Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/9

Rh relation of man to his Maker, of time to eternity, of what changes and passes away to what shall never more change, but shall endure in God and with God for ever and ever, world without end! O wonderful and overwhelming thought! O who will grant us rightly to estimate the great thought of the future? It is evident that for the human mind to dwell upon the future is not only a necessary result of the order of God, strictly according to the nature of things, but the highest duty and interest of man, strictly reasonable, inasmuch as it relates to what in its own nature is far more important, than anything that is present, or even the whole assemblage of what is recorded in the history of the past.

And yet this great and all-absorbing future is an impenetrable mystery, which no human mind can fathom. We are irresistibly drawn to the thought of it, but we cannot see to the end of it; we wander and wonder upon its dreary shore, as we may on that of the ocean, but our eye is soon perplexed and dazzled, our mind reels and falters, and we turn away from an impossible task, not to be accomplished by