A soul so narrow as to know no broader horizon than is measured by its own puny pleasure or purpose, ideal or method, can never be long in the ascendant, and ultimately receives as it deserves the condemnation of the larger, better world; the life that has no definitely fixed ideal toward which it is stirring, no divinely conceived mission which it is struggling to fulfil, can expect no less than the hearty contempt of an honest humanity. Shall we not endeavor, each of us, to become the radiating centre of kindliness and good will and helpfulness? It is hard to do one’s best and then to be troubled with a haunting fear or a real consciousness that some one else would have done that particular thing better. It is harder yet to do one’s best, to work from the purest motives even, and then to feel that one’s friends are looking on with critical eye, or, at best, with cold approval. Why not say the appreciative word and give the sympathetic hand clasp wherever we can?
Harder even than death is it to find some dearly loved friend grown cold and indifferent; to find instead of the loving sympathy that has seemed a strong fortress in the past, only a distant formality, a chilling frost; or to find, worse than all, disloyalty in place of truth. Nothing is more heart-breaking than to find a love grown cold, especially if that love is one in which we have trusted and believed for years. Such things happen. We find in place of the sympathy and affection on which we have relied without question some sudden failure in time of stress. The sympathy we have accustomed ourselves to lean upon disappoints us. The hollowness of insincerity rings through the formal attempt to simulate affection that is no longer a vital thing. And when this experience befalls us—God help us.
No; death is not the worst thing that can happen to us or to our friends. I sometimes wonder if it is not the best; if we do not do wrong in wishing back those who have gone a little before us to the silent shore. Death is a mystery, but it may be the best part of life, after all. We cannot tell.
We say we believe in immortality; that we believe the future life will take us far in advance of this; that we are to be infinitely happier, infinitely better and infinitely more useful there. Why, then, are we afraid to go forward into it? Why do we grudge our friends that experience? And why—since we believe in infinite love and the life of the soul hereafter do we mourn the death of any human love when we are sure of God’s love and that of the friends who have gone before?
There is a poem of Edward Rowland Sill’s that has long been a favorite with me. Perhaps it may bring a comforting thought to some other who reads it here:
What if, some morning when the stars were paling
And the dawn whitened and the east was clear,
Strange peace and rest fell on me from the presence
Of a benignant spirit standing near,
And I should tell him, as he stood beside me,