, 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,[248] 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 vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and
then vanisheth away"?[249]

_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 for
ever?[250] Will any answer that they _are_ sure of it, and that there
is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labour, whither they go?[251] 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 ignorant of this wonderful and infinite earth, which
is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although your days
are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that
you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are
condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the
worm, because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may
have but a few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds
only--perhaps tens; nay, the longest of our time and best, looked back
on, will be but as a moment, as the twinkling of an eye; still we are
men, not insects; we are living spirits, not passing clouds. "He
maketh the winds His messengers; the momentary fire, His minister";[252]
and shall we do less than _these_? Let us do the work of men while
we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our narrow portion of
time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion
out of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapour, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

But there are some of you w