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, 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 vapor, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away"?

_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 forever? Will any answer that they _are_
sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor,
whither they go? 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 of an eye; still we are men, not insects; we are living
spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His messengers; the
momentary fire, His minister"; and shall we do less than _these_? Let us
do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our
narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance
of passion out of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this cloud of
life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon
the floor of heaven, in t