( 91 ) 
Poets and artists grow enthusiastic over fame, and men speak of 
winning a place in history, as of something worth the labor of life; and lo ! 
on the Day of Judgment all accounts will he made up, history will he 
closed, and shame and infamy, in the sense in which ice now use these 
terms, will he buried and forgotten; yet the Day of Judgment is hut the 
opening of life, the threshold of that house which is to he our home for aye, 
and that home will he of our own choosing, either in darkness or in light. 
Which shall ice choose f Which Eternity icill you choose? is the question 
which arrests thought at the outset of every reason-guided life. Put off 
answering it, and you simply put off the use of reason, hut do not escape 
the responsibility. You cannot find the answer to it in sense, or feeling, 
or sentiment. I do not say that the world which seeks your heart and 
thoughts is not beautiful. It is beautiful, hut not beautiful enough for the 
soul. Art, nature, pleasure, success in life, wealth, friendship, can charm 
the senses— they cannot fill the soul. “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, 
nor the ear with hearing.” 
The soul was not made to sit forever in the prison-house of mortal 
flesh, and look out upon the universe through the windows of sense. It 
is one day to be brought face to face with Truth and Goodness. “All is 
vanity,” not because there is evil in it, but because whatever there is' of 
good and beautiful is not the kind for which the soul hungers. It is figure; 
the soul wants substance. It is transient; the soul yjants the enduring. 
Let not this question of the soul wait longer for an answer. I ask this, not 
because God needs you, or the Church wants you, or society claims you, 
but, because you need yourself. 
And, my dear reader, sailing on the sea of life, you and I meet here 
in these pages, for only a few moments, perhaps never to meet then again! 
Oh, that this warning cry may now ring upon your ears, and echo 
hack again on mine,— to be heeded by both! 
