May be slipped and spared, and no loss to me.
“What care I, though falls the sky,
And the shriveled earth to a cinder turn?
No fires of doom can ever consume
What never was made nor meant to burn.
“Let go the breath! There is no death
For the living soul, nor loss nor harm.
Nor of the clod is the life of God;
Let it mount, as it will, from form to form.”
When a train of cars stops suddenly at the depot, the energy that caused it to fly along the track is not lost, it is only transformed. When a tree is cut down, the energy that expressed itself in its trunk and branches is not lost, it will only take other forms. When a horse dies, the energy of which its life was the expression is not lost, it is transformed. When a tree or a horse passes from the living world into the world of inorganic things, the exact amount of energy in the body of the living tree or horse takes other forms. The amount on the side of death is equal to the amount on the side of life. If we consider man only as a physical organism, the same may be said of him. The amount transformed into earth and air, will be the equivalent of the organized fund of bone, and sinew, and muscle, turned over to death. If we thus estimate man, however, as we do a tree or a horse, have we taken into account the entire sum of assets that were in his possession during life? What of his thought, affection, and volition? When Kepler died, what became of the intelligence that discovered the “Three Laws,” which constitute the arches of the sublime bridge that spans the vast chasm between Ptolemaic and modern astronomy? When Laplace died, what became of the spirit that solved the problems of the Mécanique Céleste, by the aid of which the irregularities of the heavenly bodies were reduced to order? When Adams died, what became of the massive spirit that built in the depths of his own study the planet Neptune, with no other raw material to work from than the perturbations of Uranus? When Moses died, what became of the affection that expressed itself in the training and civilization of a race? When Jesus Christ died, what became of the love that sacrificed itself for a sinful world?