o many. So
numerous and so bewitching are the attractions of the present life that
they are loath to leave them. It is a beautiful world, this universe of
ours, so deep, so wide, so vast! It is filled with pleasures and
allurements and graced with myriad charms; and he, indeed, seems cold of
heart who can easily turn from its enchanting beauties, and close his ear
to its manifold voices. Ponder for a moment the richness of nature, its
similarity and variety, its sameness and its diversity; consider the
abundance of the harvest--the glowing fruits, the green and golden crops,
the sweet-scented flowers and gift-bearing grasses; see the stars above
and the waters beneath--all the wonders of earth and sky; and then when you
have ranged over fields and waves and mountains, when you have climbed up
the steeps of the sky and gazed on the marvels of the heavens, descend
again to earth and consider the human form--the chiefest work of the
Almighty hand, and the crown of the natural world. What beauties are here
concealed! What a mingling of material and spiritual, of human and almost
divine! What words can express, what lines portray the beauty of the human
countenance? Who can describe or adequately define the loveliness that
streams from human eyes, or echoes from the human voice? And yet these are
but the outer fringes and dimmest glimpses of the beauties of the soul
that dwells within.

How painful, then, it is for the worldly to forsake the beauties and
pleasures of this present life. Bound down to their beds of clay by the
things of sense, they are grieved to part with a life so full of diverse
attractions. How can they think undismayed of closing forever their eyes
and ears to these charms of color and sound! It is such a difficult thing,
and so hard to nature, to abandon these scenes of enticing pleasure, to
bid farewell to those that are dear and be hurried away alone and forlorn
to the chill and gloom of the grave.

So reason the children of the world; but are not their reasonings and
feelings a proof of their little faith, and of their poor conceptions of
spiritual and eternal interests? They do not want to leave the world,
because they love it; and they love the world, because their faith is too
weak to raise them to a vision of higher things. The plain on which they
stand is too low clearly to see the things of Heaven. How poor and
trifling at best is the earth and all it contains to Him who beholds with
a vivid fa