LIBRARY OF THE University of California. GIFT OF" Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, 18Q4. ^Accessions No.J^/CS^ - Class No. THE SILENT HOUSE BY E. P. TENNEY. ^g ran ST + BOSTON: CONGKEGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY, BEACON STREET. V SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 91 IV. SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. The Holy Family, upon their flight into Egypt, were attacked by two robbers. One, says the legend, relented, and bribed the other to spare Jesus and his parents ; and he hid them in a rocky cave that night. Mary prom- ised this man final pardon. He was the peni- tent thief to whom, when they were dying upon the cross together, Jesus said, " This day shalt thou be with me in paradise." We need not, however, resort to old story to account for the pardon of the penitent. The man was forgiven upon the same ground that we are now, — his repentance and faith. He believed in Christ when almost all the world rejected him. The evangelist does not intimate that he had delib- erately put off the day of repentance, planning to leave it till he should come to die, willing to 92 THE SILENT HOUSE. risk it. The emphasis of the case is not that the man was dying, but that he had great faith in Christ, who was at that moment crucified beside him as an impostor. This example gives no countenance to those who are crowding off the hour of their turning to God, hoping for mercy at last, after they have despised the mercy for years. There is, perhaps, no more abused passage in the Bible than this. 1 This poor thief is clung to by those who reject Jesus, dying at his side. Men commonly think that it will be time enough to repent when they are about to die. The grand business of life is left to be done in the last moments. The guilty and condemned have a reprieve of a few days to see if they will repent before the uncertain hour of execu- tion ; but they defer that for which their lives were lengthened, and think they will have time enough when they ascend the scaffold. No wonder is it that this is felt by some to be a most unmanly course. Do we only just begin to think upon living to God when life is i Luke xxiii. 42, 43. SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 93 spent ? Do we renounce the world only when the world is about to shake us off ? Some most honorable minds, therefore, declare it to be an insult to God to seek his grace in the dying- hour, after having deliberately despised it all one's lifetime. But the insult is in the wicked life, not in the penitent death. "I would rather be lost," said one pastor, " than become a Christian on my death-bed." But, when he said that, he little thought what it is to be lost. " I would rather continue to sin in the future than to repent in the last moment in which I may turn to God : " he would not say that. It is a most dastardly deed to live fighting against God, expecting to turn to him with a cry .for pardon when the end of life approaches. Said a dying soldier to his mother, " If I live to get well, I will be a Christian ; but I will not throw the fag-end of my life in the face of the Al- mighty." And then he died. In a storm at sea, when all hope was gone, the sailors began to cry to God. But one wicked fellow would not pray. " No, no ! " said he. " I must not pray. I have lived in sin till now. I dare not 94 THE SILENT HOUSE. v insult my Maker by offering him the very last days of my miserable life. If I had the prospect of more years ahead, I would do it ; but now it is too late. I should have no confidence in my repentance at this late hour." When, however, the peril had passed, all the rest were wild in revelry ; but he turned with all his heart to the Saviour of men. The word of God gives no countenance to this sentiment of false manli- ness, which bids one continue impenitent another moment. The sin is in continuing to sin. It is no sin to repent, even on the death-bed. The aggravated insult to God lies far back, behind the dying-pillow. To contend against God in health is the great wickedness. If there be a sense of the guilt of this course, and a disposi- tion to go to Christ in the last moment, it ought to be encouraged. The dying thief may be suitably appealed to as one who had great and decisive faith in the very last act of life. u The whole Bible gives but one saving case ; one, that none might despair : only one, that none might presume." We should, on this account, deal faithfully SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 95 with those who are about to die. It is with them now or never. So long as strength remains to turn the eye to Christ, we are to say, "Look and live." So Moses lifted up the ser- pent in the wilderness, that the dying might turn the eye of faith that way. If we hesitate to alarm their false security, seeking to turn them heavenward, they in a moment slip from our grasp, and the opportunity is gone by for- ever. We are to deal boldly, as for eternity, and faithfully, as with our own souls. Yet persons are sometimes sick a year or two with a lingering disease ; and, only a few hours before they die, they express an expectation to get well : and never one word is said to them by their dearest friends about the nearness of eternal scenes. Better is it to shock the sense of false peace before it be too late ; better one faithful word which may make entrance for faith in God than to allow the shock to come, as come it must, when the door of mercy is shut. The decisive words of a loving heart are a less sad surprise than will be the sight of the world of woe. I once heard one of the most 96 THE SILENT HOUSE. tender and affectionate women I ever knew speak words which shocked me to a friend who had only a few weeks to live ; but those words led the man to live forever. It is possible to exercise true repentance and faith upon the death-bed; but it is not probable that this step will be taken, or so taken as to give much assurance that all is well. Great disappointment is likely to over- take those who defer contrition for sin, and belief in Christ, till the last moment. The con- ditions of the death-bed are unfavorable for being born again, — so unfavorable, that it is impossible to count upon it; and the chances are greatly against it. Test this matter, for example, by what we call sudden death. Deaths which seem sudden to us differ less than might be supposed from death after some long sickness, and are, perhaps, little more surprising to those who die, since the moment when one first knows that he is to die always comes unlooked for. Again, these deaths are commonly supposed to be without SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 97 warning, and without time for decisive spiritual action. I believe this to be a mistake. Such facts as we know show that the mind can act more quickly than any physical agent which destroys life. Charles the Twelfth put forth the volition to grasp his sword-hilt between the time when a small cannon-shot struck his tem- ple, — crashing his brain, — and the cessation of the power to will. Men have, as we believe, truly turned to God when they were drowning ; their restored life has been fully given up to Him. The visions which the drowning some- times have of their past lives show how quickly the mind acts. The divine grace may act more quickly than the lightning-stroke. We are not to speak of those whose deaths seem sudden to us as dying unwarned ; besides the warning they have certainly had all their lives, they may have warning enough in the instant of death. The danger is, that those who do not repent under the admonitions of life will not repent in the moment when the soul takes its flight. When a gambler loses his head by a cannon- ball, and the cards in his hat fly in all directions, 7 98 THE SILENT HOUSE. we are not apt to think that any holy volition is actually put forth ; but when his companion at the gun, losing his life by the same shot, lives a moment, takes his Bible from his pocket, and sends a triumphant Christian message to his wife, we believe that the volitions of the soul do not need long time to show their charac- ter. A soldier in the Eighty-sixth Illinois said that he obtained a hope in Christ in the battle of Chickamauga. I watched over a dying boy at Antietam ; and in his terrible agony he was glad to acknowledge Christ, and send a message to an impenitent mother to seek the Saviour. Bibles and prayer-books were found scattered where the wounded and dying were thickest at Gettysburg. Angels of mercy and the Spirit of God are busy upon battle-fields ; and the Lord looketh down from the height of his sanctuary to hear the groaning of the prisoner, and to loose those who are appointed to death. Prison- houses and hospitals have caused many to think of early instruction, and to listen to the voice of the Son of man. But it is true, upon the other hand, that there are so many things to SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 99 take off the mind upon battle-fields and in hospitals, that the men are likely to die without hope. They are not always made aware that they are near to death. Old soldiers have re- marked, that there is no place where there is so little thought of dying as in the midst of battle, and the movements of armies, and the excite- ments of new hospitals. Wherever men are when they depart, heedless dying is apt to follow heedless living; and, while men may repent in a moment, it is not likely that many will do it. It is an appalling thought that an impenitent man may be fixed in his eternal abode in any hour. If we turn from cases of almost instantane- ous death, and look upon those patients who are carried off by acute diseases, after a few days or weeks of sickness, we find that those dis- eases approach so stealthily as to excite little alarm; and, when they once get hold, they so completely master the senses, that there is little opportunity for the mind to work as in hours of health. Thus this mode of death is, practically, almost as sudden as if one was 100 THE SILENT HOUSE. struck down in a moment. The slight begin- nings of these short and sharp sicknesses are most delusive. It is, most commonly, merely going to sleep, and waking up with the sense of having taken a sudden cold. So a young man on Niagara River went to sleep in his boat, in a quiet corner by the shore, and neglected — only neglected — to tie his craft. The wind rose, and swept him into the boiling current; and he, waked by the roughness of the water, shriek- ing, went over the falls. ' In a quiet, peaceful hour, he only slept, and neglected the means of salvation. Many a man, in like manner, goes to sleep, caring nothing for God, or the wrath to come, and wakes in the agonies of dis- ease, and hurries over the falls of death with no possibility of rescue. A man fresh from the pleasures of life lies down to pleasant dreams, and wakes, feeling somewhat ill, little thinking that it is the beginning of what proves to be his last sickness. To cheer himself up, he shuts out religious thought, and has only a light life. Friends will not say a word about religion, lest it " excite " the patient. Soon the SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 101 patient grows worse, and is unable to think con- nectedly of any thing; then dies. How com- mon is this case. If you think a moment, you will recollect many who have merely taken cold, thought it nothing unusual, and then have died within a few days. At the first, they were not alarmed, and they did not care, any more than they had done, to repent, and look toward meeting God : and, when the disease had made some progress, they could not do it ; it was too late. A fever is often like a whirlwind sweep- ing over the soul, even if it spares the body in continued life. When a severe fever is past, there is usually no memory of it ; the days or weeks are a blank. I have known persons who thought that they became Christians in those hours when their bodies were burning with fever, and then remembered nothing of it when they rose from their beds ; all passing from their minds like their delirious dreams. Yet, had they died in that state, friends might have clung to this hope of straw. It is true that the Lord may save in these fevered hours ; but the conditions for healthy, voluntary action, 102 THE SILENT HOUSE, are not favorable. A young woman who was in my congregation one Sabbath, and in eternity the next Sabbath, spent her hours upon the sick- bed in sharp cries of penitence, eagerly seizing on Christ as her Saviour ; amid great trembling and agony declaring a hope to be with him in paradise, then dying in doubt and delirium. It was plain that her mental state favored the disease ; that she would have been more likely to have recovered, if her conscience had been quiet. Those who are putting off repentance till the death-bed need to have a care how they take a slight cold, and repent before they enter the sick-room. Neither is the case of those who die by slow and protracted disease* more favorable for lead- ing the patients to repentance in their last days. Here, if anywhere, we might look to find that clear and decisive spiritual action in the sick- chamber, which many promise themselves in days of health. These forms of disease are apt to deceive their victims. The patients hope soon to be better ; and, in most cases, their friends do not tell them how ill they are. SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 103 Though they may be shocked at the first bad symptoms, they are then easier, and get used to being sick. It seems to them that there is still time enough to repent, — not to-day ; their old habits of delaying cling to them. Every one's observation will recall cases where the matter has been put off to the very end, and the soul has gone out into the dark. I should not be true to my observations in parochial life, if I did not allude to the singular hostility to religious conversation which is not unfrequently manifested by impenitent persons who are slowly dying by lingering disease. They do not wish to recognize their physical or their spiritual condition. Said Capt. Paget, in the story, " I am not aware that I am at my last gasp, or that I need to be talked to by my own daughter as if I were on my death-bed. . . . The gospel is all very well in its place, — during Sunday-morning service ; . . . but I consider, that, when a man is ill, there is a considerable want of tact in bringing the subject of religion before him in any obtrusive manner." And, as often as any way, the friends are ready to join 104 THE SILENT HOUSE. in giving false security. Perhaps they are god- less, and dread, as the patient does, any near vision of eternity. Mistress Quickly could not comfort Sir John Falstaff by praying ; so she told him her hope that there was no pressing occasion for it : — " So 'a cried out, ' God, God, God ! ' three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him, 'a should not think of God : I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet." I have spent so many vain hours in trying to arouse invalids to the necessity of preparing for death, or in the attempt to awaken the spiritual energies of their family friends, that I am less hopeful than once of finding the long days and wearisome nights of the sick-room leading men to God. It is now more than a thousand years since it was written by the devout Hindu sage, " Let virtuous deeds be done quickly, before the cough comes, making the tongue silent." But men are slow to heed the warning. It may be said, in general, that, near the close of life, the vital powers are so low, there is little SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 105 strength for healthy decision. " In that scene of pitiable feebleness, when one cannot help himself to a draught of water, or compose his mind to make a single request ; when he must look to his attendants to turn his poor head on his pillow, and to wipe the fast-gathering death-sweat from his brow, — in that hour of besetting pain and gathering agonies, who but a madman would deliberately choose to settle those momentous questions on which the eter- nity of the soul depends ? " Those who are familiar with the sick-bed know that the patient is often too weak to think much. The dying have no strength to seize upon the cross. They are come to the end of life without prep- aration for it ; and their powers are gone before they know it. A young man who was slowly dying told me that he was not able to think much, or to hear much, that he could not " attend ; " he heard as if he heard not ; his mind had sense only of the mastery of disease. One of my neighbors was told by his pastor, " You must go to Christ." The reply was, " I have no mind to go anywhere." Ask your 106 THE SILENT HOUSE. physician whether the dying-bed is a favora- ble place to repent ; and he will tell you that patients are usually too feeble to do any thing which requires much thought. When the fatal disease has made some progress, the hour will return no more. Pastors, feeling how impera- tive it is to prepare the dying for death, will, nevertheless, say frankly that they think there is little use in going to impenitent death-beds, hoping to rescue the souls of men. It is too late to do any thing for these friends. The time past has been all squandered, and the time present is already pre-occupied by death. The wise pastor feels that the patient belongs not to him, but to the physician ; and it is not deemed wise to talk much with the sick, or to agitate topics which produce excitement. It is impos- sible to attend then to the concerns which should have occupied a life-time. If one gets cold to-night, and has pneumonia to-morrow, his pastor cannot talk with him on the way of life, even though he die the day following. Every little while, I have heard that one of my neighbors is suddenly very sick ; and I have, SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 107 in sadness, said, " It is too late, too late : I can only pray for him now." Therefore it is that I go to my neighbor in the hour of health, saying, " Do not be false to yourself. Do you quiet your own spirit when you stand on the edge of the grave, ready at any time to step into it, and knowing that disease and the death- bed will unfit the soul for the needed action." There is, however, another consideration. Not only is it true that the conditions of the close of life are unfavorable to turning to God in the exercise of faith; but, even if there be what is called repentance upon the death-bed, the chances are, that it is not genuine. The hope is most likely ill founded. The last days of anxious illness, when the bodily ailment is the engrossing care, are unfa- vorable for learning the way of salvation. It is amazing that so many members of Christian congregations have given little attention to what they have heard, and that, when they come to die, they are ignorant of just what to do to make their peace with God. Persons 108 THE SILENT HOUSE. have confessed to me upon the sick-bed, -that they have borne dull and heavy ears to the house of God. But, even if the way be clear, it would seem as if the dying repent not so much of choice as of hard necessity ; it is a desperate case with them. Besides, their men- tal states, in the hours of extreme weakness, are little to be relied on. If persons have depended upon a death-bed repentance, and, when the fatal hour strikes, they express re- grets for an ill-spent life, and compunctions of conscience, — even then, their so-called repent- ance may afford no solid ground of security. " When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish ; and the hope of the unjust man perisheth." It is true, indeed, that domestic friends may cling to such sick-bed experiences, and eagerly look in the direction of hope and light; but there can be no well-grounded proof: the ques- tion hangs in doubt. It is impossible for one upon a dying-bed to give good evidence of having become a Christian : the only test is a Christian life. " If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed." SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. 109 Those who have had the best opportunities for judging — aged physicians of large prac- tice, and pastors with wide and varied experi- ence — say that the evidence is strongly against the value of what is sometimes called death-bed repentance ; since, in those cases where the patients recover, it is found that the state is not abiding. An English physician kept a record of three hundred cases in which persons sup- posed that they became Christians while upon a sick-bed, and afterwards recovered ; and only ten out of the whole number gave good evi- dence of a changed life. An American physi- cian, who kept a similar record, counted only three out of a hundred. City pastors, who go to the dying almost every day, find, of all those who are anxious for themselves in their last hours, scarcely one a year giving satisfactory ground for hope. The fact is, that, when the human soul is so hardened in sin as not to repent and believe in health, one is not likely to make a radical change when the powers of body and mind are prostrated by sickness. And though it is true that there are some remarkable 110 THE SILENT HOUSE. cases of conversion in time of severe sickness, in which the persons, upon recovery, prove to be really renewed, yet it must be considered the common rule, that purposes formed under the agonies of disease and the excitement of an expected death, do not stand against the temptations of life. Practically, for myself, I have so little confidence in sick-bed experiences, that I do not look to see men become Christians when they are sick, who would not when they were well. Death-bed baptisms, as anciently practised, were deemed so worthless, that we find Athanasius relating to his people an anec- dote of the angel, who once complained of his episcopal predecessor for sending him so many " sacks, carefully sealed up, with nothing what- ever inside." There is so little probability that men will suitably attend to life's business when they come to die ; and there is so little evidence, when it is attempted, that it is successful ; we must consider it most prejudicial to speak very confidently of the well-being of those who have led most godless lives, and then expressed SEARCHING FOR LIGHT. \\\ contrition, and received unction, when they could not well do otherwise. Whatever we may hope in our hearts, we can say little. 1 Christian faithfulness may not neglect the dying ; but it is to spend itself chiefly upon the living. Turn we from the house of the dying to the home of the living, and we find the next neighbor persisting in delaying repentance, putting it off, perchance, to the death-bed hour. I miss faces from my congregation, and I mourn over them ; but the saddest thought is for those in health, who defer the time for returning to the heavenly Father. It is to them that I now turn, affectionately asking, — Do you say that it is never too late to repent ? I answer, that it is never too early to repent. It is a desperate amusement to play at a game of hazards, to see how near you can come to missing heaven, and yet enter. What you are in health, you will pro- bably continue to be in death. The moral 1 "Spera, quia turns; time, quia solus." Hope, because there is one ; fear, because there is but one. 112 THE SILENT HOUSE. stupor induced by habits of. sin may hold sway over the soul in the last hours. Or, if you are terrified at the approach of the grave, little use, my friends, will it be for me to go to you when you are under that strange excitement of dying; there will be no respite in which I can quiet your well-grounded alarms. Let me entreat you, rather, in the full glow of health to-day, to form an intimate friendship with One, who, when your eyes become dim, will light up your pathway, and lead you through the dark valley in peace. THE LIGHT. 113 THE LIGHT. Theee is a constitutional fear of death, which cannot be overcome by moral consid- erations, any more than our instinctive fear of fire. The law of self-preservation draws us away from death. We shrink from the act of dying. It was this, perhaps, which Plato alluded to, when he spoke of " the child within us, who trembles before death." The love of life and the fear of death are implanted in our natures to protect us: they call upon us to stand aloof, so long as may be, from the hour in which we shall give up this known mode of being, and take up that which lies beyond it. The sensations of the hour of departure are so unique, that men do not willingly encounter them. It is well that it is so, else many would be tempted, when weary, to cast off life, and 114 THE SILENT HOUSE. hasten to the eternal awards. Many fear death as an executioner ; but it is the constitutional dread of the act of dying, which keeps men from rushing in crowds to that "bourn whence no traveller returns." This instinct of our natures is right, not wrong. And no person should try to reason it away upon moral grounds. It does not argue that one is not truly loving God, and earnestly desiring the best spiritual gifts, because one shrinks from the gateway of the tomb. " Is it anywhere written in the New Testament that you shall not fear death ? It is a privilege not to fear it ; but a duty it is not." x We certainly should not allow this fear to torment us. If we receive the testimony of physicians, and recall our own observation at the bedsides of the dying, we must believe that it is an easy thing to die. Leaving out of account that which greets the soul just beyond the veil, the mere physical phenomena accom- panying death are not to be dreaded so much as is commonly supposed. There is no doubt i Mouutford's Euthanasy. THE LIGHT. t . apparent, not likely to be genuine This year thou shalt die Triumphant living better than triumphant dying PAGE. 91, 92, 94 82-84 84-86 87' 95,96 91-112 93,94 96-99 99-102 102, 103 104-107 107-111 42,43 142-151 INDEX B. AUTHORS WHOSE NAMES ARE NOT MADE CLEAR IN THE TEXT. JEschyltts, Of all the gods .... Boston, Thomas, Dust walking in dust . Browning, Mrs. E. B., referred to High heart, etc The plague runs Bryant, All that tread .... Baxter, Richard, pastor in England . Cervantes, Death is deaf .... Coleridge, S. T., Is that a death-hed? Cuyler, T. L., In that scene of pitiable, etc. Drelincotjrt, Charles, the editions of Death stops its ears .... no respect for crowns or chains He that travels in a strange country Directions of an old book, "Art thou" and "Imagine" Epictetus, Why crowd the world Hale, Robert, The wheels of Nature Herbert, George, Nothing between two dishes 155 PAGE. 30 12 9 20 55 13 77 30 131 104, 105 3 20 21 . 132 17 10 87 156 Index B. Holmes, O. W., By the stillness Homer, The wind in autumn .... Jacques, Jacques, canon of Auburn, — Death conversing with victims Longfellow, H. W., Spanish song, Our lives Murray, Here in this chamber . . . Oleviams, quaint German divine Saurin, pastor in France .... Shakspeare, old play, Richard II. . Justice Shallow ..... Seven ages Words of Warwick .... Of comfort no man speak . Tongues of dying men .... Smith, Henry, 1550-1600, the Puritan pastor South, Robert, After . . . hours . . . night . Taylor, Jeremy, Nero, Judas, Herod . Theodosius, epitaph, " Health" (Gibbon) . Thompson, A. C, Fifth chapter of Genesis Virgil, These fierce passions Wallace, A. R., Changing names in Borneo Whittier, " I am," from Questions of Life . Young, Night Thoughts, All men think . Wise to-day The knell, the shroud PAGE. 56 47 30 23 134 134 77 - 21 3S 49 85 117 142 52 24 78 151 16 70 25 48 39 41 117 YB 2954 TZ^WWm?: m