PITY (WHICH IS THE TENDEREST OF AFFECTIONS)

provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers.  A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again.”  We all must die, sooner or later.  It is easier to die than to live again our stormy and tempestuous lives.  Few would re-embark at the cradle, suffer the pains of childhood, the hurts which the feelings of youth get, the pangs of love, the shock of loneliness coming from the departure of those we cling to, the vicissitudes of fortune, the stings of penury, the journeys into the lands of strangers, the flight of summer friends, the alienation of children, and the fevers and the wounds which human nature crosses on its way to the kind haven of a good old age.  Jesus stands near.  When death comes, his voice will sound, just at the brink:  “It is I; be not afraid.”  “When I look at the tombs of the great,” said Joseph Addison, on

HIS VISIT TO WESTMINSTER ABBEY,

“every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow.  When I see Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind.  When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great judgment day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.”

THE AGED MAN

who has “walked with God” is always ready for the Master’s call.  His loins are girded about and his lights burning.  He “lies down with the Kings of the earth,” and that leveling process which is thus intimated and begun in death he feels is the order of a higher plane of life to come, when all the abuses and incongruities of human government will be swept away, and the light of omniscient wisdom will shine on all alike.  There will he meet the little child who strayed from the fold into the snows of death early in the married life, and there will he sit beside that fond old heart who heard his first piteous wail in this cold world, and nestled him to her bosom all warm with a mother’s love.

IT IS THE ONE POSSIBLE CHANCE

of happiness, and only death stands in the way.  Nature carries the soul gently over the river, where those who have gone before stand waiting in glad expectation.  Shall we doubt either the goodness of God or the perfection of nature?  Shall we hesitate to weave the silk of death around our bodies when we know that we may thence issue a being worthy of a celestial sphere of action?