ON SEEING A SKULL
This morning while examining a skull strange emotions took possession of me—such as I never before experienced. That senseless skull had once been the seat of deep thought and powerful passions; beaming eyes once glistened brightly where now there was only a hollow space; that head was once proudly erected, and the form that supported it once mingled in the busy scenes of life. But now what a change! His very name is forgotten—himself but a handful of dust. O mortals! behold, and learn a lesson. His body has long since mouldered away and mingled with the parent earth,—this skull alone remains; and yet the time will surely come, and cannot be far distant, when "the bones shall come together—bone to his bone"; when the sinews and the flesh shall come upon them, the skin cover them, and the breath entering the body the dead shall live! Will this skull come forward at "the resurrection of the just," or ——? Oh, what an awful thought! My very blood runs cold, and a shudder steals over me. O thou great Mediator of mankind, intercede for me before thy Father's throne, that ere it is everlastingly too late my unworthy name may be written in the Lamb's book of life. (July 5, 1852.)