end, and after twenty years of anxious toil find himself master of a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand pounds—where is the benefit? he may die the next week, and leave all the fruits of his long toils in a moment,—and go creeping into the next world, an empty desolate soul: "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?"[1]
The only end which a wise man will hold up to himself as worthy of his immortal nature, and which every man should keep before himself as the true purpose of life here, is to become fitted for the long life hereafter. This life is for sixty or seventy years,—but that is for seventy millions of years, and an infinity beyond! Which, then, is the more worthy of man's consideration and regard? Yet, as this short life is, so will that long one be: the scale turns here,—and the beam, once down, can never rise again. Each day is making its mark upon us; each month is bending our spirits in one direction or another; each year completes its own volume of record; and, by and by, the last volume and the last page will have been written, and Death will set his great seal on the whole book of life: no word or character can then be altered—no! not to eternity. What an awful thought! And how can a thinking man, then—one who brings this truth before his mind—waste his precious days in the poor employment of laboriously heaping up gold and banknotes beyond what he can use to any proper purpose,—while the sands of his life are running so fast away, and he has done nothing yet towards accomplishing the great purpose of his being?
