*
In particular, I heard of clergymen who were employing
their time in explaining to a delighted audience the
physics of the Second Coming. It is not very likely any of
us will be asked to help. If we were, it is likely we
should receive instructions for the occasion, and that on
more reliable authority. And so I can only figure to
myself a congregation truly curious in such flights of
theological fancy, as one of veteran and accomplished
saints, who have fought the good fight to an end and
outlived all worldly passion, and are to be regarded rather
as a part of the Church Triumphant than the poor, imperfect
company on earth.
*
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is
the common and the god-like law of life. The browsers, the
biters, the barkers, the hairy coats of field and forest,
the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper in the
dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us
the love of an ideal; strive like us--like us are tempted
to grow weary of the struggle--to do well; like us receive
at times unmerited refreshment, visitings of support,
returns of courage; and are condemned like us to be
crucified between that double law of the members and the
will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of
some reward, some sugar with the drug? Do they, too, stand
aghast at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings of those
whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and the
prosperity of such as in our blindness we call wicked?
*
But to be a true disciple is to think of the same things as
our prophet, and to think of different things in the same
order.
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