To a child a rainbow is a real thing--substantial and palpable; its
limb rests on the side of yonder hill; he believes that he can
appropriate it to himself; and when, instead of gems and gold hid in
its radiant bow, he finds nothing but damp mist--cold, dreary drops of
disappointment--that disappointment tells that his belief has been
delusion.

To the educated man that bow is a blessed illusion, yet it never once
deceives; he does not take it for what it is not, he does not expect
to make it his own; he feels its beauty as much as the child could
feel it, nay infinitely more--more even from the fact that he knows
that it will be transient; but besides and beyond this, to him it
presents a deeper loveliness; he knows the laws of light, and the laws
of the human soul which gave it being. He has linked it with the laws
of the universe, and with the invisible mind of God; and it brings to
him a thrill of awe, and the sense of a mysterious, nameless beauty,
of which the child did not conceive. It is illusion still; but it has
fulfilled the promise. In the realm of spirit, in the temple of the
soul, it is the same. All is illusion; "but we look for a city which
hath foundations;" and in this the promise is fulfilled.

And such was Canaan to the Israelites. To some doubtless it was
delusion. They expected to find their reward in a land of milk and
honey. They were bitterly disappointed, and expressed their
disappointment loudly enough in their murmurs against Moses, and their
rebellion against his successors. But to others, as to Abraham, Canaan
was the bright illusion which never deceived, but for ever shone
before as the type of something more real. And even taking the promise
literally, though they built in tents, and could not call a foot of
land their own, was not its beauty theirs? Were not its trellised