As the angel said to the prophet Esdras:--"The Most High hath made this world for many, but the world to come for few.

I will tell thee a similitude, Esdras; As when thou askest the earth, it shall say unto thee that it giveth much mould whereof earthern vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of, even so is the course of this present world!" Weary of arguing with himself, Helmsley tried to reflect back on certain incidents of his youth, which now in his age came out like prominent pictures in the gallery of his brain.

He remembered the pure and simple piety which distinguished his mother, who lived her life out as sweetly as a flower blooms,--thanking God every morning and night for His goodness to her, even at times when she was most sorrowful,--he thought of his little sister, dead in the springtime of her girlhood, who never had a doubt of the unfailing goodness and beneficence of her Creator, and who, when dying, smiled radiantly, and whispered with her last breath, "I wish you would not cry for me, Davie dear!--the next world is so beautiful!" Was this "next world" in her imagination, or was it a fact?
Materialists would, of course, say it was imagination.

But, in the light of present-day science and discovery, who can pin one's faith on Materialism?
"I have missed the talisman that would have made all the darkness of life clear to me," he said at last, half aloud; "and missing it, I have missed everything of real value.

Pain, loss, old age, and death would have been nothing to me, if I had only won that magic glory of the world--Love!" His eyes again wandered to the sky, and he noticed that the grey-and-white clouds in the west were rising still higher in fleecy pyramids, and were spreading with a wool-like thickness gradually over the whole heavens.