The Golden Censer Part 36

says Jeremy Collier, "the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pa.s.s from midnight into noon on the sudden; to be decrepit one minute and all spirit and activity the next, must be a desirable change. To call this dying is an abuse of language."

Death to the aged is natural, therefore as pleasant and easy as any other natural office of the body. Indeed, it is far easier than the operation by which we even get our teeth in youth. If we, then, are able to forget that greatest shock of pain so quickly as we do, why shall we dread a little sinking of the breath, and the unwilling battle of a body that is tired and

LITERALLY WILLING AT HEART

to surrender? "In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life," says Sir Thomas Browne, "yet in my best meditations do I often desire death. For a pagan there may be some motive to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come." We are now of the earth; but all the high reason which has taught us to master fire, and water, and the thunderbolts themselves, has also instructed us that we are only sojourners on this little planet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE EVENING OF LIFE]

OUR MINDS ARE AS BROAD

as the range of stellar systems. We are not as large as a horse or an elephant. Are we, therefore, inferior? We are inhabiting bodies which thrive but a few years, on a planet remarkable for its smallness. But we stretch our knowledge over mighty distances; we construct triangles which have for one side the whole sweep of the earth, over 180 millions of miles; we measure the distance of other worlds by this side of a triangle, and the nearest star is thus found to be 103,000 of our measures away from us--103,000 times 180,000,000 miles! Young has well said that

THE UNDEVOUT ASTRONOMER IS MAD.

So did Napoleon die. Was he not the mightiest man of his time? Did not the whole world sigh with relief when the final end came? Yet he was on a tiny rock in the great ocean? On a map of the world that rock has no t.i.tle even to a dot. Yet it would be foolish to say he belonged simply to that rock. No. He had come from other human worlds. He was as broad as the earth. We, too, have come from other worlds. We are as broad as the universe. Even our minds, clad in clay, betray the high character of our souls.

DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?

Do the birds that pa.s.s so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties--the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit.

The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial s.p.a.ce, is not a conceit.

Therefore we possess our souls, flashing within caskets which have not been altogether unworthy of their priceless treasures.

AS THE CASKET DULLS

and grows to its decay, we cannot weep greatly over its loss, for will it not reveal the splendors all within?

"It is worthy the observing," says Lord Bacon, "wisest of men," "that there is no pa.s.sion in the mind of men so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat from him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the Emperor had slain himself,

PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)

provoked many to die out of mere compa.s.sion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again." We all must die, sooner or later. It is easier to die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives. Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. Jesus stands near. When death comes, his voice will sound, just at the brink: "It is I; be not afraid." "When I look at the tombs of the great," said Joseph Addison, on

HIS VISIT TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

"every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compa.s.sion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little compet.i.tions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great judgment day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."

THE AGED MAN

who has "walked with G.o.d" is always ready for the Master's call. His loins are girded about and his lights burning. He "lies down with the Kings of the earth," and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will shine on all alike.

There will he meet the little child who strayed from the fold into the snows of death early in the married life, and there will he sit beside that fond old heart who heard his first piteous wail in this cold world, and nestled him to her bosom all warm with a mother's love.

IT IS THE ONE POSSIBLE CHANCE

of happiness, and only death stands in the way. Nature carries the soul gently over the river, where those who have gone before stand waiting in glad expectation. Shall we doubt either the goodness of G.o.d or the perfection of nature? Shall we hesitate to weave the silk of death around our bodies when we know that we may thence issue a being worthy of a celestial sphere of action?

APOSTROPHE.

Venerable sir, thou hast borne the burdens of the world to the last mile-post. Thy companions have fallen by the wayside, and even some of them may have gone unbidden to their Judge. But thou, having in view the dignity of the human mind and the will of G.o.d, hast labored while the light was given thee, and hast journeyed while thy strength remained.

Thy destiny is now but opening to thy sight. Thou lookest through the inner doors and seest that infinite cathedral which openeth beyond the vestibule of death.

"The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter and the crush of worlds."

THE FUTURE LIFE.

Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction?

'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!--Addison.

"Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you." So spake the Savior. "We know," says Paul, "that all things work together for good to them that love G.o.d. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pa.s.s the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is my sting? O grave, where is thy victory? For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me

A CROWN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS,

which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." "These things saith He that holdeth the Seven Stars in his right hand: Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." These are a few of the bright promises held out to us in the Book of Life. Are we not blest? "The joys of heaven," says Bishop Norris, "are without example, above experience, and beyond imagination, for which the whole creation wants a comparison; we an apprehension; and even the Word of G.o.d a revelation." "Heaven," says Shakspeare, "is the treasury of everlasting joy." "By heaven we understand a state of happiness," says Franklin, "infinite in degree, and endless in duration." With man's finite mind man solaces himself with

PICTURES OF PARADISE

mortal in their scope. He is not to be blamed for this, for it is G.o.d's will to let him grope in darkness a few short years. But man's imagination in all earthly things conjures up that which is far beyond the earthly reality, leaving him a prey to dissatisfaction. How good to believe that our imagination finds in heaven a field where all our most beautiful ideas, collated, joined and woven together into a whole, fail to approach the true glories of the home in the far skies which our kind Father, taking us in His arms, will open before us. "How should we rejoice," says Sir Robert Hall, "in the prospect,

THE CERTAINTY, RATHER,

of spending a blissful eternity with those whom we loved on earth; of seeing them emerge from the ruins of the tomb and the deeper ruins of the fall, not only uninjured, but refined and perfected, 'with every tear wiped from their eyes,' standing before the throne of G.o.d and the Lamb, 'in white robes and palms in their hands, crying with a loud voice, Salvation to G.o.d that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever!'

WHAT DELIGHT WILL IT AFFORD

to renew the sweet counsel we have taken together, to recount the toils of combat and the labor of the way, and to approach, not the house, but the throne of G.o.d in company, in order to join in the symphonies of heavenly voices, and lose ourselves amid the splendor and fruition of the beatific vision!" Dr. d.i.c.k supposes that the soul may find endless employment in beholding "those magnificent displays which will be exhibited of the extent, the magnitude, the motions, the mechanism, the scenery, the inhabitants, and the general const.i.tution of other systems, and the general arrangement and order of the universal system comprehended under the government of the Almighty."

THIS IS ENTIRELY IN REASON.

So far as we are able to judge, there is absolutely no limit to the universe of stars. We are as sure of the law of gravity as we are of the existence of heaven. We build larger telescopes each year only to behold additional millions of stars, each star, possibly, the larger on account of our being able to see it at all. We absolutely know that one star is larger than our sun by 324 times. The moon is about nine times around the earth away from us. The sun is larger than the track of the moon around the earth by 167,000 miles in every direction. If you had a ball which would just fit in the track of the moon, and stuck it all full of pins 167,000 miles long, you would have the size of the sun.

SIRIUS, THE STAR,