Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 February 1881 — A Beautiful Incident. [ARTICLE]

A Beautiful Incident.

On a beautiful summer’s day, a clergyman was called to preach in a town in Indiana to a young congregation. At the close of his discourse* he addressed his young hearers in such words as these: “Learn that the present life is a preparation for, and has a tendency tv, eternity. The present is linked to the future throughout creation, in the vegetable, in the animal, and in the moral world. As isjthe seed, so is the fruit; as is the egg, ao is the fowl; as is the boy, so is the man; aud as the rational being iu this world, so will he be in the next; Dives estranged from God .here, is Dives estranged from Godin the next; and Enoch walking with God here, is Enoch walking with God in a calm aud better world. I beseech you, live, then, for a blessed eternity. Go to the worm you tread upon, and learn a lesson of wisdom. The very caterpillar seeas the food that fosters it for another and similar state, and, more wisely than man, builds its own sepulchre, from whence, in ttme, by a kind of resurrection, it comes forth iu a new creature in almost angelic form. And now that which crawled flies, and that which fed on comparatively gross food, sips the dsw that revels is the rich pastures, an emblem of that paradise where flows the river of life, and grows the tree of life. Could the caterpillar haye been diverted from its proper element aud mode of life, if it had never attained the butterfly’s splendid form and hue, it had perished a worthless worm. Consider her ways and be wise. Let it not be said that ye are more negligent than worms, aud that your reason is less available than their instinct. As often as the butterfly flits across your path, remember that it whispers in its flight, for the future.” With this the preacher closed his discourse; but to deepen the impression, a butterfly, directed by the hand which guides alike the sun and au atom in its course, fluttered through the church, as it commissioned by heaven to repeat the exhortation.— There was neither speech nor anguage, but its yoice was heard saying to the gazing audience, “Live for the future.”