XXII. NOTHING HUMAN EVER DIES. ECCLESIASTES VII. 17. WHY SHOULDST THOU DIE BEFORE THY TIME? THE only resource for a man without faith, is to be also without love; which indeed, by the compassion of Heaven, he will naturally be. For scarcely can anything be more serious, than the aspect which life assumes, when any considerable portion of it lies in retrospect, beneath an affectionate eye that can discern no more than its visible and palpable relations. A few years of unconscious gain, followed by a long process of conscious loss, complete the story of our being here. The best shelter that the world affords us is the first, the affections into which we are born, and which are too natural for us to know their worth, till they are disturbed;-for constant blessings, like constant pressures, are the last to be discovered. During the whole period of childhood, when the most rapid and astonishing development of vitality, and acquisition of power are going on, the wonder and the bliss are hidden from our eyes; gratitude is scarcely possible; and the delighted gaze of the contemplating spectator is unintelligible. We wake up at our first grave affliction; our blindness is removed by pain; the film is purified by tears, and alas! the moment sorrow gives us sight, the good that we behold is gone. And thenceforth we love knowingly, and lose constantly; and after dreaming that all things were given to us, or even by nature our own, we find them only lent, and see in our remaining years the undecyphered list of their recal. Standing on the shore which bounds the ocean of the Past, we see treasure after treasure receding in the distance, or thrown into that insatiable waste, on whose surface they make a momentary smile of light, then leave the gulf in darkness. Into that deep, year after year has sunk, no less rich than this* in spoils from the human heart. Our fathers and our early homes, the dream of our first friendships, the surprise of new affections, and all the delicious marvels of life yet fresh, have * This Discourse was preached on the last day of the year. vanished there. And soon, when we have been the losers long enough, we shall become the lost; and vainly struggle with the sweep of the unfathomable sea. Whether death, which treads closely on the steps of life upon our world, shall ever absolutely overtake it, and finally stop the race of beauty and of love which now is perpetually begun afresh;-whether the chills of winter, transient now, will become eternal, and suppress for ever the flowers which can yet steal out again on the bosom of the earth;-whether the frosts of mortality shall hereafter arrest the life-stream of our race, and dismiss us to that extinction which has fallen on other tribes before us; and the clouds fly, and the shrill hail fall over a naked world,-we know not. But to us, in succession, all things die. The past contains all that time has rendered dear and familiar; and that passes silently away: the future contains whatever is cold and strange; and its mysteries come swiftly on us. Yet in this melancholy retrospect, natural as it is to our affections, there is a great deal of illusion, which is the occasion of half its sadness. When we go out of ourselves and our affairs, and seize a higher point of view, we see that this world is no such collection of perishable things, after all that as God lives ever in it, he gathers : around him all that is most like him, and suffers nothing that is excellent to die. There are things in his world which are not meant to perish ;— works which survive the workmen, and multiply blessings when they are gone, and make all who lend a faithful hand to them, part of the husbandry of God, labourers with Him on that great field of time, whose culture and whose harvests are everlasting. The pains we spend upon our mortal selves, will perish with ourselves; but the care we give out of a good heart to others, the efforts of disinterested duty, the deeds and thoughts of pure affection, are never lost: they are liable to no waste; and are like a force that propagates itself for ever, changing its place but not losing its intensity. In short, there is a sense in which nothing human ever perishes: nothing, at least, which proceeds from the higher and characteristic part of a man's nature; nothing which comes of his mind and conscience; nothing which he does as a subject of God's moral law. His good and ill lives after him, an endless blessing or a lasting curse; a consideration this which gives dignity to the humblest duty, and enormity to careless wrong. I do not now refer to the consequences of conduct in a future life; but to a certain perpetual and indestructible influence it must have upon this world. It is a mistake to |