an says eternity is everything, present is nothing.

I believe the real truth is, both are man's chief concern, and neither
is all truth.

In this matter the general rule I have so often pointed out will
harmoniously apply; that rule is, avoid extremes.

Those who believe that the now, the present, is the all important thing
in man's life have the fashionable or favorite point of view.

Man definitely knows much about the present, he knows much about life.
He is in the midst of life--it pulsates all around him and in him.

We know positively that the law of compensation is inexorable in its
demands for right and positive in its punishment of wrong.

We know that on this earth kindness, love, occupation, help, truth,
honor and sympathy are investments which bring happiness today. You get
your pay instantly when you have done a helpful act and you get your
punishment instantly when you have done a hurtful act.

That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic
points to that sane and reasonable conclusion.

So be it, with a belief in the future estate, it is reasonable to assume
that our acts and lives in the present estate will have influence on our
future estate.

We know positively of today, and the happiness we can get from good
deeds done today.

If we will have power in the future to look back to today's acts, well
and good, if today's acts are worth while.

The other view that eternity is everything and the present is nothing is
the antiquated view, the narrow view; the, I might say, illiterate view.

That view warps the present life; it calls for present
self-chastisement, present gloom, present sorrow and present misery.

It takes the tangible definite today, calls it nothing, and accepts the
intangible unknown eternity as everything.

It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a
vapor, a shadow. In fact, it makes gloom on today's sunshine and puts
its believers into a purgatory; a dismal unhappy punishment antechamber
where man exists and waits peeping out of his cell windows for a little
imagined view of eternity.

He waits and endures the unpleasant interval, steeled against definite
pleasures and evident life of today, and worried into an intoxicated
colored belief in the expected happiness of the undefined future.

He refuses to think of definite life of today and spoils the thought of
those who do.

He is a blockade to progress, a disagreeable