Chapter Thirty One.
I am grave to-day; it is the birth-day of one of my children—a day so joyful in youth, in more advanced life so teeming with thought and serious reflections. How happy the child is—and it is its happiness which has made me grave.
How changed are our feelings as we advance in life!—Our responsibility is increased with each fleeting year. In youth we live but for ourselves—self predominates in every thing. In mature age, if we have fulfilled the conditions of our tenure, we feel that we must live for our children. Fortunately, increase of years weans us from those selfish and frivolous expenses which youth requires, and we feel it little or no sacrifice to devote to our children the means which, before, we considered so important to the gratification of our pride and our ambition. Not that we have lost either our pride or our ambition, but they have become centred in other objects dearer to us than ourselves—in the race springing up—to whom we shall leave our names and worldly possessions when our own career is closed.
Worn out with the pursuit of vanity, we pause at a certain age, and come to the conclusion that in this life we require but little else than to eat, drink, prepare for a future existence, and to die.
What a miserable being must an old bachelor be!—he vegetates, but he cannot be said to exist—he passes his life in one long career of selfishness, and dies. Strange, that children, and the responsibility attached to their welfare, should do more to bring a man into the right path than any denunciations from holy writ or holy men! How many who might have been lost, have been, it is to be hoped, saved, from the feeling that they must leave their children a good name, and must provide for their support and advancement in life! Yes, and how many women, after a life so frivolous as to amount to wickedness, have, from their attachment to their offspring, settled down into the redeeming position of careful, anxious, and serious-minded mothers!
Such reflections will rise upon a birth-day, and many more of chequered hopes and fears. How long will these flowers, now blossoming so fairly, be permitted to remain with us? Will they be mowed down before another birth-day, or will they be permitted to live to pass through the ordeal of this life of temptation? How will they combat? Will they fall and disgrace their parents, or will they be a pride and blessing? Will it please Heaven to allow them to be not too much tempted, not overcome by sickness, or that they shall be severely chastised? Those germs of virtue now appearing, those tares now growing up with the corn—will the fruit bring forth good seed? will the latter be effectually rooted up by precept and example? How much to encourage! and how much to check! Virtues in excess are turned to vice—liberality becomes extravagance—prudence, avarice—courage, rashness—love, weakness—even religion may turn to fanaticism—and superior intellect may, in its daring, mock the power which granted it. Alas! what a responsibility is here. A man may enjoy or suffer when he lives for himself alone; but he is doubly blest or doubly cursed when, in his second stage, he is visited through his children. What a blessing is our ignorance of the future! Fatal, indeed, to all happiness in this world would be a foreknowledge of that which is to come. We have but to do our duty and hope for the best, acknowledging, however severe may be the dispensation, that whatever is, or is to be, is right.
How strange, although we feel in the midst of life we are in death, that mortals should presume to reduce it to a nice calculation, and speculate upon it! I can sell my life now to an annuity-office for twenty years’ purchase or more, and they will share a dividend upon it. Well, if ever I do insure my life, I hope that by me they will lose money, for, like every body else in this world, I have a great many things to do before I die. There was but one man I ever heard of who could lie down and die, saying, “Now, Lord, let thy servant depart in peace.” I have no warning yet, no screw is loose in this complex mechanism; and yet, this very day, a chimney-pot may fall on my head, and put an end to all my calculations.
It is right that the precarious tenure of our existence should not be wholly forgotten, but certainly was never intended that it should be borne on the mind, for, if we had ever in our memory that we may die this very hour, what a check there would be to all energy, and enterprise, and industry. Who would speculate with the anticipation of large returns upon some future day, if he did not calculate upon living to receive them? We should all stop to say Cui bono? If it were not that our hopes support us, not only support us in all reasonable, but even unreasonable calculations, the world would be at a stand-still. No, no! we have our duty to perform towards our God; but we are also enjoined to perform our duty towards our neighbour. The uncertainty of life is to be remembered as a check to our worldly passions, but not as a drag-chain to our worldly career.