The Pleasures of Life Part 32

"Weep not for death, 'Tis but a fever stilled, A pain suppressed,--a fear at rest, A solemn hope fulfilled.

The moonshine on the slumbering deep Is scarcely calmer. Wherefore weep?"

"Weep not for death!

The fount of tears is sealed, Who knows how bright the inward light To those closed eyes revealed?

Who knows what holy love may fill The heart that seems so cold and still."

Many a weary soul will have recurred with comfort to the thought that

"A few more years shall roll, A few more seasons come, And we shall be with those that rest Asleep within the tomb.

"A few more struggles here, A few more partings o'er, A few more toils, a few more tears, And we shall weep no more."

By no one has this, however, been more grandly expressed than by Sh.e.l.ley.

"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep!

He hath awakened from the dream of life.

'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, He has outsoared the shadows of our night.

Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again.

From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray, in vain--"

Most men, however, decline to believe that

"We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." [6]

According to the more general view death frees the soul from the enc.u.mbrance of the spirit, and summons us to the seat of judgment. In fact,

"There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death." [7]

We have bodies, "we are spirits." "I am a soul," said Epictetus, "dragging about a corpse." The body is the mere perishable form of the immortal essence. Plato concluded that if the ways of G.o.d are to be justified, there must be a future life.

To the aged in either case death is a release. The Bible dwells most forcibly on the blessing of peace. "My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you." Heaven is described as a place where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

But I suppose every one must have asked himself in what can the pleasures of heaven consist.

"For all we know Of what the blessed do above Is that they sing, and that they love." [8]

It would indeed accord with few men's ideal that there should be any "struggle for existence" in heaven. We should then be little better off than we are now. This world is very beautiful, if we could only enjoy it in peace. And yet mere pa.s.sive existence--mere vegetation--would in itself offer few attractions. It would indeed be almost intolerable.

Again, the anxiety of change seems inconsistent with perfect happiness; and yet a wearisome, interminable monotony, the same thing over and over again forever and ever without relief or variety, suggests dulness rather than bliss.

I feel that to me, said Greg, "G.o.d has promised not the heaven of the ascetic temper, or the dogmatic theologian, or of the subtle mystic, or of the stern martyr ready alike to inflict and bear; but a heaven of purified and permanent affections--of a book of knowledge with eternal leaves, and unbounded capacities to read it--of those we love ever round us, never misconceiving us, or being hara.s.sed by us--of glorious work to do, and adequate faculties to do it--a world of solved problems, as well as of realized ideals."

"For still the doubt came back,--Can G.o.d provide For the large heart of man what shall not pall, Nor through eternal ages' endless tide On tired spirits fall?

"These make him say,--If G.o.d has so arrayed A fading world that quickly pa.s.ses by, Such rich provision of delight has made For every human eye,

"What shall the eyes that wait for him survey When his own presence gloriously appears In worlds that were not founded for a day, But for eternal years?" [9]

Here science seems to suggest a possible answer: the solution of problems which have puzzled us here; the acquisition of new ideas; the unrolling the history of the past; the world of animals and plants; the secrets of s.p.a.ce; the wonders of the stars and of the regions beyond the stars. To become acquainted with all the beautiful and interesting spots of our own world would indeed be something to look forward to, and our world is but one of many millions. I sometimes wonder as I look away to the stars at night whether it will ever be my privilege as a disembodied spirit to visit and explore them. When we had made the great tour fresh interests would have arisen, and we might well begin again.

Here there is an infinity of interest without anxiety. So that at last the only doubt may be

"Lest an eternity should not suffice To take the measure and the breadth and height Of what there is reserved in Paradise Its ever-new delight." [10]

Cicero surely did not exaggerate when he said, "O glorious day! when I shall depart to that divine company and a.s.semblage of spirits, and quit this troubled and polluted scene. For I shall go not only to those great men of whom I have spoken before, but also to my son Cato, than whom never was better man born, nor more distinguished for pious affection; whose body was burned by me, whereas, on the contrary, it was fitting that mine should be burned by him. But his soul not deserting me, but oft looking back, no doubt departed to these regions whither it saw that I myself was destined to come. Which, though a distress to me, I seemed patiently to endure: not that I bore it with indifference, but I comforted myself with the recollection that the separation and distance between us would not continue long. For these reasons, O Scipio (since you said that you with Laelius were accustomed to wonder at this), old age is tolerable to me, and not only not irksome, but even delightful. And if I am wrong in this, that I believe the souls of men to be immortal, I willingly delude myself: nor do I desire that this mistake, in which I take pleasure, should be wrested from me as long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead philosophers should ridicule this my delusion."

Nor can I omit the striking pa.s.sage in the _Apology_, when pleading before the people of Athens, Socrates says, "Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things--either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the sight of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had pa.s.sed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this?

"If, indeed, when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges, who are said to give judgment there,--Minos, and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, and Triptolemus, and other sons of G.o.d who were righteous in their own life,--that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions. In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions; a.s.suredly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said be true.

"Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the G.o.ds; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die and you to live. Which is better G.o.d only knows."

In the _Wisdom of Solomon_ we are promised that--

"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of G.o.d, and there shall no torment touch them.

"In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die; and their departure is taken for misery.

"And their going from us to be utter destruction; but they are in peace.

"For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality.

"And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for G.o.d proved them, and found them worthy for himself."

And a.s.suredly, if in the hour of death the conscience is at peace, the mind need not be troubled. The future is full of doubt, indeed, but fuller still of hope.

If we are entering upon a rest after the struggles of life,

"Where the wicked cease from troubling, And the weary are at rest,"

that to many a weary soul will be a welcome bourne, and even then we may say,

"O Death! where is thy sting?

O Grave! where is thy victory?"

On the other hand, if we are entering on a new sphere of existence, where we may look forward to meet not only those of whom we have heard so often, those whose works we have read and admired, and to whom we owe so much, but those also whom we have loved and lost; when we shall leave behind us the bonds of the flesh and the limitations of our earthly existence; when we shall join the Angels, and Archangels, and all the company of Heaven,--then, indeed, we may cherish a sure and certain hope that the interests and pleasures of this world are as nothing compared to those of the life that awaits us in our Eternal Home.

[1] Montgomery.

[2] Emerson.

[3] Seneca.

[4] Milton.

[5] Cicero.

[6] Shakespeare.