A stop which can but for a moment last,
A point between the future and the past."
Nature presents in all her laws such a beautiful and wonderful harmony, that it is as impossible for death to produce discord among them, as for night to destroy, by the intervention of its shadow, the splendour of the coming day. Were men taught from infancy to regard death as a natural consequence, a fixed law of their being, instead as an awful pumshment for sin--as the friend and benefactor of mankind, not the remorseless tyrant and persecutor--to die would no longer be considered an evil. Let this hideous skeleton be banished into darkness, and replaced by a benignant angel, wiping away all tears, healing all pain, burying in oblivion all sorrow and care, calming every turbulent passion, and restoring man, reconciled to his Maker, to a state of purity and peace; young and old would then go forth to meet him with lighted torches, and hail his approach with songs of thanksgiving and welcome.
And this is really the case with all but the desperately wicked, who show that they despise the magnificent boon of life by the bad use they make of it, by their blasphemous defiance of God and good, and their unwillingness to be renewed in his image.
The death angel is generally met with more calmness by the dying than by surviving friends. By the former, the dreaded enemy is hailed as a messenger of peace, and they sink tranquilly into his arms, with a smile upon their lips.
The death of the Christian is a beautiful triumph over the fears of life. In Him who conquered death, and led captivity captive, he finds the fruition of his being, the eternal blessedness promised to him in the Gospel, which places him beyond the wants and woes of time. The death of such a man should be celebrated as a sacred festival, not lamented as a dreary execution,--as the era of a new birth, not the extinction of being.
It is true that death is a profound sleep, from which no one can awaken to tell his dreams. But why on that account should we doubt that it is less blessed than its twin brother, whose resemblance it bears, and whose presence we all sedulously court? Invest sleep, however, with the same dismal garb; let your bed be a coffin, your canopy a pall, your night-dress a shroud; let the sobs of mourners, and the tolling of bells lull you to repose,--and few persons would willingly, or tranquilly, close their eyes to sleep.
And then, this absurd fashion of wearing black for months and years for the dead; let us calmly consider the philosophy of the thing, its use and abuse. Does it confer any benefit on the dead? Does it afford any consolation to the living? Morally or physically, does it produce the least good? Does it soften one regretful pang, or dry one bitter tear, or make the wearers wiser or better? If it does not produce any ultimate benefit, it should be at once discarded as a superstitious relic of more barbarous times, when men could not gaze on the simple, unveiled face of truth, but obscured the clear daylight of her glance under a thousand fantastic masks.
The ancients were more consistent in their mourning than the civilized people of the present day. They sat upon the ground and fasted, with rent garments, and ashes strewn upon their heads. This mortification of the flesh was a sort of penance inflicted by the self-tortured mourner for his own sins, and those of the dead. If this grief were not of a deep or lasting nature, the mourner found relief for his mental agonies in humiliation and personal suffering. He did not array himself in silk, and wool, and fine linen, and garments cut in the most approved fashion of the day, like our modern beaux and belles, when they testify to the public their grief for the loss of relation or friend, in the most expensive and becoming manner.
Verily, if we must wear our sorrow upon our sleeve, why not return to the sackcloth and ashes, as the most consistent demonstration of that grief which, hidden in the heart, surpasseth show.