It has been, and is now, a common complaint with many who interest
themselves about their fellow-creatures, and the welfare of the human
race, that nothing in this world is sure,--nothing is permanent; a
continual ebb and flow seems to be the only law of human life. Men
change, they say; their friendships are fickle; their minds, like their
bodies, alter from day to day. The heart whom you trust to-day, to-
morrow may deceive; the friend for whom you have sacrificed so much, will
not in his turn endure the trial of his friendship. The child on whom
you may have reposed your whole affection for years, grows up and goes
forth into the world, and forms new ties, and you are left alone. Why
then love man? Why care for any born of woman, if the happiness which
depends on them is exposed to a thousand chances--a thousand changes?
Again; we hear the complaint that not only men, but circumstances change.
Why knit myself, people will ask, to one who to-morrow may be whirled
away from me by some eddy of circumstances, and so go on his way, while I
see him no more? Why relieve distress which fresh accidents may bring
back again to-morrow, with all its miseries? Why attach ourselves to a
home which we may leave to-morrow,--to pursuits which fortune may force
us to relinquish,--to bright hopes which the rolling clouds may shut out
from us,--to opinions which the next generation may find to have been
utterly mistaken,--to a circle of acquaintances who must in a few years
be lying silent and solitary, each in his grave? Why, in short, set our
affections on anything in this earth, or struggle to improve or settle
aught in a world where all seems so temporary, changeful, and uncertain,
that "nought doth endure but mutability?"
Such is and has been the complaint, mixed up of truth and falsehood,
poured out for ages by thousands who have loved (as the world would say)
"too well"--who have tried to build up for themselves homes in this
world; forgetting that they were strangers and pilgrims in it; and so,
when the floods came, and swept away that small fool's paradise of
theirs, repined, and were astonished, as though some strange thing had
happened to them.
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