Almighty and immortal God, whose mercies are like your years, unnumbered, we your dependent creatures, humbly adore you for your manifold goodness to us and to all your children. Awaken in our hearts a thankful sense of your forbearance in preserving our lives through the dangers, and all the changes and trials of another year of fleeting time.

We acknowledge you as the Lord of our life by whom we escape death, and that it is of your mercy that we are not consumed. As the years of our lives are passing away, help us, we pray, so to number our days, so to estimate the shortness and uncertainty of life, that we may apply our hearts to the wisdom which is from above; that we may know your truth and do your will.

Pardon, Lord, our many sins and transgressions, during the time which is passed and gone. Who can tell how often he offends: cleanse us, we pray, from all our secret faults, and preserve us from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over us. Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

You have made our days but as a span, and our age is as nothing in respect of you. A thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday. The heavens, which are the works of your hands, shall perish; but you remain the same forever, and your years do not fail. Give us grace to redeem the time; to use the world by not abusing it, and to be always ready to leave this world at any day or hour in which the Lord our God shall call us. Make us more sensible to know that in the midst of life we are in death; that we have no Savior in heaven but you, and that there is none on earth that we can reasonably desire in comparison of you.

May we not be so anxious and troubled about the things of this world, as to forget or neglect that which is most needful. May we choose that good part which shall not be taken from us. Make us, our God, duly thankful for all the favors bestowed upon us from our earliest infancy to this present hour, and especially for the many and great blessings which are still continued to us.

Support us, our heavenly Father, in all the trials of life which await us. In seasons of prosperity may we be thankful and humble; in adversity, patient and resigned. As times and seasons to us are renewed, may our hearts be also renewed and created unto good works. May we labor faithfully in doing those good works which you have intended for us to walk in, before that night comes in which no one can work. We ask these things in the name, and through the mediation of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Savior. Amen.

(Alexander V. Griswold, 1766-1843, Bishop of New England)