At the close of a long and arduous career the famous Lyman Beecher passed under a mental cloud. The great man became as a little child. One day after his son, Henry Ward, had preached a striking sermon, his father entered the pulpit and beginning to speak wandered in his words. With great tenderness the preacher laid his hand upon his father's shoulder and said to the audience: "My father is like a man who, having long dwelt in an old house, has made preparations for entering a new and larger home. Anticipating a speedy removal, he sent on beforehand much of his soul-furniture. When later the day of removal was postponed the interval seemed so brief as to render it unnecessary to bring back his mental goods." Oh, beautiful words describing those whose strength is declining, whose spirit is ebbing and senses failing, because God is packing up their soul-furniture that they may be ready for the long journey that awaits us all. But man's journey is not unto the grave. Dying is transmutation. Dying is not folding of the wings; but pluming the pinions for new and larger flight. Dying is not striking an unseen rock, but a speedy entrance into an open harbor. Death is no enemy, letting the arrow fly toward one who sits at life's banquet-table. Death is a friend coming on an errand of release and divine convoy. For God's children "to be death-called is to be God-called; to be God-called is to be Christ-found; to be Christ-found is hope and home and heaven."
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See Symposium on Evolution, Homiletic Review, May, 1894.
The Mind: and the Duty of Right Thinking
"All ye who possess the power of thought, prize it well! Remember that its flight is infinite; it winds about over so many mountain tops, and so runs from poetry to eloquence, it so flies from star to star, it so dreams, so loves, so aspires, so hangs both over mystery and fact, that we may well call it the effort of man to explore the home, the infinite palace of his heavenly Father."—Swing.
"Men with empires in their brains."—Lowell.