and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven Longfellow was thus thinking when he wrote: —
| And the feeble hands and helpless, |
| Groping blindly in the darkness, |
| Touch God's right hand in that darkness, |
| And are lifted up and strengthened. |
“Putting off the old man” and his deeds, mortals thereby “put on immortality.”
Who that has felt the loss of physical pleasure, has not gained stronger desires for impersonal joy? The aspiration after these comes even before we find what belongs to Wisdom and Love. The loss of earthly hopes and joys has brightened the ascending plane of many a heart. The pains of sense quickly inform us that its pleasures are mortal, and that joy is spiritual.
The sinner believes himself happier for wrong-doing, and the saint that he suffers for doing right. Both inferences are false. They are the cobweb conceptions of material sense, — transient forms of error flitting before mortals, only to sink into rapid oblivion.
Would existence be to you a blank without personal friends? Then the time cometh when you will be solitary, left without sympathy and alone; for this vacuum is to be filled with God, spiritual Truth, and Love, impersonal instead of personal Good. When this hour of development comes, even if you cling to a sense of material joys, Divine Love will force you to accept what best promotes your growth. Friends will betray, and personal enemies will encompass you; but the lesson will be sufficient, for “man's extremity is God's opportunity.” Thus He teaches mortals to lay down their personal
