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Show LEGITIMACY-AND ILLEGITIMACY. 355 It has made us feel as though we were upon the threshold of eternity; as though we were eternal beings, and had to do with eternal things ; as though the things of this world were short, fleeting and evanescent, not worthy of a thought when compared with those things that are calculated to exalt and ennoble us in time and in eternity. The principles of justice, righteousness, and truth, which have an endless duration, can alone satisfy the capacious, desires of the immortal soul. We may amuse ourselves like children do at play, or engage in the frivolities of the dance. We may take our little enjoyments in our social assemblies, but when the man comes to reflect, when the Saint of God considers, and the visions of eternity are open to his view, and the unalterable purposes of God are developed to his mind- when he contemplates his true position before God, angels and men, then he soars above the things of time and sense, and bursts the cords that bind him to earthly objects; he contemplates God and his own destiny in the economy of heaven, and rejoices in a blooming hope of an immortal glory. Such have been some of our feelings, while our minds have been carried away from the things of earth to contemplate the things with which eternal beings are associated, and the glories that await us in the everlasting mansions of the Gods. The principles that we have to do with, then, are eternal, andnot simply to play a game upon the checker of mortality, on which people can win and lose for the time being. We have to do with that which shall continue "While life, and thought and being last, Or immortality endures." |
