From these reasonings he repairs to the Scriptures. A strange book, utterly unlike any writings that had appeared before, declares that we shall exist forever. The religion which has arisen from this book, in its whole structure and dispensation, is predicated on the assumed fact, that we shall exist forever in another life, happy or miserable, according to our deeds on earth. Jesus, the author and finisher of this faith, announces himself the resurrection and the life; with a voice of power calls his dead friend from the tomb; declares, that death has no power over himself; that, after suffering a violent death, on the third day from that event, he shall arise from the dead. He arises, according to his promise; and, in the midst of his awe-struck friends he visibly ascends to his own celestial sphere. Millions, as by one impulse, catch the spirit of this wonderful book—love each other with anew and single-hearted affection, as unlike the spirit of all former ties of kindness and love, as the doctrines of this religion are different from those of paganism. The new sect look with a careless eye upon whatever is transitory; and will submit to privation, derision and torture, of whatever form, rather than waver, or equivocate, in declaring themselves subjects of this hope of immortality. This Christian hope, in every period from the time of its author, has made its way to the heart of millions, who have laid themselves down on their last bed, and felt the approach of their last sleep, expecting, as confidently to open their eyes on an eternal morning, as the weary laborer, at his evening rest, trusts that he shall see the brightness of the morrow’s dawn.
I recur, with new and unsated satisfaction, to these arguments for the soul’s immortality. I love to evoke the venerable shades of Socrates and Plato and Cicero, and hear them, each in his own way, persuade himself, that the thoughts and affections, of which he was conscious, could only belong to an immortal spirit. I listen to the eloquent and impressive apostrophe of Tacitus, to the conscious spirit of him, whose life he had so charmingly delineated, with feelings which I cannot well describe.
‘Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum corpore extinguontur magnæ animæ, placide quiescas; nosque, domum tuam, ab infirmo desiderio, et muliebribus lamentis, ad contemplationem virtutum tuarum voces, quas neque lugeri, neque plangi fas est: admiratione te potius temporalibus laudibus, et, si natura suppeditet, similitudine decoremus.’[H]
I repair with new confidence and hope to the gospel, and strive to imbibe the cheering conviction, as I hear Paul sublimely declare, that this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal immortality, and that death shall be swallowed up in victory.
I have no disposition to deny that these arguments would be, in themselves, insufficient to turn the balance against the evidence of the senses, and produce the conviction of immortality from the deductions of simple reason, if religion were an impression to be raised and sustained by argument. But, if we are religious, in some form, from our very constitution, if immortality be felt as a sentiment, with more or less clearness and force, I deem that these arguments have their appropriate effect, in giving form and direction to this interior sentiment; that believers have been such, because these doctrines have found a concurrent sympathy in their spirit, a suitableness to the wants of their heart, a development of the germ of their hopes. It seems to me, that whoever has a heart, cannot look upon the earth and the firmament, without exclaiming ‘there is a God,’ nor within himself, without a conviction, that his soul is immortal.
I see in the enthusiasm,—the embraces, cries, tears, swoonings and the revolting extravagances of various sects under the influence of high religious excitement, nothing more than the morbid development of this latent religious sentiment. Instead of being, as scoffers affirm, subjects of a mere factitious intoxication, these people, who seem only to demand wings, to soar aloft, are only manifesting the unregulated action of nature working at the bottom of their hearts.
For myself I feel that I am immortal, and that those fellow sojourners, to whom I have been attached by the affection of long intimacy, and the reception of many and great kindnesses, will exist with me hereafter. I pretend to conceive nothing, I wish to inquire nothing, about the mode, the place and circumstances. I should as soon think of disturbing myself, by endeavoring to conceive the ideas that might be imparted by a sixth sense. It is sufficient that my heart declares, that a being who has seen this glorious world, cherished these warm affections, entertained these illimitable aspirations, felt these longings after immortality, indulged ‘these thoughts, that wander through eternity,’ cannot have been doomed by Him, who gave them, to have them quenched forever in annihilation. Even an illusion so glorious would be worth purchasing at the price of a world. I would affirm, even to repetition, that there is given us that high and stern power, which implies a courage superior to any conflict, and which gives the mind a complete ascendency over any danger, pain or torture, which belongs to life or death. But we would not be so extravagant, as for a moment, to question that death, as the present generation have been trained, and as we are accustomed, by all we see, and hear to view it, is a formidable evil, fitly characterized by its dread name, the king of terrors. Many a debilitating interior misgiving will assail the stoutest mind, in certain moments, in view of it. There are dark intervals by night, in the midnight hours of pain, periods between the empire of sleep and active reason, when the terrific and formless image rushes in its terror and indefiniteness upon the mind. As age steals upon us, and the vivid perceptions, and the bright dreams of youth disappear, many a dark shadow will cloud the sunshine of the soul. The conflict, in which all these terrors are overcome by unaided nature and reason is, as has been seen, a cruel one. The tender sensibilities, the keen affections, the dear and delusive hopes of our nature must all be crushed, before we can be unmoved in the endurance of the pain and torture that precede, and the death that follows.
It is only to a firm and unhesitating faith, that it becomes as easy and natural to die, as to sleep. Glorious and blessed hope, the hope of meeting our friends, in the eternal land of those who truly and greatly live forever! There we shall renew our youth, and mount as on the wings of eagles.
‘But we shall meet, but we shall meet,
Where parting tears shall cease to flow: