When they part—are strangers yet.”
Or as Chauncy Hare Townshend expresses the same relative truth, too absolutely true:—
“Kindred are oft but kin by name,
Our thoughts they never knew.”
MANY YEARS TO ENJOY LIFE: THIS NIGHT TO DIE.
St. Luke xii. 19, 20.
The rich man was getting richer to his heart’s content. So plentiful was the produce of his land, that he must needs enlarge his premises. There was not room enough in his barns for those golden harvests; the barns must be pulled down, and greater ones built, wherein to bestow all his fruits and his goods. Happy man he accounted himself that day; happy in a prosperous present, happier still in a promising future. A future of happiness not less prolonged than assured. So he would say to his soul that day, “Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” That day he said it. Fool! that night his soul was required of him.
Woe was denounced by one of old on another of the Dives family, who said, “I will build me a wide house, and large chambers,” and who cut him out windows, and ceiled his house with cedar, and painted it with vermilion. “Shalt thou reign because thou closest thyself in cedar?” Man’s sanguine and sure “I will”—how little of the future tense there sometimes is about it after all!