Year: 1873




The Possibilities of the Future.


If we are sure that the other life is
life, and not slumbering hole in the
ground if death is but the opening of
the gate; if dying is translation if
passing from sentence here we reach a
higher sentence there, one can almost
bear anything in this life. "Christ,
for the Joy that was set before him, en-
dured the cross, despising shame !"
and the joy that is set before us, if full
ly revealed to us, would enable every
man, methinks, to endure the cross and
despise the shame. 1t is the unknown
to come that cheers and blesses the
known life that now is. For this is IN
orphaned life. Here we are helpless, or
like stumbling children, with little
strength and little experience, but we
are living toward our manhood and
every year that we leave behind us is
one station on the road over which we
have passed and every day the very
dust that annoys us, and the very Gin
ders that vex our summer eyes, are
so many witnesses of the speed with
which we are crossing that territory
which separates between us and ours
between our seeming life and our real
life; between the life that now is and
the life that is to come. Every one of us
will know each other in heaven. Every
one of us will be nobler in heaven than
we are here. The sensibilities of this
poor, dim earth are no Interpretation
of the sensibilities of heaven. The
great march of men through this life is
scarcelya hint of the volume, the vast
ness, the magnitude, the grandeur, OF
that march in procession, of soul with
soul, through the eternal ages. What
ever we do not know, one thing we do
know, and that is this, that we shall go
to heaven, not to shrink with age, to
find poverty, and to find distortion, but
to find riches, and symmetry, and to
develop into all the glory of everlasting
youth. All that populates our fancy
with ideal perfectness, and more, will
be there. The noblest conception, the
most rapt vision of the most ecstatic or
seer, will be mole than outdone.
Heaven will be larger, heaven will be
richer, heaven will be happier, and the
glory of God will be more transcendent
than it has ever entered into the heart of
man to conceive. Toward it we are be-
ing swept with an irresistible impulse.
For l believe that, besides our own life,
there is great current of forces in
which we are swinging upward and on
ward toward the invisible sphere. As
the traveller on earth has double
journey; as in addition to the journey
which he is himself making, he is swept
along by the earth in its revolutions SC
1 believe that the human race is being
swept in vast aerial circles toward bet.
ter climes and nobler societies. What
ever may be done by tears, by sorrows,
by temptations, by weariness, by study,
by toll, there is something better than
all that. The irresistible power of God
is carrying the universe upward and
onward to its final perfection and glori
fication. W. Beecher.


The gifted Sargent s. Prentiss once
gave a sumptuous dinner to some
friends at hotel in Yicksburg. Early
in the evening q stranger entered the
room in a mistake. Prentiss cour'
teously invited him to join the party.
Before long the strange guest began
boasting of how much he had drank
during the day, cocktail here, smash
er there, a julep in this place, a sling ii
that, and so on, apparently without end
At length Prentiss said "Sir," sale
he, "do you believe in the doctrine o
metempsychosis?" ?" 81 don't know,
was the reply, "and I don't see that i
has any thing to do with what we wer,
talking about" "It has," reioinet
Prentiss, much, much every way.
have firm faith in that doctrine. I be
lieve that in the next life every man vii
be transformed into the thing for which
he has best qualified himself in this
In that life, sir, you will become cor
ner grocery" ~. .....tI.s. ..
| A scHoOL-MAsTER on being asked
what was meant by the word :" "fortifica
tion," answered, 1.-TWO Identification
makes fortifcation.