Parch’d by the sun’s directer ray
The momentary glories waste,
The short-liv’d beauties die away.”
And where are you then? Does your soul disperse and dissolve into common air? Or does it share the fate of its former companion, and moulder into dust! Or does it remain conscious of its own existence, in some distant, unknown world? ’Tis all unknown! A black, dreary, melancholy scene! Clouds and darkness rest upon it.
But the case is far otherwise with a Christian. To him life and immortality are brought to light. His eye pierces through the vale of the shadow of death, and sees into the glories of eternity. His view does not terminate on that black line,
“The verge ’twixt mortal and immortal being.”
But extends beyond the bounds of time and place, to the house of God eternal in the heavens. Hence he is so far from looking upon death as an enemy, that he longs to feel his welcome embrace. He groans (but they are pleasing groans) to have mortality swallowed up of life.
Perhaps you will say, “But this is all a dream. He is only in a fool’s paradise?” Supposing he be, it is a pleasing dream.
Maneat mentis gratissimus error!
If he is only in a fool’s paradise, yet it is a paradise, while you are wandering in a wide, weary, barren world. Be it folly: his folly gives him that present happiness, which all your wisdom cannot find. So that he may now turn tables upon you and say,