pillians & Son, 1811. A PDF file of this book can be downloaded, free of charge, at http://www.ClassicChristianLibrary.com