316 FAITH IN A HEREAFTER. 



tempting their weakness, and forced upon their adoption by 

 the conventionalities of life, every day, every hour, and 

 everywhere. It is a part of our civilization, an offshoot of 

 the very progress of which you speak, a sort of necessity in 

 practical results, at least, that men shall so live as to wage 

 war against nature, and against themselves; that they shall 

 hurry themselves, or be hurried by inevitable circumstances, 

 into the grave at the earliest possible moment. You may, 

 therefore, dismiss from your mind, my friend, the fanciful 

 idea, that science will ever enable the world to dispense 

 with the cemeteries, or that the cities of the dead will, 

 through its agency, cease to flourish. You will find that as 

 science closes up one avenue to the grave, men will force a 

 way to it through another. We shall have to live as our 

 fathers lived, be subject to disease as they were, grow old 

 as they grew old, and die as they died. We must submit 

 to the law which has written the doom of decay upon all 

 things, which has made us mortal, and when our time comes 

 we must be content to pass away as the countless millions 

 who preceded us have done." 



" Well," said Spalding, as he knocked the ashes from his 

 pipe, and rose to retire, under the cover of the tent, for the 

 night, "be it as you say, what matters it ? 'I would not 

 live always.' Give to us the hope of an hereafter, a faith 

 that looks through the valley of the shadow of death, and 

 sees immortality, a world of glory beyond, and what matters 

 it how soon the hour of our departure shall come ?" 



