MORAL REFLECTIONS. 215 



That 'tis so mighty long ere it arrive, 



Beyond the Indies does this morrow live ? 



Tis so far-fetched, this morrow, that I fear 



'Twill be both very old and very dear. 



To-morrow I will live, the fool does say. 



To-day itself 's too late : the wise lived yesterday.' 



1 What is, or where is, to-morrow ? is the question of 

 the Roman epigrammatist. I would in like manner ask 

 what is, or rather what was, yesterday ? It has left a 

 few marks upon the face of the earth. Yesterday, a 

 field was ploughed, a house built, and a grave dug ; and 

 these marks and scarce anything else make yesterday 

 different from the dream of yesternight ; but the grave 

 must very soon be closed, the ploughed field will soon 

 become a piece of green sward, and to Him with whom 

 a thousand years are as a day, -it will appear but a short 

 space when the foundations of the house will become a 

 piece of green sward also. Yet things like these are the 

 monuments of yesterday. But what is yesterday itself ? 

 what was it, rather ? It was a space of time, measured 

 by the sun, which was given to men that in it they 

 might prepare for death ; and instead of preparing for 

 death, the whole power of their bodies and every energy 

 of their souls have been employed in building and 

 ploughing and in other such occupations, even though 

 they saw graves opening and closing before them. 

 What though those wasting monuments of yesterday 

 which men have raised or inscribed on the face of the 

 earth were eternal, what has the soul of man to do 

 with these external things ? If his soul be immaterial, 

 as many judicious philosophers affirm, then, though 

 mysteriously connected with a material body, it can 

 surely have no proper and natural connection with the 

 earth in which vegetables grow or the stones with which 

 houses are built. But I am quaintly deducing a moral 



