In the New Year of 1766 the admirable orator and thinker Platon, Metropolitan of Moscow, delivered in the court church a Sermon before Catherine II and the heir Pavel Petrovich on the essence and nature of time

In the New Year of 1766 the admirable orator and thinker Platon, Metropolitan of Moscow, delivered in the court church a Sermon before Catherine II and the heir Pavel Petrovich on the essence and nature of time. The address is rich and beautiful; I shall quote a few passages, and consider them the finest of New Year greetings:

"The beauty of flowers fades; the pleasant greenery that covers the earth grows coarse and withers; the lofty cedars are laid low; rust eats the hardest metals; all living creatures in the air, on the land and in the water die and decay... Where now are those pyramids, obelisks, statues, colossi and hanging gardens, famed for their antiquity? Where are the once flourishing empires, the Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman? All has yielded to time; all lies buried beneath the ruins of the ages.

...Of the time of our past years one may say that it has passed; but one cannot say so of our deeds... They remain, and will always remain, in the conscience. Good deeds always gladden, gladden by their remembrance and by their immortal fruits. Evil deeds, by contrast, always trouble us, by their remembrance and by their harmful consequences.

...In the Christian community there are both good people and bad: some are like golden vessels, others like earthen ones. But an earthen vessel cannot become a golden one, just as a golden one cannot become earthen. A bad man, however, may become a good man, just as a good man may become bad. You golden vessels! You the virtuous! You children adopted by God! Take heed lest you lose this treasure; take heed lest from golden vessels you become earthen. And you earthen vessels! You who willingly toil beneath the heavy yoke of vice! Remember the nobility of your nature, and strive to turn from earthen vessels into golden ones. I do not know whether anything can be more pleasing than to see a sinner turn from his error and thereby bring joy to all the Angels in heaven; but, on the contrary, nothing is more lamentable and bitter than to see a good man begin to turn bad."