Oh! the heart, the heart--what are all its joys of youth, and all its
griefs of age? Is it that youth has no apprehensions, and we enjoy its
anticipations and its present without alloy? or does its _all_ belong
to love and joy when life and the world is new? Are these too bright,
too pure for time? and the griefs of later life the Dead Sea apples
which grow from them. And is it so with all? Is there one, whose years
have brought increase of happiness, and who has lived on without a
sorrow?
In God's economy must all experience misery, to dull the love of life,
and kindle hope for a blissful future, to steal from the heart its
cherished _here_, to yield it all in its _hereafter_. Ah! we know what
a world this is, but what a world is to come we know not. Is it not as
reasonable to believe we lived before our birth into this, as to hope
we shall live after death in another world? Is this hope the instinct
of the coming, or does it grow from the baser instinct of love for the
miserable life we have? It is easy to ask, but who shall answer? Is it
the mind which remembers, and is the mind the soul? or is the soul
independent of the mind, surviving the mind's extinction? and do the
memories of time die with time? or,
Do these pursue beyond the grave?
Must the surviving spirit have
Its memories of time and grief?
Then, surely, death is poor relief.
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