Page:Interesting stories.pdf/22

22 the children, as they are playing around me. I shall point to the vines laden with fruit, to the orchards, to the herds of cattle lowing around us, to the distant hills, stretching one behind another, and they will ask me," How came all these things?" I shall tell them all I know, or have heard from wise men who have lived before me; they will be penetrated with love and veneration; they will kneel, I shall kneel with them; they will not be at my feet, but all of us at the feet of that Good Being, whom we shall worship together ;---and thus they will receive within their tender minds a religion. The old men will come sometimes, from having deposited under the green sod one of their companions, and place themselves by my side; they will look wishfully at the turf, and anxiously inquire— * Is he gone for ever? Shall we, soon be like him? Will no morning break over the tomb? When the wicked cease from troubling, I will the good cease from doing good"

We will talk of these things: I will comfort them. I will tell them of the goodness of God; I will speak to them of a life to come; I will bid them hope for a state of retribution. In a clear night, when the stars slide over our heads. they will ask what those bright bodies are, and by what rules they rise and set ? And we will converse bout different forms of being, and distant worlds in the immensity of space, governed by the same laws; till we feel our minds raised from what is grovelling, and refined from what is sordid. Your talk of nature, this is nature; and if you could at this moment extinguish religion in the minds of all the world, thus would it be kindled again, and thus again excite the curiosity, and interest