DOES THE BEAST PEER INTO THE STARS?
Do the birds that pass so easily into the air go on voyages of discovery past Sirius? And yet the air refuses to bear us, and wafts them gently on its lightest zephyrs! We have sublime faculties—the fit companions of a soul. It is not our self-conceit. The Milky Way is not our conceit. The eclipses are not our conceit. The awful sweep of our whole family of planets, moons, and sun, onward in celestial space, is not a conceit. Therefore we possess our souls, flashing within caskets which have not been altogether unworthy of their priceless treasures.
AS THE CASKET DULLS
and grows to its decay, we cannot weep greatly over its loss, for will it not reveal the splendors all within?
"It is worthy the observing," says Lord Bacon, "wisest of men," "that there is no passion in the mind of men so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat from him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we read, after Otho the Emperor had slain himself,
PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)
provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again." We all must die, sooner or later. It is easier to die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives. Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age. Jesus stands near. When death comes, his voice will sound, just at the brink: "It is I; be not afraid." "When I look at the tombs of the great," said Joseph Addison, on
HIS VISIT TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY,
"every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great judgment day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together."
THE AGED MAN