And let this simple hymn be the old man's last prayer, bridging over the long interval of well-nigh fourscore years between cradle and grave with a child's first piety:—
Love and Life.
"'My son, give Me thine heart;'
Yes, Abba, Father, yes!
Perfect in goodness as Thou art,
I will not give Thee less.
"But I am dark and dead,
And need Thy grace to live;
Father, on me Thy Spirit shed,
To me that sunshine give!
"Thus only can I say
When Thou dost ask my love,
I will return in earth's poor way
Thy gift from heaven above.
"There is no good in me
But droppeth from on high,
Then quicken me with life from Thee,
That I may never die.
"For if I am a son—
O grace beyond compare!—
A child of God, with Jesus one,
In Him I stand an heir;
"In Him I live and move,
And only so can give
An immortality of love,
To Thee by whom I live.
"Then melt this heart of stone,
And grant the heart of flesh,
That all I am may be Thine own,
Renewed to love afresh."
About the much-vexed question of Eschatology and the final state of the dead, I have long since grown to the happy doctrine of Eternal Hope—ultimately for all; perhaps even siding with Burns, who (as the only logical way of eliminating evil) gives a chance to the "puir Deil:" albeit the path for some must be through the terrible Gehenna of fire to purify, and with few stripes or many to satisfy conscience and evoke character. As for that text in Ecclesiastes about the "tree lying where it fell," commonly supposed to prove an unchanging state for ever,—it is obvious to answer that when a tree is cut down, its final course of usefulness only then begins, by being sawn up and converted into furniture; much as when a human being's work here is finished, he is taken hence to be utilised elsewhere. Everlasting progress is the law of our existence, whether here or elsewhere,—no stopping, far less annihilation. And then the character of our Maker is Love, this Love having satisfied Justice by self-sacrifice, and nothing is more reiterated in the Psalms than that "His mercy endureth for ever;" which cannot be true if bodies and spirits—even of the wicked—are to be condemned by Him to endless torment. Adequate punishment, and that for the wretched creature's own improvement, is only in accordance with the voice of reason, and the voice of inspired wisdom too; for though our Lord Christ warns against a fearful retribution (involved in the phrase of "the undying worm and the unquenchable fire," as He was looking over the wall of Jerusalem into Tophet and the valley of Hinnom where the offal from the thousands of sacrifices was perpetually rotting and being burned, so taking his parable from an incident, as usual)—He yet "went and preached after death to the spirits in prison," probably to those who were then enduring some such purgatorial punishment. After all, this sentence of King Solomon as to a fallen tree, so often misapplied, is not one of the higher forms of inspiration; even St. Paul qualifies his own sometimes; and there are several disputable texts in Proverbs: and, if taken literally for exposition, we all must admit that the felling, of a tree is the immediate precursor to its further life of usefulness. Let us, then, rationally hope that the dead in Christ will be improved from good to better and best; and that even those who have failed to live for Him in this world may by some purifying education in the next come finally to the happy far-off end of being saved by Him at last.