English Secularism Part 12

Then answered he me and said, Thou hast given a right judgment; but why judgest thou not thyself also? For like as the ground is given unto the woods, and the sea to his floods, even so they that dwell upon the earth may understand nothing but that which is upon the earth: and he that dwelleth upon the heavens may only understand the things that are above the height of the heavens.

Then answered I and said, I beseech thee, O Lord, let me have understanding.

For it was not my mind to be curious of the high things y but of such as pa.s.s by us daily.

Harriet Martineau's Hymn.*

* Which may be sung where it can be so arranged.

[The only hymn known to me in which a Supreme Cause is implied without being a.s.serted or denied, or the reader committed to belief in it.]

Beneath this starry arch Nought resteth or is still, But all things hold their march As if by one great will: Moves one, move all: Hark to the footfall!

On, on, for ever!

Yon sheaves were once but seed; Will ripens into deed.

As eave-drops swell the streams, Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams; And sorrow tracketh wrong, As echo follows song, On, on, for ever!

By night, like stars on high, The hours reveal their train; They whisper and go by; I never watch in vain: Moves one, move all: Hark to the footfall!

On, on, for ever!

They pa.s.s the cradle-head, And there a promise shed; They pa.s.s the moist new grave, And bid bright verdure wave; They bear through every clime, The harvests of all time, On, on, for ever!

II.--AT THE GRAVE OF A CHILD.

The death of a child is alone its parents' sorrow. Too young to know, too innocent to fear, its life is a smile and its death a sleep. As the sun goes down before our eyes, so a mother's love vanishes from the gaze of infancy, and death, like evening, comes to it with quietness, gentleness, and rest. We measure the loss of a child by the grief we feel. When its love is gone, its promise over, and its prattle silent, its fate excites the parents' tears; but we forget that infancy, like the rose, is unconscious of the sweetness it sheds, and it parts without pain from the pleasure it was too young to comprehend, though engaging enough to give to others. The death of a child is like the death of a day, of which George Herbert sings:

"Sweet day, so clear, so calm, so bright Bridal of the earth and sky; The dew shall weep thy fall to-night-- For thou must die."

It is no consolation to say, "When a child dies it is taken from the sorrows of life." Yes! it is taken from the sorrows of life, and from its joys also. When the young die they are taken away from the evil, and from good as well. What parents' love does not include the happiness of its offspring? No! we will not cheat ourselves. Death is a real loss to those who mourn, and the world is never the same again to those who have wept by the grave of a child. Argument does not, in that hour, reach the heart. It is human to weep, and sympathy is the only medicine of great grief. The sight of the empty shoe in the corner will efface the most relevant logic. Not all the preaching since Adam has made death other than death. Yet, though sorrow cannot be checked at once by reason, it may be chastened by it. Wisdom teaches that all human pa.s.sions must be subordinate to the higher purposes of life. We must no more abandon ourselves to grief than to vice. The condition of life is the liability to vicissitude, and, while it is human to feel, it is duty to endure.

The flowers fade, and the stars go down, and youth and loveliness vanish in the eternal change. Though we cannot but regret a vital loss, it is wisdom to love all that is good for its own sake; to enjoy its presence fully, but not to build on its continuance, doing what we can to insure its continuance, and bearing with fort.i.tude its loss when it comes. If the death of infancy teaches us this lesson, the past may be a charmed memory, with courage and dignity in it.

III.--MEN OR WOMEN.

The science of life teaches us that while there is pain there is life.

It would seem, therefore, that death, with silent and courteous step, never comes save to the unconscious. A niece of Franklin's, known for her wit and consideration for others, arrived at her last hour at the age of ninety-eight. In her composure a friend gently touched her. "Ah,"

murmured the old lady, "I was dying so beautifully when you brought me back! But never mind, my dear; I shall try it again." This bright resignation, worthy of the niece of a philosopher, is making its way in popular affection.

Lord Tennyson, when death came near to him, wrote:

"Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar When I put out to sea.

"Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark, And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark."

There is just a touch of superst.i.tion in these genial lines. He writes: "After death the dark." How did he know that? What evidence is there that the unknown land is "dark"? Why not light? The unknown has no determinate or ascertained color.

Where we know nothing, neither priest nor poet has any right to speak as though he had knowledge. Improbability does not imply impossibility.

That which invests death with romantic interest is, that it may be a venture on untried existence. If a future state be true, it will befall those who do not expect it as well as those who do. Another world, if such there be, will come most benefitingly and most agreeably to those who have qualified themselves for it, by having made the best use in their power of this. By best use is meant the service of man. Desert consists alone in the service of others. Kindness and cheerfulness are the two virtues which most brighten human life.

Wide-eyed philanthropy is not merely money-giving goodness, but the wider kindness which aids the ascendancy of the right and minimises misery everywhere.

Death teaches, as nothing else does, one useful lesson. Whatever affection or friendship we may have shown to one we have lost, Death brings to our memory countless acts of tenderness which we had neglected. Conscience makes us sensible of these omissions now it is too late to repair them. But we can pay to the living what we think we owe to the dead; whereby we trans.m.u.te the dead we honor into benefactors of those they leave behind. This is a useful form of consolation, of which all survivors may avail themselves.

Mrs. Ernestine Rose--a brave advocate of unfriended right--when age and infirmity brought her near to death, recalled the perils and triumphs in which she had shared, the slave she had helped to set free from the bondage of ownership, and the slave minds she had set free from the bondage of authority; she was cheered, and exclaimed: "But I have lived."

The day will come when all around this grave shall meet death; but it will be a proud hour if, looking back upon a useful and generous past, we each can say: "I have _lived_."

IV.----ON A CAREER OF PUBLIC USEFULNESS.

In reasoning upon death no one has surpa.s.sed the argument of Socrates, who said: "Death is one of two things: either the dead may be nothing and have no feeling--well, then, if there be no feeling, but it be like sleep, when the sleeper has no dream, surely death would be a marvellous gain, for thus all futurity appears to be nothing more than one night.

If, on the other hand, death be a removal hence to another place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing can there be than this?"

Sir Edwin Arnold, in his _Secret of Death_, writes:

"Nay, but as when one layeth His worn-out robes away, And, taking new ones, sayeth, 'These will I wear to-day!'

So putteth by the spirit Lightly its garb of flesh, And pa.s.seth to inherit A residence afresh."

This may be true, and there is no objection to it if it is. But the pity is, n.o.body seems to be sure about it. At death we may mourn, but duty ceaseth not. If we desist in endeavors for the right because a combatant falls at our side, no battle will ever be won. "Life," Mazzini used to say, "is a battle and a march." Those who serve others at their own peril are always in

"battle." Let us honor them as they pa.s.s. Some of them have believed:

"Though love repine and reason chafe, There came a voice without reply-- 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth he ought to die.'"

They are of those who, as another poet has said, "are not to be mourned, but to be imitated."* The mystery of death is no greater than the mystery of life. All that precedes our existence was unseen, unimaginable, and unknown to us. What may succeed in the future is unprovable by philosopher or priest:

"A flower above and the mould below: And this is all that the mourners know."**

The ideal of life which gives calmness and confidence in death is the same in the mind of the wise Christian as in the mind of the philosopher. Sydney Smith says: "Add to the power of discovering truth the desire of using it for the promotion of human happiness, and you have the great end and object of our existence."*** Putting just intention into action, a man fulfils the supreme duty of life, which casts out all fear of the future.

* W. J. Linton.

** Barry Cornwall.

*** Moral Philosophy.

A poet who thought to reconcile to their loss those whose lines have not fallen to them in pleasant places wrote:

"A little rule, a little sway, A sunbeam on a winter's day, Is all the proud and mighty have Between the cradle and the grave."

This is not true; the proud and mighty have rest at choice, and play at will. The "sunbeam" is on them all their days. Between the cradle and the grave is the whole existence of man. The splendid inheritance of the "proud and mighty" ought to be shared by all whose labor creates and makes possible the good fortune of those who "toil not, neither do they spin"*, and whoever has sought to endow the industrious with liberty and intelligence, with competence and leisure, we may commit to the earth in the sure and certain hope that they deserve well, and will fare well, in any "land of the leal" to which mankind may go.