They have had--they
also,--their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have dreamed of
mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and good-will; they
have dreamed of labour undisappointed, and of rest undisturbed; they
have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in store; they
have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law; of
gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of grey
hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them
for idle and vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we
accomplished with our realities? Is this what has come of our worldly
wisdom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest possible,
against their impotent ideal? or, have we only wandered among the
spectra of a baser felicity, and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead
of visions of the Almighty; and walked after the imaginations of our
evil hearts,[248] instead of after the counsels of Eternity, until our
lives--not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of
hell--have become "as a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away"?[249]
_Does_ it vanish then? Are you sure of that?--sure, that the
nothingness of the grave will be a rest from this troubled
nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in
vain, cannot change into the smoke of the torment that ascends for
ever?[250] Will any answer that they _are_ sure of it, and that there
is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?[251] Be
it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life that now is, as
you are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in this
world--will you not give them to it wisely, as well as perfectly? And
see, first of all, that you _have_ hearts, and sound hearts, too, to
give.
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