Now what is remarkable in this is, that the delusion continued to the last; they _all_ died in faith, not having received the promises; all were hoping up to the very last, and all died in faith--not in realization; for thus God has constituted the human heart. It never will be believed that this world is unreal. God has mercifully so arranged it, that the idea of delusion is incredible. You may tell the boy or girl as you will that life is a disappointment; yet however you may persuade them to adopt your _tone_, and catch the language of your sentiment, they are both looking forward to some bright distant hope--the rapture of the next vacation, or the unknown joys of the next season--and throwing into it an energy of expectation which only a whole eternity is worth. You may tell the man who has received the heart-shock which in this world, he will not recover, that life has nothing left; yet the stubborn heart still hopes on, ever near the prize--"wealthiest when most undone:" he has reaped the whirlwind, but he will go on still, till life is over, sowing the wind. Now observe the beautiful result which comes from this indestructible power of believing in spite of failure. In the first centuries, the early Christians believed that the millennial advent was close; they heard the warning of the apostle, brief and sharp, "The time is short." Now suppose that, instead of this, they had seen all the dreary page of Church history unrolled; suppose that they had known that after two thousand years the world would have scarcely spelled out three letters of the meaning of Christianity, where would have been those gigantic efforts,--that life spent as on the very brink of eternity, which characterize the days of the early Church,--and which was after all, only the true life of man in time? It is thus that God has led on His world. He has conducted it as a father leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many a dreary league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, to chase now a butterfly; the butterfly is crushed, the flower fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and full of health, and scarcely wearied yet.