God has lent us the earth for our
life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come
after us, and whose names are already written in the book of creation,
as to us; and we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to
involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits
which it was in our power to bequeath. And this the more, because it is
one of the appointed conditions of the labour of men that, in
proportion to the time between the seed-sowing and the harvest, is the
fulness of the fruit; and that generally, therefore, the farther off we
place our aim, and the less we desire to be ourselves the witnesses of
what we have laboured for, the more wide and rich will be the measure
of our success. Men cannot benefit those that are with them as they can
benefit those who come after them; and of all the pulpits from which
human voice is ever sent forth, there is none from which it reaches so
far as from the grave.
Nor is there, indeed, any present loss, in such respect for futurity.
Every human action gains in honour, in grace, in all true magnificence,
by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the
quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes,
separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no
action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.
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