Progress EVERY event agreeable to the course of nature ought to be looked on as a real good; and surely none can be more natural than for an old man to die. The disunion of the soul and the body is effected in the young by dint of violence, but is wrought out in the old by a mere fullness of the completion of years. The ripeness of death I perceive in myself with much satisfaction; and I look forward to my approaching dissolution as to the entrance into a secure haven, where I may at length find a happy repose from the fatigues of a long voyage. The nearer death advances toward me, the more clearly I seem to discern its real nature. The soul, during her confinement within this prison of the body, is doomed by fate to undergo a severe penance; for her native seat is in heaven; and it is with reluctance that she is forced down from those celestial mansions into these lower regions, where all is foreign and repugnant to her nature. This opinion I am induced to embrace, not only as agreeable to the best deductions of reason, but in just deference also to the most noble and distinguished philosophers. When I consider the faculty with which the human mind is endued, its amazing celerity, its wonderful power in recollecting past events, and its sagacity in determining the future, together with its numberless discoveries in the arts and sciences, I feel a conscious conviction that this active comprehensive principle cannot possibly be of a mortal nature. For my own part, I feel transported with the most ardent impatience to join the society of my departed friends, whose characters I greatly respected and whose persons I sincerely loved. Nor is this earnest wish confined to those excellent persons alone with whom I was formerly connected: I ardently wish to visit those celebrated worthies of whose honorable conduct I have heard and read much. To this glorious assembly I am speedily advancing; and I would not now be turned back in my journey, even on the assured condition that my youth, like that of Pelias, should again be restored. In short, I consider this world as a place which Nature never designed for my permanent abode; and I look upon my departure from it, not as being driven from my habitation, but as leaving my inn. -Cicero. 'HERE is a land where every pulse is thrilling TH With raptures earth's sojourners may not know, Where heaven's repose the weary heart is stilling, And peacefully life's time-tossed currents flow. Far out of sight, while yet the flesh enfolds us, O blessed thought, to know the spirit's yearning Shall there be satisfied the soul's vague longing— Thither my weak and weary steps are tending- FE Prospice EAR death?-to feel the fog in my throat, When the snows begin and the blasts denote, I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, For the journey is done and the summit attain'd, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so- -one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forebore, And bade me creep past. No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers. The heroes of old; Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain and darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements rage, the fiend voices that rave Shall dwindle, shall blend, Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again, -Robert Browning. T The Eternal Home HE little child who comes into this world comes into a place which has been prepared for him. A mother's arms embrace him: A father's care protects him. So when he goes up into the world close by, and his tender feet pass beyond the veil, will he not be welcomed by as many loving hearts as when he came to us? There are families in heaven as well as on earth. This is a new tie, and another relationship. It constitutes what Paul calls "the family in heaven and earth." It connects in one bond time and eternity. It lifts us into communion with those, now in the other world, who lived here for generous ends. This tie brings heaven nearer to earth, and earth nearer to heaven. Whenever a good man, a pure woman, a lovely child, passes through this life into eternity, we feel that they make us more sure of our own immortality. We cannot believe that God who has caused all their sweetness, loveliness and nobility to be unfolded by the long process of time, will permit them at last to come to a sudden end. If God is really our Father, we are safe in his hands and all whom we love are safe. A perfect Creator does not create in order to destroy. What he gives he gives forever. The outward form may change, but the inward spirit, the divine life, the real being remains forever. The universe goes upward not downward. The souls whom God loves do not descend into death, but rise into a fuller and nobler life. His children are not lost when they pass from our sight, they have gone upward into life and heaven and home. Jesus hath "abolished death and brought life and immortality to light." "There are three things," says the apostle, "which resist decay, change and death;" these are faith, hope and love, and the dearest and sweetest of these is love. The love which continues in our hearts for those who may have left us long years ago, is itself the assurance that we belong to each other still. And so we realize that death is nothing; that we are already immortal; that the hour of immortal life cometh and now is. Death ceases to exist to a Christian. He looks forward to the time a change shall come which simply means a real awakening. Soft as an infant's sleep shall be the coming of the silent messenger. Sweet shall be the rest as it shall come to weary soul and exhausted body. Tenderly shall the cloud of the new life envelop us, hiding the familiar things from the failing sight, but we shall awake with no abrupt transition, with no more astonishment than after a night of glorious and refreshing slumber, and with a serene satisfaction we shall find ourselves gently led into new being in the midst of friends old and new. -James Freeman Clark. TH Compensation HERE is no loss, however great the seeming, Must end sometime in peace, all free from pain. But underneath the heart-break of all being Each life must sometime know this great unveiling, Note: The compiler regrets sincerely that he has been unable to learn the author of this beautiful poem. Mother MOTHER left us at sunset yesterday-crossing the great divide. With a fortitude that has graced none more fair, she took her leave of life without a fear. Through weeks of silent suffering she looked calmly into the future, and did not falter; with a heroism born of her supreme faith in Jesus of Nazareth she approached the end, trilling with her latest breath the high note of exultation-as one who knocks at the gate of eternal morning. Each returning springtime, when the lilacs and the snowball hold their carnival, will recall to us the passing of the sweetest, noblest character we have known. Shrouded in her robes immaculate, asleep beneath a wilderness of flowers, that fain would have kissed her eyelids to awakening, we sent the precious earthly casket back to the old eastern home. There, beneath the whispering pines, within sound of the babbling stream which for more than forty years was to her the sweetest music of earth, "We paused and breathed a prayer above the sod, And left her to her rest and God." With her ear attuned to the music of the infinite she caught up the celestial strain, and the harmonies of a noble life, set vibrating by her on earth, were blended triumphantly with the eternal anthems of the heavenly home. -Luther C. Bailey. |