Must it be always thus?  Is our life for ever to be without profit—­without possession?  Shall the strength of its generations be as barren as death; or cast away their labour, as the wild fig-tree casts her untimely figs?[247] Is it all a dream then—­the desire of the eyes and the pride of life—­or, if it be, might we not live in nobler dream than this?  The poets and prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us nothing about a life to come, have told us much about the life that is now.  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.  Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly given you in possession?  Although your days are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the worm, because you are to companion them in the dust?  Not so; we may have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only—­perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling