satisfaction with the life that now is. There are seasons when it is
our sole resource to recollect that in a few short years we shall be
at rest. While upon this subject I may say, too, that some injustice
has been done to the Christian creed of immortality as an influence
in determining men's conduct. Paul preached the imminent advent of
Christ and besought his disciples, therefore, to watch, and we ask
ourselves what is the moral value to us of such an admonition. But
surely if we are to have any reasons for being virtuous, this is as
good as any other. It is just as respectable to believe that we
ought to abstain from iniquity because Christ is at hand, and we
expect to meet Him, as to abstain from it because by our abstention
we shall be healthier or more prosperous. Paul had a dream--an
absurd dream let us call it--of an immediate millennium, and of the
return of his Master surrounded with divine splendour, judging
mankind and adjusting the balance between good and evil. It was a
baseless dream, and the enlightened may call it ridiculous. It is
anything but that, it is the very opposite of that. Putting aside
its temporary mode of expression, it is the hope and the prophecy of
all noble hearts, a sign of their inability to concur in the present
condition of things.

Going back to Clem's wife; she laid hold, as I have said, upon
heaven. The thought wrought in her something more than forgetfulness
of pain or the expectation of counterpoising bliss. We can
understand what this something was, for although we know no such
heaven as hers, a new temper is imparted to us, a new spirit breathed
into us; I was about to say a new hope bestowed upon us, when we
consider that we live surrounded by the soundless depths in which the
stars repose. Such a consideration has a direct practical effect
upon us, and so had the future upon the mind of Mrs. Butts. "Why