eets, rises up
the cry of the homeless--"I was a stranger, and ye took me not in."

Must it be always thus? Is our life forever to be without
profit--without possession? Shall the strength of its generations be as
barren as death; or cast away their labor, as the wild fig-tree casts
her untimely figs? 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 labor
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 gray 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, 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 ign