education; you tell him of his place in his class, of the prizes at
the end of the year, of the honours to be given at college.

These are not the true incentives to knowledge, such incentives are
not the highest--they are even mean, and partially injurious; yet
these mean incentives stimulate and lead on, from day to day and from
year to year, by a process the principle of which the boy himself is
not aware of. So does God lead on, through life's unsatisfying and
false reward, ever educating: Canaan first; then the hope of a
Redeemer; then the millennial glory.

Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the
last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all
were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in
realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never
will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so
arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the
boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you
may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your
sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant
hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the
next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only
a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the
heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has
nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the
prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but
he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind.

Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible
power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the