The Upton Letters

by Arthur Christopher Benson

I do not, of course, mean that it should be a steady, melancholy preoccupation. If we have to die, we are also meant to live; but we ought to combine and co-ordinate the thought of it. It ought to take its place among the other great certainties of life, without weakening our hold upon the activity of existence. How is this possible? For the very terror of death lies not in the sad accidents of mortality, the stiffened and corrupting form, the dim eye, the dreadful pageantry—over that we can triumph; but it is the blank cessation of all that we know of life, the silence of the mind that loved us, the irreparable wound.

Some turn hungrily to Spiritualism to escape from this terrible mystery. But, so far as I have looked into Spiritualism, it seems to me only to have proved that, if any communication has ever been made from beyond the gate of death—and even such supposed phenomena are inextricably intertwined with quackeries and deceits—it is an abnormal and not a normal thing. The scientific evidence for the continuance of personal identity is nil; the only hope lies in the earnest desire of the hungering heart.

The spirit cries out that it dare not, it cannot cease to be. It cannot bear the thought of all the energy and activity of life proceeding in its accustomed course, deeds being done, words being uttered, the problems which the mind pondered being solved, the hopes which the heart cherished being realised—"and I not there." It is a ghastly obsession to think of all the things that one has loved best—quiet work, the sunset on familiar fields, well-known rooms, dear books, happy talk, fireside intercourse—and one's own place vacant, one's possessions dispersed among careless hands, eye and ear and voice sealed and dumb. And yet how strange it is that we should feel thus about the future, experience this dumb resentment at the thought that there should be a future in which one may bear no part, while we acquiesce so serenely in claiming no share in the great past of the world that enacted itself before we came into being. It never occurs to us to feel wronged because we had no conscious outlook upon the things that have been; why should we feel so unjustly used because our outlook may be closed upon the things that shall be hereafter? Why should we feel that the future somehow belongs to us, while we have no claim upon the past? It is a strange and bewildering mystery; but the fact that the whole of our nature cries out against extinction is the strongest argument that we shall yet be, for why put so intensely strong an instinct in the heart unless it is meant to be somehow satisfied?

Only one thought, and that a stern one, can help us—and that is the certainty that we are in stronger hands than our own. The sense of free-will, the consciousness of the possibility of effort, blinds us to this; we tend to mistake the ebullience of temperament for the deliberate choice of the will. Yet have we any choice at all? Science says no; while the mind, with no less instinctive certainty, cries out that we have a choice. Yet take some sharp crisis of life—say an overwhelming temptation. If we resist it, what is it but a resultant of many forces? Experience of past failures and past resolves combine with trivial and momentary motives to make us choose to resist. If we fail and yield, the motive is not strong enough. Yet we have the sense that we might have done differently: we blame ourselves, and not the past which made us ourselves.

But with death it is different. Here, if ever, falls the fiat of the Mind that bade us be. And thus the only way in which we can approach it is to put ourselves in dependence upon that Spirit. And the only course we can follow is this: not by endeavouring to anticipate in thought the moment of our end—that, perhaps, only adds to its terrors when it comes—but by resolutely and tenderly, day after day, learning to commend ourselves to the hand of God; to make what efforts we can; to do our best; to decide as simply and sincerely as possible what our path should be, and then to leave the issue humbly and quietly with God.

I do this, a little; it brings with it a wonderful tranquillity and peace. And the strange thing is that one does not do it oftener, when one has so often experienced its healing and strengthening power.

To live then thus; not to cherish far-off designs, or to plan life too eagerly; but to do what is given us to do as carefully as we can; to follow intuitions; to take gratefully the joys of life; to take its pains hopefully, always turning our hearts to the great and merciful Heart above us, which a thousand times over turns out to be more tender and pitiful than we had dared to hope. How far I am from this faith. And yet I see clearly that it is the only power that can sustain. For in such a moment of insight even the thought of the empty chair, the closed books, the disused pen, the sorrowing hearts, and the flower-strewn mound fail to blur the clear mirror of the mind.

For him there can be but two alternatives: either the spirit that we knew has lost the individuality that we knew and is merged again in the great vital force from which it was for a while separated; or else, under some conditions that we cannot dream of, the identity remains, free from the dreary material conditions, free to be what it desired to be; knowing perhaps the central peace which we know only by subtle emanations; seeing the region in which beauty, and truth, and purity, and justice, and high hopes, and virtue are at one; no longer baffled by delay, and drooping languor, and sad forebodings, but free and pure as viewless air.

THE END