Severe, therefore, as his loss had been, and lasting as its effects were, it produced in him nothing like a settled sorrow, nor even that melancholy which sorrow leaves behind. Gibbon has said of himself, that as a mere philosopher he could not agree with the Greeks, in thinking that those who die in their youth are favored by the Gods: ὅν ὅι θεοι φιλοῦσιν ἀποθνησκε νεός. It was because he was “a mere philosopher,” that he failed to perceive a truth which the religious heathen acknowledged, and which is so trivial, and of such practical value, that it may now be seen inscribed upon village tombstones. The Christian knows that “blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit.” And the heart of the Christian mourner, in its deepest distress, hath the witness of the Spirit to that consolatory assurance.
In this faith Leonard regarded his bereavement. His loss, he knew, had been Margaret's gain. What if she had been summoned in the flower of her years, and from a state of connubial happiness which there had been nothing to disturb or to alloy? How soon might that flower have been blighted,—how surely must it have faded! how easily might that happiness have been interrupted by some of those evils which flesh is heir to! And as the separation was to take place, how mercifully had it been appointed that he, who was the stronger vessel, should be the survivor! Even for their child this was best, greatly as she needed, and would need, a mother's care. His paternal solicitude would supply that care, as far as it was possible to supply it; but had he been removed, mother and child must have been left to the mercy of Providence, without any earthly protector, or any means of support.
For her to die was gain; in him, therefore, it were sinful as well as selfish to repine, and of such selfishness and sin his heart acquitted him. If a wish could have recalled her to life, no such wish would ever have by him been uttered, nor ever have by him been felt; certain he was that he loved her too well to bring her again into this world of instability and trial. Upon earth there can be no safe happiness.
Ah! male FORTUNÆ devota est ara MANENTI!
Fallit, et hæc nullas accipit ara preces.1
1 WALLIUS.
All things here are subject to Time and Mutability:
Quod tibi largâ dedit Hora dextrâ,
Hora furaci rapiet sinistrâ.2
2 CASIMIR.
We must be in Eternity before we can be secure against change. “The world,” says Cowper, “upon which we close our eyes at night, is never the same with that on which we open them in the morning.”
It was to the perfect Order he should find in that state upon which he was about to enter, that the judicious Hooker looked forward at his death with placid and profound contentment. Because he had been employed in contending against a spirit of insubordination and schism which soon proved fatal to his country; and because his life had been passed under the perpetual discomfort of domestic discord, the happiness of Heaven seemed, in his estimation, to consist primarily in Order, as indeed in all human societies this is the first thing needful. The discipline which Mr. Bacon had undergone was very different in kind: what he delighted to think, was, that the souls of those whom death and redemption have made perfect, are in a world where there is no change, nor parting, where nothing fades, nothing passes away and is no more seen, but the good and the beautiful are permanent.