to deprive us of, and often the more likely by how much the greater worth our possessions are of!  Is it not to place our affections on a bubble in the water, or on a picture in the clouds?  What madman would build a fine house or frame a beautiful garden on land in which he held so uncertain an interest?  But again, was all this less undeniable, did Fortune, the lady of our manor, lease to us for our lives, of how little consideration must even this term appear!  For, admitting that these pleasures were not liable to be torn from us, how certainly must we be torn from them!  Perhaps to-morrow—­nay, or even sooner; for as the excellent poet says—­

    Where is to-morrow?—­In the other world. 
    To thousands this is true, and the reverse
    Is sure to none.

But if I have no further hope in this world, can I have none beyond it?  Surely those laborious writers, who have taken such infinite pains to destroy or weaken all the proofs of futurity, have not so far succeeded as to exclude us from hope.  That active principle in man which with such boldness pushes us on through every labour and difficulty, to attain the most distant and most improbable event in this world, will not surely deny us a little flattering prospect of those beautiful mansions which, if they could be thought chimerical, must be allowed the loveliest which can entertain the eye of man; and to which the road, if we understand it rightly, appears to have so few thorns and briars in it, and to require so little labour and fatigue from those who shall pass through it, that its ways are truly said to be ways of pleasantness, and all its paths to be those of peace.  If the proofs of Christianity be as strong as I imagine them, surely enough may be deduced from that ground only, to comfort and support the most miserable man in his afflictions.  And this I think my reason tells me, that, if the professors and propagators of infidelity are in the right, the losses which death brings to the virtuous are not worth their lamenting; but if these are, as certainly they seem, in the wrong, the blessings it procures them are not sufficiently to be coveted and rejoiced at.

“On my own account, then, I have no cause for sorrow, but on my children’s!—­Why, the same Being to whose goodness and power I intrust my own happiness is likewise as able and as willing to procure theirs.  Nor matters it what state of life is allotted for them, whether it be their fate to procure bread with their labour, or to eat it at the sweat of others.  Perhaps, if we consider the case with proper attention, or resolve it with due sincerity, the former is much the sweeter.  The hind may be more happy than the lord, for his desires are fewer, and those such as are attended with more hope and less fear.  I will do my utmost to lay the foundations of my children’s happiness, I will carefully avoid educating them in a station superior to their fortune, and for the event trust to that being in whom whoever rightly confides, must be superior to all worldly sorrows.”