But alas! is this all that is left of us, amid the memorials of natural decay? Senses, memory, reason, all blotted out, in succession, and instinctive affection left alone to its spontaneous workings, like a solitary flower breathing its fragrance upon snows? And how do we know but this, too, will close up its leaves, and fall before the touch of the invader? Then the last remnant of the man is no more. Or, if otherwise, must so many souls enter upon their immortality denuded of everything but the heart’s inmost and ruling love?
How specious and deceptive are natural appearances! What seemed to the outward eye the waning of existence, and the loss of faculties, is only locking them up successively, in order to keep them more secure. Old age, rather than death, answers strictly to the analogies of sleep. It is the gradual folding in and closing up of all the voluntary powers, after they have become worn and tired, that they may wake again refreshed and renovated for the higher work that awaits them. The psychological evidence is pretty full and decisive, that old age is sleep, but not decay. The reason lives, though its eye is temporarily closed; and some future day it will give a more perfect and pliant form to the affections. Memory remains, though its functions are suspended for a while. All its chambers may be exhumed hereafter, and their frescoes, like those of the buried temples at Meroë, will be found preserved in unfading colors. The whole record of our life is laid up within us; and only the overlayings of the physical man prevent the record from being always visible. The years leave their débris successively upon the spiritual nature, till it seems buried and lost beneath the layers. On the old man’s memory every period seems to have obliterated a former one; but the life which he has lived can no more be lost to him, or destroyed, than the rock-strata can be destroyed by being buried under layers of sand. In those hours when the bondage of the senses is less firm, and the life within has freer motion; or, in those hours of self-revelation, which are sometimes experienced under a clearer and more pervading light from above,—the past withdraws its veil; and we see, rank beyond rank, as along the rows of an expanding amphitheatre, the images of successive years, called out as by some wand of enchantment. There are abundant facts, which go to prove that the decline and forgetfulness of years are nothing more than the hardening of the mere envelopment of the man, shutting in the inmost life, which merely waits the hour to break away from its bondage.
De Quincey says: “I am assured that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind. A thousand circumstances may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever; just as the stars seem to withdraw from the common light of day; whereas, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them, as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn.”
The resurrection is the exact inverse of natural decay; and the former is preparing ere the latter has ended. The affections, being the inmost life, are the nucleus of the whole man. They are the creative and organific centre, whence are formed the reason and the memory, and thence their embodiment in the more outward form of members and organs. The whole interior mechanism is complete in the chrysalis, ere the wings, spotted with light, are fluttering in the zephyrs of morning. St. Paul, who, in this connection, is speaking specially of the resurrection of the just, presents three distinct points of contrast between the natural body and the spiritual. One is weak, the other is strong. One is corruptible, the other is incorruptible. One is without honor, the other is glorious. By saying that one is natural, and the other spiritual, he certainly implies that one is better adapted than the other to do the functions of spirit, and more perfectly to organize and manifest its powers. How clearly conceivable then is it that when man becomes free of the coverings of mere natural decay, he comes into complete possession of all that he is, and all that he has ever lived; that leaf after leaf in our whole book of life is opened backward, and all its words and letters come out in more vivid colors!
In the other life, therefore, appears the wonderful paradox that the oldest people are the youngest. To grow in age is to come into
everlasting youth. To become old in years is to
put on the freshness of perpetual prime.
We drop from us the débris of
the past, we breathe the ether
of immortality, and our
cheeks mantle with
eternal bloom.
LIFE.
The following lines were by Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, an English writer of great merit, extensively known as the author of excellent Hymns, and Early Lessons for Children. She was born in 1743, and lived to be nearly eighty-two years old. She employed the latter part of her life in editing a series of the best English novels and essays, accompanied with biographical sketches of the authors; and compositions in prose and verse continued to be her favorite occupation to the last.