once, to ask you if it is not a fact that often we would like
to remain where, and to have what, is not best for us? Do
not illustrations of this simple thought occur easily to your
minds? Does not man often desire, as it were, to build his
tabernacles here or there, when due consideration, and after-
experience will convince him that it was not the place to
abide; that it was better that the good be craved, or the
class of relations to which he clung, should not be
permanent? In order to give effect to this train of
reflection, let me direct you to some specific instances in
which this desire is manifested.

Perhaps I may say, without any over-refinement upon my topic,
that there are three things in life to which the desires of
men especially cling, --three tabernacles which upon the
slope of this world they would like to build. I speak now,
it is to be remembered, of desires of impulse, not of
deliberation, --of desires often felt, if not expressed. And
I say, in the first place, that there are certain conditions
in life itself that it sometimes appears desirable to retain.
Sometimes, from the heart of a man, there breaks forth a sigh
for perpetual youth. In the perplexities of mature years, --
in the experience of selfishness, and hollowness, and bitter
disappointment; in the surfeit of pleasure; in utter
weariness of the world, --he exclaims, "O! give me back that
sweet morning of my days, when all my feelings were fresh,
and the heart was wet with a perpetual dew. Give me the
untried strength; the undeceived trust; the credulous
imagination, that bathed all things in molten glory, and
filled the unknown world with infinite possibilities." Sad