‘Not to thy eternal resting place,Shalt thou retire alone:****Thou shalt lie downWith patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the valesStretching in pensive quietness between;The venerable woods, rivers, that moveIn majesty, and the complaining brooks,That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,Are but the solemn decorations allOf the great tomb of man.’6. Philosophers and moralists will readily admit, that the only easy and adequate remedy for the fear of death is the hope of immortality. On the other hand, they, whose vocation it is to question and decry the aids, which reason and philosophy offer in the case, as sullen, cold, stoical, will not deny, that ‘innumerable’ examples have been offered in all countries, and in all time, of men, who, in virtue of no higher discipline than that of reason and philosophy, have met death with such unshrinking and invincible firmness, as could hardly have been rendered more illustrious by any additional motives. They have shown, beyond all question, that nature has furnished us with a power of resistance,which, when rightly called forth, enables us to triumph over fear and death. The pagans of ancient story, the unbelieving of christian lands, the red men of our forests, offer us demonstrations to any extent. I am aware, in what places this simplest of all truths is weakly denied. Those, for whom I write, are of the number who exact the truth; and I have no fear to declare it; nor would I contend for a moment with such as deny this fact.But I am not the less sensible, that the triumph, in these cases, is bitter and painful. It can only be obtained by a violence done to instinctive nature, connected with innumerable revulsions and horrors, and to all those ineffable clingings to earth, and shrinkings from the first step into the unknown land, that are partly the heritage of nature, and partly the result of the concurrent influence of all our institutions. It is a violence to all the passions, affections, hopes and fears fostered by the earth. But the victory has been wrought, and can be wrought, even though the bosom, in which it is wrought become as of iron.But the same triumph is won by the hope of immortality, by a process, simple, easy, natural, in entire consonance with the most tender affections and lively sympathies of flesh and blood. We lie down in pain and agony, with a spirit of easy endurance, if we have a confident persuasion that, during the night, we shall have shaken off the cause of our sufferings, and shall rise to renewed health and freshness in the morning. Death can bring little terror to him, who believes that its darkness will instantly be replaced by the light of another scene: and that the separation from friends in the visible land, is only rejoining the more numerous group, who have already become citizens of the invisible country.To what extent am I the subject of this hope myself; and whence do I derive my belief? These are questions which affection will ask; and the answers, if devoid of interestnow, will not be so when thememory of things that were shall come over the mind of the reader like a cloud, and when read as the thoughts of one, who, during his whole sojourn, feltand reflected intensely upon those subjects; and who will then himself have passed away to the experience of all that which is here matter of discussion. Those most dear to me will know what relations I sustained to these subjects, during the best part of my life; and will not be without solicitude to know my final thoughts upon them; thoughts, purified at least from all stain of party interest andesprit du corps, and put forth in the simple consciousness of my own convictions, however they may be powerless to produce belief in the mind of any other. With the fierce war cry of sects in religion, in their acrimonious and never ending contests about abstract terms without a meaning, their combats about the vague and technical phrases of formulas of faith, I have long since had nothing to do. For many years they have rung on my ear like the distant thunder of clouds that have passed by. To the denunciations of those, who assume to hold all truth imprisoned in their articles of confession, if I might hope the distinction of receiving them, I am perfectly callous. Neither would I desire to add another book to the millions of volumes of polemic theology which already exist, and which have as little bearing upon the knowledge, virtue and happiness of the age, as the last year’s snow.We are, after all, unconsciously influenced, and that in no slight degree, by authority, however humble may be its claims, as a test of truth. How did such a person believe on such a point? Many a young aspirant suspends his opinion, until he hears; and settles into fixed persuasion afterwards. How many are there, in christian lands especially, who have never had a wandering or unbelieving doubt of the soul’s immortality float over their minds? How many, who have had no terrene and gross ideas, influenced by seeing the tenement of flesh, by which all that was called the mind and the soul stood visible to the eye, and tangible to the thought, yielded up to consumption and decay? This is a question which no one can answer for another. For myself, I believe unhesitatingly, and with no stain of doubt, that I shall, in some way, exactly provided for by Him whomade me, exist after death, as simply conscious, that I am the same person, as I am now in the morning, that I slept at night. Do I derive this conviction from books and reasonings? I am by no means sure that I do; though the gospel assuredly speaks directly to my heart. I do ready homage to the talents and learning of Clarke, Locke, Paley, Channing and a cloud of reasoning witnesses, of whom every Christian may well be proud; and, most of all, to the profound and admirable Butler.I hear the author of our faith directly declaring a resurrection and immortality. A single assertation from such a source were enough. But I find him reasoning, and insisting less upon the fact, than I should have expected, had he intended to implant it in the mind, as it were a truth, chiefly to be apprehended by the understanding. It seems to me that he so discusses it, as one who was aware that it was already inwoven in the sentiments and hearts of his hearers, vague, dark, without moral consequence, it may be; but an existing sentiment, taken for granted, upon which he might predicate his doctrines, as upon a thousand other facts, which we can clearly perceive, he considers already admitted by his hearers.Let a man walk in the fields on a June morning after night showers. Let him seat himself for meditation on the hill-side, under the grateful canopy of foliage. Let him ask himself to embody his conceptions of the divinity, and to give form and place to the Author of the glorious scene outstretched before him. He may have just risen from reading the admirable demonstrations of Clarke, and the astronomical sermons of Chalmers. He may concentrate his conceptions by a fixedness of study, that may amount to pain. He may bewilder his faculties, in attempting to embody something, that his thoughts and reasonings can grasp. I know not what the powers of others can achieve in this case. But I know, by painful experiment, what mine cannot. I ask my understanding and reasoning powers about this glorious Being. They inform me that it is a subject that comes not within theirpurview. They can follow the chain of reasoning, see that every link is complete, and the demonstration irresistible. But when they wish to avail themselves of their new truth, they have no distinct idea either of premises or conclusion. It has evaporated in the analysis.I ask my heart, or the source of my moral sentiment, be it what it may, the same question. The grateful verdure, the matin freshness, the glad voices, the aroma of flowers, the earth, the rolling clouds, the sun, all the lamps, that will burn in the firmament by night, my own happy consciousness in witnessing this impressive scene, cry outa God. To my heart, it is the first, the simplest, most obvious thought, presenting itself, it seems to me, as soon as the consciousness of my own existence; certainly susceptible of as little doubt. I have no need to define, analyze, embody. The moment I attempt to do it, my thoughts are vague and unsettled. I yield myself to the conviction. My heart swells with gratitude, confidence, love. So good, so beneficent a Being can do nothing but good, in this or any other world, to him who loves and trusts him, and strives to obey his laws.My most treasured hopes of immortality are from the same source. Will this conscious being, capable of such remote excursions into the two eternities between which its existence is suspended, live beyond the present life? Not a particle of matter, for ought that appears, can be annihilated. Will the nobler thoughts, the warmer affections perish, as though they had not been? We ask our senses, and they can give us no hope. The body lives, and we speak of it as including the conscious being. We see it die, pass under the empire of corruption, molder, and incorporate with its kindred elements. The sensible evidence, that the person exists, is entirely destroyed. The most insatiate appetite of our natures, however, craves continued existence, and ceases not to seek for it. The inquirer after immortality cannot but be in earnest in this pursuit. The arguments of the venerable sages of old are spread before him. From the soul’s nature, from the unity of consciousness, the incorruptibility of thought,the everlasting progress, of which our faculties are capable, the strong and unquenchable desire of posthumous fame, the sacredness of earthly friendships, and similar arguments, they strove to establish, on the basis of reasoning, the conviction of immortality.From these reasonings he repairs to the Scriptures. A strange book, utterly unlike any writings that had appeared before, declares that we shall exist forever. The religion which has arisen from this book, in its whole structure and dispensation, is predicated on the assumed fact, that we shall exist forever in another life, happy or miserable, according to our deeds on earth. Jesus,the author and finisher of this faith, announces himselfthe resurrection and the life; with a voice of power calls his dead friend from the tomb; declares, that death has no power over himself; that, after suffering a violent death, on the third day from that event, he shall arise from the dead. He arises, according to his promise; and, in the midst of his awe-struck friends he visibly ascends to his own celestial sphere. Millions, as by one impulse, catch the spirit of this wonderful book—love each other with anew and single-hearted affection, as unlike the spirit of all former ties of kindness and love, as the doctrines of this religion are different from those of paganism. The new sect look with a careless eye upon whatever is transitory; and will submit to privation, derision and torture, of whatever form, rather than waver, or equivocate, in declaring themselves subjects of this hope of immortality. This Christian hope, in every period from the time of its author, has made its way to the heart of millions, who have laid themselves down on their last bed, and felt the approach of their last sleep, expecting, as confidently to open their eyes on an eternal morning, as the weary laborer, at his evening rest, trusts that he shall see the brightness of the morrow’s dawn.I recur, with new and unsated satisfaction, to these arguments for the soul’s immortality. I love to evoke the venerable shades of Socrates and Plato and Cicero, and hear them, each in his own way, persuade himself, that the thoughts andaffections, of which he was conscious, could only belong to an immortal spirit. I listen to the eloquent and impressive apostrophe of Tacitus, to the conscious spirit of him, whose life he had so charmingly delineated, with feelings which I cannot well describe.‘Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguontur magnæ animæ, placide quiescas; nosque, domum tuam, ab infirmo desiderio, et muliebribus lamentis, ad contemplationem virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri, neque plangi fas est: admiratione te potius temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura suppeditet, similitudine decoremus.’[H]I repair with new confidence and hope to the gospel, and strive to imbibe the cheering conviction, as I hear Paul sublimely declare,that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality, and that death shall be swallowed up in victory.I have no disposition to deny that these arguments would be, in themselves, insufficient to turn the balance against the evidence of the senses, and produce the conviction of immortality from the deductions of simple reason, if religion were an impression to be raised and sustained by argument. But, if we are religious, in some form, from our very constitution, if immortality be felt as a sentiment, with more or less clearness and force, I deem that these arguments have their appropriate effect, in giving form and direction to this interior sentiment; that believers have been such, because these doctrines have found a concurrent sympathy in their spirit, a suitableness to the wants of their heart, a development of the germ of their hopes. It seems to me, that whoever has a heart, cannot look upon the earth and the firmament, without exclaiming ‘there is a God,’ nor within himself, without a conviction, that his soul is immortal.I see in the enthusiasm,—the embraces, cries, tears, swoonings and the revolting extravagances of various sects under the influence of high religious excitement, nothing more than themorbid development of this latent religious sentiment. Instead of being, as scoffers affirm, subjects of a mere factitious intoxication, these people, who seem only to demand wings, to soar aloft, are only manifesting the unregulated action of nature working at the bottom of their hearts.For myself I feel that I am immortal, and that those fellow sojourners, to whom I have been attached by the affection of long intimacy, and the reception of many and great kindnesses, will exist with me hereafter. I pretend to conceive nothing, I wish to inquire nothing, about the mode, the place and circumstances. I should as soon think of disturbing myself, by endeavoring to conceive the ideas that might be imparted by a sixth sense. It is sufficient that my heart declares, that a being who has seen this glorious world, cherished these warm affections, entertained these illimitable aspirations, felt these longings after immortality, indulged ‘these thoughts, that wander through eternity,’cannothave been doomed by Him, who gave them, to have them quenched forever in annihilation. Even an illusion so glorious would be worth purchasing at the price of a world. I would affirm, even to repetition, that there is given us that high and stern power, which implies a courage superior to any conflict, and which gives the mind a complete ascendency over any danger, pain or torture, which belongs to life or death. But we would not be so extravagant, as for a moment, to question that death, as the present generation have been trained, and as we are accustomed, by all we see, and hear to view it, is a formidable evil, fitly characterized by its dread name,the king of terrors. Many a debilitating interior misgiving will assail the stoutest mind, in certain moments, in view of it. There are dark intervals by night, in the midnight hours of pain, periods between the empire of sleep and active reason, when the terrific and formless image rushes in its terror and indefiniteness upon the mind. As age steals upon us, and the vivid perceptions, and the bright dreams of youth disappear, many a dark shadow will cloud the sunshine of the soul. The conflict, in which all these terrors areovercome by unaided nature and reason is, as has been seen, a cruel one. The tender sensibilities, the keen affections, the dear and delusive hopes of our nature must all be crushed, before we can be unmoved in the endurance of the pain and torture that precede, and the death that follows.It is only to a firm and unhesitating faith, that it becomes as easy and natural to die, as to sleep. Glorious and blessed hope, the hope of meeting our friends, in the eternal land of those who truly and greatly live forever! There we shall renew our youth, andmount as on the wings of eagles.‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet,Where parting tears shall cease to flow:And, when I think thereon, almost I long to go!’Note 62, page 177.That is an unworthy opponent, who assails what assumes to be important truth, by no better argument than ridicule and sarcasm. That is a despicable one, unworthy of exciting any feelings but those of pity and contempt, who attempts to bring to bear upon it the blind and fierce prejudices of the multitude. This last is the prevalent mode of modern attack. By those, who deem that wisdom will die with them, and that they can learn nothing more, who dogmatize without examining, and measure the views of others by their own preconceived and settled opinions, all the foregoing doctrines, which militate with the established prejudices and habits of the age, will be denounced, I am aware, as heretical, imaginary, false.‘He would teach people how to be happy,’ say they with a sneer, ‘as though they were not compelled to pursue happiness by a law of their natures.’ My business is not with such opponents, and I should consider their opposition an honor and a distinction.The fact will remain true, be it welcomed, be it ridiculed, as it may, that a few, in all time, have found the means of being more comfortable and happy, than others in the same circumstances. They had a method of their own in creatingthis difference. That method might be so indicated, as to be reduced to general, and settled rules. This is the amount of the foregoing doctrines. The object has been to discuss and fix some of those rules. No moralist was ever so stupid, as to expect, that the world would not pursue its headlong course, inculcate what he might. Every one, who understands the analogy of the present to the past, will expect that no form of virtuous effort will be screened from question and ridicule; and that no purity of purpose will conquer the blind and fierce hate of the multitude.But there will still be a few quiet, reflecting and philosophic people. What is better, the number will be always increasing. For such, are these my labors, and those, which I have adopted from another, chiefly designed. Their suffrage is an ample reward. Their plaudit is true fame. If they say, ‘we and those about us may be better and happier; let us make the effort to become so,’ my object is attained.To encourage us to shake off the superincumbent load of indifference, ridicule, and opposition, and to make efforts to extend virtue and happiness, it is a sublime reflection, that a thought may outlive an empire. Babylon and Thebes are, now, nowhere to be found; but the moral lessons of the cotemporary wise and good, despised and disregarded, perhaps, in their day, have descended to us and are to be found everywhere. As the seminal principles of plants, borne through the wide spaces of the air by their downy wings, find at length a congenial spot, in which to settle down, and vegetate, these seeds of virtue and happiness, floating down the current of time, are still arrested, from age to age, by some kindred mind, in which they germinate, and produce their golden fruit. No intellect can conjecture, in how many instances, and to what degree, every fit moral precept may have come between the reason and passions of some one, balancing between the course of happiness and ruin, and may have inclined the scale in his favor. The consciousness of even an effort to achieve one such triumph is a sufficient satisfaction to a virtuous mind.
‘Not to thy eternal resting place,Shalt thou retire alone:****Thou shalt lie downWith patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the valesStretching in pensive quietness between;The venerable woods, rivers, that moveIn majesty, and the complaining brooks,That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,Are but the solemn decorations allOf the great tomb of man.’
‘Not to thy eternal resting place,Shalt thou retire alone:****Thou shalt lie downWith patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the valesStretching in pensive quietness between;The venerable woods, rivers, that moveIn majesty, and the complaining brooks,That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,Are but the solemn decorations allOf the great tomb of man.’
‘Not to thy eternal resting place,
Shalt thou retire alone:**
**Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,
The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good,
Fair forms and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills,
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods, rivers, that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks,
That make the meadows green, and, poured round all,
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man.’
6. Philosophers and moralists will readily admit, that the only easy and adequate remedy for the fear of death is the hope of immortality. On the other hand, they, whose vocation it is to question and decry the aids, which reason and philosophy offer in the case, as sullen, cold, stoical, will not deny, that ‘innumerable’ examples have been offered in all countries, and in all time, of men, who, in virtue of no higher discipline than that of reason and philosophy, have met death with such unshrinking and invincible firmness, as could hardly have been rendered more illustrious by any additional motives. They have shown, beyond all question, that nature has furnished us with a power of resistance,which, when rightly called forth, enables us to triumph over fear and death. The pagans of ancient story, the unbelieving of christian lands, the red men of our forests, offer us demonstrations to any extent. I am aware, in what places this simplest of all truths is weakly denied. Those, for whom I write, are of the number who exact the truth; and I have no fear to declare it; nor would I contend for a moment with such as deny this fact.
But I am not the less sensible, that the triumph, in these cases, is bitter and painful. It can only be obtained by a violence done to instinctive nature, connected with innumerable revulsions and horrors, and to all those ineffable clingings to earth, and shrinkings from the first step into the unknown land, that are partly the heritage of nature, and partly the result of the concurrent influence of all our institutions. It is a violence to all the passions, affections, hopes and fears fostered by the earth. But the victory has been wrought, and can be wrought, even though the bosom, in which it is wrought become as of iron.
But the same triumph is won by the hope of immortality, by a process, simple, easy, natural, in entire consonance with the most tender affections and lively sympathies of flesh and blood. We lie down in pain and agony, with a spirit of easy endurance, if we have a confident persuasion that, during the night, we shall have shaken off the cause of our sufferings, and shall rise to renewed health and freshness in the morning. Death can bring little terror to him, who believes that its darkness will instantly be replaced by the light of another scene: and that the separation from friends in the visible land, is only rejoining the more numerous group, who have already become citizens of the invisible country.
To what extent am I the subject of this hope myself; and whence do I derive my belief? These are questions which affection will ask; and the answers, if devoid of interestnow, will not be so when thememory of things that were shall come over the mind of the reader like a cloud, and when read as the thoughts of one, who, during his whole sojourn, feltand reflected intensely upon those subjects; and who will then himself have passed away to the experience of all that which is here matter of discussion. Those most dear to me will know what relations I sustained to these subjects, during the best part of my life; and will not be without solicitude to know my final thoughts upon them; thoughts, purified at least from all stain of party interest andesprit du corps, and put forth in the simple consciousness of my own convictions, however they may be powerless to produce belief in the mind of any other. With the fierce war cry of sects in religion, in their acrimonious and never ending contests about abstract terms without a meaning, their combats about the vague and technical phrases of formulas of faith, I have long since had nothing to do. For many years they have rung on my ear like the distant thunder of clouds that have passed by. To the denunciations of those, who assume to hold all truth imprisoned in their articles of confession, if I might hope the distinction of receiving them, I am perfectly callous. Neither would I desire to add another book to the millions of volumes of polemic theology which already exist, and which have as little bearing upon the knowledge, virtue and happiness of the age, as the last year’s snow.
We are, after all, unconsciously influenced, and that in no slight degree, by authority, however humble may be its claims, as a test of truth. How did such a person believe on such a point? Many a young aspirant suspends his opinion, until he hears; and settles into fixed persuasion afterwards. How many are there, in christian lands especially, who have never had a wandering or unbelieving doubt of the soul’s immortality float over their minds? How many, who have had no terrene and gross ideas, influenced by seeing the tenement of flesh, by which all that was called the mind and the soul stood visible to the eye, and tangible to the thought, yielded up to consumption and decay? This is a question which no one can answer for another. For myself, I believe unhesitatingly, and with no stain of doubt, that I shall, in some way, exactly provided for by Him whomade me, exist after death, as simply conscious, that I am the same person, as I am now in the morning, that I slept at night. Do I derive this conviction from books and reasonings? I am by no means sure that I do; though the gospel assuredly speaks directly to my heart. I do ready homage to the talents and learning of Clarke, Locke, Paley, Channing and a cloud of reasoning witnesses, of whom every Christian may well be proud; and, most of all, to the profound and admirable Butler.
I hear the author of our faith directly declaring a resurrection and immortality. A single assertation from such a source were enough. But I find him reasoning, and insisting less upon the fact, than I should have expected, had he intended to implant it in the mind, as it were a truth, chiefly to be apprehended by the understanding. It seems to me that he so discusses it, as one who was aware that it was already inwoven in the sentiments and hearts of his hearers, vague, dark, without moral consequence, it may be; but an existing sentiment, taken for granted, upon which he might predicate his doctrines, as upon a thousand other facts, which we can clearly perceive, he considers already admitted by his hearers.
Let a man walk in the fields on a June morning after night showers. Let him seat himself for meditation on the hill-side, under the grateful canopy of foliage. Let him ask himself to embody his conceptions of the divinity, and to give form and place to the Author of the glorious scene outstretched before him. He may have just risen from reading the admirable demonstrations of Clarke, and the astronomical sermons of Chalmers. He may concentrate his conceptions by a fixedness of study, that may amount to pain. He may bewilder his faculties, in attempting to embody something, that his thoughts and reasonings can grasp. I know not what the powers of others can achieve in this case. But I know, by painful experiment, what mine cannot. I ask my understanding and reasoning powers about this glorious Being. They inform me that it is a subject that comes not within theirpurview. They can follow the chain of reasoning, see that every link is complete, and the demonstration irresistible. But when they wish to avail themselves of their new truth, they have no distinct idea either of premises or conclusion. It has evaporated in the analysis.
I ask my heart, or the source of my moral sentiment, be it what it may, the same question. The grateful verdure, the matin freshness, the glad voices, the aroma of flowers, the earth, the rolling clouds, the sun, all the lamps, that will burn in the firmament by night, my own happy consciousness in witnessing this impressive scene, cry outa God. To my heart, it is the first, the simplest, most obvious thought, presenting itself, it seems to me, as soon as the consciousness of my own existence; certainly susceptible of as little doubt. I have no need to define, analyze, embody. The moment I attempt to do it, my thoughts are vague and unsettled. I yield myself to the conviction. My heart swells with gratitude, confidence, love. So good, so beneficent a Being can do nothing but good, in this or any other world, to him who loves and trusts him, and strives to obey his laws.
My most treasured hopes of immortality are from the same source. Will this conscious being, capable of such remote excursions into the two eternities between which its existence is suspended, live beyond the present life? Not a particle of matter, for ought that appears, can be annihilated. Will the nobler thoughts, the warmer affections perish, as though they had not been? We ask our senses, and they can give us no hope. The body lives, and we speak of it as including the conscious being. We see it die, pass under the empire of corruption, molder, and incorporate with its kindred elements. The sensible evidence, that the person exists, is entirely destroyed. The most insatiate appetite of our natures, however, craves continued existence, and ceases not to seek for it. The inquirer after immortality cannot but be in earnest in this pursuit. The arguments of the venerable sages of old are spread before him. From the soul’s nature, from the unity of consciousness, the incorruptibility of thought,the everlasting progress, of which our faculties are capable, the strong and unquenchable desire of posthumous fame, the sacredness of earthly friendships, and similar arguments, they strove to establish, on the basis of reasoning, the conviction of immortality.
From these reasonings he repairs to the Scriptures. A strange book, utterly unlike any writings that had appeared before, declares that we shall exist forever. The religion which has arisen from this book, in its whole structure and dispensation, is predicated on the assumed fact, that we shall exist forever in another life, happy or miserable, according to our deeds on earth. Jesus,the author and finisher of this faith, announces himselfthe resurrection and the life; with a voice of power calls his dead friend from the tomb; declares, that death has no power over himself; that, after suffering a violent death, on the third day from that event, he shall arise from the dead. He arises, according to his promise; and, in the midst of his awe-struck friends he visibly ascends to his own celestial sphere. Millions, as by one impulse, catch the spirit of this wonderful book—love each other with anew and single-hearted affection, as unlike the spirit of all former ties of kindness and love, as the doctrines of this religion are different from those of paganism. The new sect look with a careless eye upon whatever is transitory; and will submit to privation, derision and torture, of whatever form, rather than waver, or equivocate, in declaring themselves subjects of this hope of immortality. This Christian hope, in every period from the time of its author, has made its way to the heart of millions, who have laid themselves down on their last bed, and felt the approach of their last sleep, expecting, as confidently to open their eyes on an eternal morning, as the weary laborer, at his evening rest, trusts that he shall see the brightness of the morrow’s dawn.
I recur, with new and unsated satisfaction, to these arguments for the soul’s immortality. I love to evoke the venerable shades of Socrates and Plato and Cicero, and hear them, each in his own way, persuade himself, that the thoughts andaffections, of which he was conscious, could only belong to an immortal spirit. I listen to the eloquent and impressive apostrophe of Tacitus, to the conscious spirit of him, whose life he had so charmingly delineated, with feelings which I cannot well describe.
‘Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguontur magnæ animæ, placide quiescas; nosque, domum tuam, ab infirmo desiderio, et muliebribus lamentis, ad contemplationem virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri, neque plangi fas est: admiratione te potius temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura suppeditet, similitudine decoremus.’[H]
I repair with new confidence and hope to the gospel, and strive to imbibe the cheering conviction, as I hear Paul sublimely declare,that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality, and that death shall be swallowed up in victory.
I have no disposition to deny that these arguments would be, in themselves, insufficient to turn the balance against the evidence of the senses, and produce the conviction of immortality from the deductions of simple reason, if religion were an impression to be raised and sustained by argument. But, if we are religious, in some form, from our very constitution, if immortality be felt as a sentiment, with more or less clearness and force, I deem that these arguments have their appropriate effect, in giving form and direction to this interior sentiment; that believers have been such, because these doctrines have found a concurrent sympathy in their spirit, a suitableness to the wants of their heart, a development of the germ of their hopes. It seems to me, that whoever has a heart, cannot look upon the earth and the firmament, without exclaiming ‘there is a God,’ nor within himself, without a conviction, that his soul is immortal.
I see in the enthusiasm,—the embraces, cries, tears, swoonings and the revolting extravagances of various sects under the influence of high religious excitement, nothing more than themorbid development of this latent religious sentiment. Instead of being, as scoffers affirm, subjects of a mere factitious intoxication, these people, who seem only to demand wings, to soar aloft, are only manifesting the unregulated action of nature working at the bottom of their hearts.
For myself I feel that I am immortal, and that those fellow sojourners, to whom I have been attached by the affection of long intimacy, and the reception of many and great kindnesses, will exist with me hereafter. I pretend to conceive nothing, I wish to inquire nothing, about the mode, the place and circumstances. I should as soon think of disturbing myself, by endeavoring to conceive the ideas that might be imparted by a sixth sense. It is sufficient that my heart declares, that a being who has seen this glorious world, cherished these warm affections, entertained these illimitable aspirations, felt these longings after immortality, indulged ‘these thoughts, that wander through eternity,’cannothave been doomed by Him, who gave them, to have them quenched forever in annihilation. Even an illusion so glorious would be worth purchasing at the price of a world. I would affirm, even to repetition, that there is given us that high and stern power, which implies a courage superior to any conflict, and which gives the mind a complete ascendency over any danger, pain or torture, which belongs to life or death. But we would not be so extravagant, as for a moment, to question that death, as the present generation have been trained, and as we are accustomed, by all we see, and hear to view it, is a formidable evil, fitly characterized by its dread name,the king of terrors. Many a debilitating interior misgiving will assail the stoutest mind, in certain moments, in view of it. There are dark intervals by night, in the midnight hours of pain, periods between the empire of sleep and active reason, when the terrific and formless image rushes in its terror and indefiniteness upon the mind. As age steals upon us, and the vivid perceptions, and the bright dreams of youth disappear, many a dark shadow will cloud the sunshine of the soul. The conflict, in which all these terrors areovercome by unaided nature and reason is, as has been seen, a cruel one. The tender sensibilities, the keen affections, the dear and delusive hopes of our nature must all be crushed, before we can be unmoved in the endurance of the pain and torture that precede, and the death that follows.
It is only to a firm and unhesitating faith, that it becomes as easy and natural to die, as to sleep. Glorious and blessed hope, the hope of meeting our friends, in the eternal land of those who truly and greatly live forever! There we shall renew our youth, andmount as on the wings of eagles.
‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet,Where parting tears shall cease to flow:And, when I think thereon, almost I long to go!’
‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet,Where parting tears shall cease to flow:And, when I think thereon, almost I long to go!’
‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet,
Where parting tears shall cease to flow:
And, when I think thereon, almost I long to go!’
Note 62, page 177.
That is an unworthy opponent, who assails what assumes to be important truth, by no better argument than ridicule and sarcasm. That is a despicable one, unworthy of exciting any feelings but those of pity and contempt, who attempts to bring to bear upon it the blind and fierce prejudices of the multitude. This last is the prevalent mode of modern attack. By those, who deem that wisdom will die with them, and that they can learn nothing more, who dogmatize without examining, and measure the views of others by their own preconceived and settled opinions, all the foregoing doctrines, which militate with the established prejudices and habits of the age, will be denounced, I am aware, as heretical, imaginary, false.
‘He would teach people how to be happy,’ say they with a sneer, ‘as though they were not compelled to pursue happiness by a law of their natures.’ My business is not with such opponents, and I should consider their opposition an honor and a distinction.
The fact will remain true, be it welcomed, be it ridiculed, as it may, that a few, in all time, have found the means of being more comfortable and happy, than others in the same circumstances. They had a method of their own in creatingthis difference. That method might be so indicated, as to be reduced to general, and settled rules. This is the amount of the foregoing doctrines. The object has been to discuss and fix some of those rules. No moralist was ever so stupid, as to expect, that the world would not pursue its headlong course, inculcate what he might. Every one, who understands the analogy of the present to the past, will expect that no form of virtuous effort will be screened from question and ridicule; and that no purity of purpose will conquer the blind and fierce hate of the multitude.
But there will still be a few quiet, reflecting and philosophic people. What is better, the number will be always increasing. For such, are these my labors, and those, which I have adopted from another, chiefly designed. Their suffrage is an ample reward. Their plaudit is true fame. If they say, ‘we and those about us may be better and happier; let us make the effort to become so,’ my object is attained.
To encourage us to shake off the superincumbent load of indifference, ridicule, and opposition, and to make efforts to extend virtue and happiness, it is a sublime reflection, that a thought may outlive an empire. Babylon and Thebes are, now, nowhere to be found; but the moral lessons of the cotemporary wise and good, despised and disregarded, perhaps, in their day, have descended to us and are to be found everywhere. As the seminal principles of plants, borne through the wide spaces of the air by their downy wings, find at length a congenial spot, in which to settle down, and vegetate, these seeds of virtue and happiness, floating down the current of time, are still arrested, from age to age, by some kindred mind, in which they germinate, and produce their golden fruit. No intellect can conjecture, in how many instances, and to what degree, every fit moral precept may have come between the reason and passions of some one, balancing between the course of happiness and ruin, and may have inclined the scale in his favor. The consciousness of even an effort to achieve one such triumph is a sufficient satisfaction to a virtuous mind.