CHAPTER XLIX.
FINAL.
A few last words as to sundry life-experiences. Whether we notice it or not, we are guided and guarded and led on through many changes and chances to the gates of death in a marvellously predestined manner; if we pray about everything, we shall see and know that, as Pope says,
"In spite of wrong, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right;"
and the trustful assurance that the highest wisdom and mercy and power orders all things will give us comfort under whatever circumstances. I believe in prayer as the universal panacea, philosophically as well as devoutly; and that "walking with God" is our highest wisdom as well as our deepest comfort.
Let no man think that a sick-bed is the best place to repent in. When the brain is clouded by bodily ailment there is neither capacity nor even will to mend matters; a man is at the best then tired, lazy, and dull, but if there is pain too all is worse. Listen to one of my old sonnets, and take its good advice:—
"Delay not, sinner, till the hour of pain
To seek repentance: pain is absolute,
Exacting all the body, all the brain,
Humanity's stern king from head to foot:
How canst thou pray, while fever'd arrows shoot
Through this torn targe,—while every bone doth ache,
And the soared mind raves up and down her cell
Restless, and begging rest for mercy's sake?
Add not to death the bitter fear of hell;
Take pity on thy future self, poor man,
While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can;
Wrestle to-day with sin; and spare that strife
Of meeting all its terrors in the van
Just at the ebbing agony of life."
I have great faith in first impressions of intuitive liking or disliking. Second thoughts are by no means best always nor even often. Charity sometimes tries to induce, one to think better of such a person or such a situation than a first feeling shrinks from,—but it won't do for long: the man or the place will continue to be distasteful. My spirit apprehends instinctively the right and the true; and through life I have relied on intuitions; which some have called a rashness, recommending colder cautions; but these latter have seldom paid their way. A country parson was right in his diagnosis of Iscariot's character as that of "a low mean fellow;" and he judged reasonably that all the patient kindliness of One who strove to make such His "own familiar friend" was so much charity almost thrown away, except indeed as to spiritual improvement of the charitable.