If, sir, we were without light from the revealed Word of God, if we were left, by the help of reason, standing upon the brink of Time, dimly guessing, and inquiringly exploring, to find for ourselves the grounds of Hope and Fear, would your description, my dear Master, of that which has happened, seem to our Natural Faculties impossible? Surely not.
NORTH.
My dear Seward, we have the means of rendering some answer to that question. The nations of the world have been, more or less, in the condition, supposed. Self-left, they have borne the burden of the dread secret, which for them only the grave could resolve; but they never were able to sit at rest in the darkness. Importunate and insuppressible desire, in their bosoms, knocked at the gate of the invisible world, and seemed to hear an answer from beyond. The belief in a long life of ages to follow this fleet dream—imaginary revelations of regions bright or dark—the mansions of bliss or of sorrow—an existence to come, and often of retribution to come—has been the religion of Mankind—here in the rudest elementary shape—here in elaborated systems.
SEWARD.
Ay, sir; methinks the Hell of Virgil—and his Elysian Fields are examples of a high, solemn, and beautiful Poetry. But they have a much deeper interest for a man studious, in earnest, of his fellow-men. Since they really express the notions under which men have with serious belief shadowed out for themselves the worlds to which the grave is a portal. The true moral spirit that breathes in his enumeration of the Crimes that are punished, of the Virtues that have earned and found their reward, and some scattered awful warnings—are impressive even to us Christians.
NORTH.
Yes, Seward, they are. Hearken to the attestation of the civilised and the barbarous. Universally there is a cry from the human heart, beseeching, as it were, of the Unknown Power which reigns in the Order and in the Mutations of Things, the prolongation of this vanishing breath—the renovation, in undiscovered spheres, of this too brief existence—an appeal from the tyranny of the tomb—a prayer against annihilation. Only at the top of Civilisation, sometimes a cold and barren philosophy, degenerate from nature, and bastard to reason, has limited its sullen view to the horizon of this Earth—has shut out and refused all ulterior, happy, or dreary anticipation.
SEWARD.
You may now, assured of our profound attention—return to Butler—if indeed you have left him——
NORTH.