Yet our Lord and Saviour hath not left those who are in darkness and the shadow of death, without the light of a heavenly hope at their departure, if their ways have not wilfully been evil,—if they have done their duty according to that law of nature which is written in the heart of man. It is the pride of presumptuous wisdom (itself the worst of follies) that has robbed the natural man of his consolation in old age, and of his hope in death, and exacts the forfeit of that hope from the infidel as the consequence and punishment of his sin. Thus it was in heathen times, as it now is in countries that are called christian. When Cicero speaks of those things which depend upon opinion, he says, hujusmodi sunt probabilia; impiis apud inferos pœnas esse præparatas; eos, qui philosophiæ dent operam, non arbitrari Deos esse. Hence it appears he regarded it as equally probable that there was an account to be rendered after death; and that those who professed philosophy would disbelieve this as a vulgar delusion, live therefore without religion, and die without hope, like the beasts that perish!
“If they perish,” the Doctor, used always reverently to say when he talked upon this subject. Oh Reader, it would have done you good as it has done me, if you had heard him speak upon it, in his own beautiful old age! “If they perish,” he would say. “That the beasts die without hope we may conclude; death being to them like falling asleep, an act of which the mind is not cognizant! But that they live without religion, he would not say,—that they might not have some sense of it according to their kind; nor that all things animate, and seemingly inanimate did not actually praise the Lord, as they are called upon to do by the Psalmist, and in the Benedicite!”
It is a pious fancy of the good old lexicographist Adam Littleton that our Lord took up his first lodging in a stable amongst the cattle, as if he had come to be the Saviour of them as well as of men; being by one perfect oblation of himself, to put an end to all other sacrifices, as well as to take away sins. This, he adds the Psalmist fears not to affirm speaking of God's mercy. “Thou savest,” says he, “both man and beast.”
The text may lead us further than Adam Littleton's interpretation.
“Qu'on ne me parle plus de NATURE MORTE, says M. de Custine, in his youth and enthusiasm, writing from Mont-Auvert; on sent ici que la Divinité est partout, et que les pierres sont pénétrées comme nous-mêmes d'une puissance créatrice! Quand on me dit que les rochers sont insensibles, je crois entendre un enfant soutenir que l'aiguille d'une montre ne marche pas, parce qu'il ne la voit pas se mouvoir.”
Do not, said our Philosopher, when he threw out a thought like this, do not ask me how this can be! I guess at every thing, and can account for nothing. It is more comprehensible to me that stocks and stones should have a sense of devotion, than that men should be without it. I could much more easily persuade myself that the birds in the air, and the beasts in the field have souls to be saved, than I can believe that very many of my fellow bipeds have any more soul than, as some of our divines have said, serves to keep their bodies from putrefaction. “God forgive me, worm that I am! for the sinful thought of which I am too often conscious,—that of the greater part of the human race, the souls are not worth saving!”—I have not forgotten the look which accompanied these words, and the tone in which he uttered them, dropping his voice toward the close.
We must of necessity, said he, become better or worse as we advance in years. Unless we endeavour to spiritualize ourselves, and supplicate in this endeavour for that Grace which is never withheld when it is sincerely and earnestly sought, age bodilizes us more and more, and the older we grow the more we are embruted and debased: so manifestly is the awful text verified which warns us that “unto every one which hath shall be given, and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.” In some the soul seems gradually to be absorbed and extinguished in its crust of clay; in others as if it purified and sublimed the vehicle to which it was united. Viget animus, et gaudet non multum sibi esse cum corpore; magnam oneris partem sui posuit.1 Nothing therefore is more beautiful than a wise and religious old age; nothing so pitiable as the latter stages of mortal existence—when the World and the Flesh, and that false philosophy which is of the Devil, have secured the victory for the Grave!
1 SENECA.
“He that hath led a holy life,” says one of our old Bishops, “is like a man which hath travelled over a beautiful valley, and being on the top of a hill, turneth about with delight, to take a view of it again.” The retrospect is delightful, and perhaps it is even more grateful if his journey has been by a rough and difficult way. But whatever may have been his fortune on the road, the Pilgrim who has reached the Delectable Mountains looks back with thankfulness and forward with delight.
And wherefore is it not always thus? Wherefore, but because as Wordsworth has said,