far, far away--one not nearly so real as this world of their own, made
up of fields and barns, streets and shops, sea and ships, friends and
action! But what, let me ask, separates us from that world which we
think to be so very far off--so very unreal? The thin coat of an
artery! No more! Let the thin pipe burst through which our life-blood
is now coursing in the full play of health, and where then will our
present world, now so very real, be to us? In a single second it will
have vanished for ever from our grasp, like something we clutch at
in the visions of the night. And where then will that other world be
which to many is now so dim and unreal as not to be worth thinking
about? We, the same living persons, will be in it--in the midst of
all its realities; and with these we shall have to do, and with these
only, for ever and ever.

But many people do not _wish_ to think about the unseen future. It is
not so much that _no_ thoughts about it intrude themselves upon their
minds, as that all such thoughts are deliberately banished. It is with
the eternal future as with anything which here gives them pain,--they
"hate to think about it." This, of course, arises from the suspicion,
or rather the conviction, that it cannot be a good future to them.
They have read enough about it from the Bible to make it alarming. At
all events, they have no security for its being to them as happy as
the present; and so, whether from a fearful looking for of judgment,
because of their sins, or from ignorance of the means of salvation,
or from unbelief in the good-will of God as ready to save them, the
result is, that they voluntarily shut their eyes to, and banish all
thought of, eternity. It pains them--it agonises them--to put the
question, "What is to become of me when I die?" And the more pain the
question gives them, the more they fly to the world, and occupy their
minds with its society, its amusements, and even its dissipation and