CONCLUSION. 125 



and whose very existence foreshows a time when 

 they will have their fruition. The moral con. 

 sequence we may draw from this is almost too 

 obvious to require notice. If we look forward 

 to a state in which the body shall be so changed 

 that its present enjoyments can exist no more, 

 while those of the soul shall last for ever, how 

 important is it that the Will, which triumphs 

 over every thing that is material in us, should 

 be so regulated, that when that state arrives, it 

 may not long for those earthly pleasures which 

 are gone to return no more, but may have al- 

 ready anticipated in hope the reality it shall 

 then experience. The wise of old, though but 

 dimly perceiving what is assured to us under 

 the pledge and seal of God himself, could yet 

 draw the right inference from those dim per- 

 ceptions. When in the varied phases of the 

 butterfly's frail life they saw prefigured their 

 own future destiny, they could urge their dis- 

 ciples to purify the soul, and fit it for compa- 

 nionship with eternal Love. In the grain of 

 wheat apparently perishing in the earth, but 

 springing up in due season in a form " the same, 

 and yet another," the Apostle found a similar 

 correspondence with our lot : all can see the 

 appropriateness and beauty of the comparison, 



