LIFE.
(Vol. vii., pp. 429. 560. 608.; Vol. viii., pp. 43. 550.)
Your correspondent H. C. K. (Vol. vii., 560.) quotes a passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, sect. xlii. The following passage from the same writer's Christian Morals is much more to the point:
"When the Stoic said ('Vitam nemo acciperet, si daretur scientibus'—Seneca) that life would not be accepted if it were offered unto such as knew it, he spoke too meanly of that state of being which placeth us in the form of men. It more depreciates the value of this life, that men would not live it over again; for although they would still live on, yet few or none can endure to think of being twice the same men upon earth, and some had rather never have lived than to tread over their days once more. Cicero, in a prosperous state, had not the patience to think of beginning in a cradle again. ('Si quis Deus mihi largiatur, ut repuerascam et in cunis vagiam, valdè recusem.'—De Senectute.) Job would not only curse the day of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to act over his disasters and the miseries of the dunghill. But the greatest underweening of this life is to undervalue that unto which this is but exordial, or a passage leading unto it. The great advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand in a capacity of a better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and the sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus Adam came into this world with the power also of another; not only to replenish the earth, but the everlasting mansions of heaven."—Part III. sect. xxv.
"Looking back we see the dreadful train
Of woes anew, which, were we to sustain,
We should refuse to tread the path again."
Prior's Solomon, b. iii.
The crown is won by the cross, the victor's wreath in the battle of life:
"This is the condition of the battle[[9]] which man that is born upon the earth shall fight. That if he be overcome he shall suffer as thou hast said, but if he get the victory, he shall receive the thing that I say."—2 Esdr. vii. 57.
Our grade in the other world is determined by our probation here. To use a simile of Asgill's, this life of time is a university in which we take our degree for eternity. Heaven is a pyramid, or ever-ascending scale; the world of evil is an inverted pyramid, or ever-descending scale. Life is motion. There is no such thing as stagnation: everything is either advancing or retrograding. Corruption itself is an activity, and evil is ever growing. According to the habits formed within us, we are ascending or descending; we cannot stand still.
A man, then, in whom the higher life predominates, were he to live life over again, would
grow from grace to grace, and his status in the spirit world would be higher than in the first life, and vice versâ; an evil man[[10]] would be more completely evil, and would rank in a darker and more bestial form. They who hear not the good tidings will not be persuaded though one rose from the dead; and those with whom the experience of one life failed would not repent in the second.
The testimony of the Shunamite's son, Lazarus, and of those who rose from the dead at the crucifixion, is not recorded; but they who have escaped from the jaws of death, by recovery from sickness or preservation from danger, may in a certain sense be said to live life over again. After the fright is over the warning in most cases loses its influence, and we have a verification of the two proverbs, "Out of sight out of mind," and—
"The devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
The devil was well, the devil a monk would he."
In a word, this experiment of a second life would best succeed with him whose habits are formed for good, and whose life is already overshadowed by the divine life. Even of such an one it might be said, "Man is frail, the battle is sore, and the flesh is weak; even a good man may fall and become a castaway." The most unceasing circumspection is ever requisite. The most polished steel rusts in this corrosive atmosphere, and purest metals get discoloured.
Finally, it is very probable that God gives every man a complete probation; that is to say, He cuts not man's thread of life till he be at the same side of the line he should be were he to live myriads of years. Every man is made up of a mixture of good and evil: these two principles never become soluble together, but ever tend each to eliminate the other. They hurry on in circles, alternately intersecting and gaining the ascendancy, till one is at last precipitated to the bottom, and pure good or evil remains. In the nature of things there are critical moments and tides of circumstances which become turning-points when time merges into eternity and mutability into permanence: and such a crisis may occur in the course of a short life as well as in many lives lived over again.
Eirionnach.
Footnote 9:[(return)]
"A field of battle is this mortal life!"
Young, N. viii.
See a recent novel by Frederick Souillet, entitled Si Jeunesse savait, Si Vieillesse pouvait.
Life and Death (Vol. ix., p. 481.).—The following is on a monument at Lowestoft, co. Suffolk, to the memory of John, son of John and Anne Wilde, who died February 9, 1714, aged five years and six months:
"Quem Dii amant moritur Juvenis."
Sigma.
The following may be added to the parallel passages collected by Eirionnach. Chateaubriand says, in his Memoirs, that the greatest misfortune which can happen to a man is to be born, and the next greatest is to have a child. As Chateaubriand had no children, the most natural comment on the last branch of his remark is "sour grapes."
Uneda.
Philadelphia.