“We must not love the creature as the Creator. My son, give _me_ thy heart. When he removes our friends from the scenes of time (with a glance in my direction), we should resign ourselves to his will, remembering that the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away in mercy; that He is all in all; that He will never leave us nor forsake us; that _He_ can never change or die.” As if that made any difference with the fact, that his best treasures change or die! “In conclusion,-- “We infer from our text that our hearts should not be set upon earthly happiness. (Enlarged.) “That the subject of heaven should be often in our thoughts and on our lips.” (Enlarged.) Of course I have not done justice to the filling up of the sermon; to the illustrations, metaphors, proof-texts, learning, and eloquence,--for, though Dr. Bland cannot seem to think outside of the old grooves, a little eloquence really flashes through the tameness of his style sometimes, and when he was talking about the harpers, etc., some of his words were well chosen. “To be drowned in light,” I have somewhere read, “may be very beautiful; it is still to be drowned.” But I have given the skeleton of the discourse, and I have given the sum of the impressions that it left on me, an attentive hearer. It is fortunate that I did not hear it while I was alone; it would have made me desperate. Going hungry, hopeless, blinded, I came back empty, uncomforted, groping. I wanted something actual, something pleasant, about this place into which Roy has gone. He gave me glittering generalities, cold commonplace, vagueness, unreality, a God and a future at which I sat and shivered. Dr. Bland is a good man. He had, I know, written that sermon with prayer. I only wish that he could be made to _see_ how it glides over and sails splendidly away from wants like mine. But thanks be to God who has provided a voice to answer me out of the deeps. Auntie and I walked home without any remarks (we overheard Deacon Quirk observe to a neighbor: “That’s what I call a good gospel sermon, now!”), sent Faith away to Phœbe, sat down in the parlor, and looked at each other. “Well?” said I. “I know it,” said she. Upon which we both began to laugh. “But did he say the dreadful truth?” “Not as I find it in my Bible.” “That it is probable, only _probable_ that we shall recognize--”