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. 
 
<SVtf»S 
 
 $10 ff 
 
 COPYKIGHT, 1876, E. P. Tenney. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY C. J. PETERS & SON, 
 
 78 FEDERAL STREET. 
 
nmtoDUCTioK 
 
 Drelincourt's " Meditations on Death" had as 
 remarkable a run, in its day, as any well written 
 modern novel. First published in France in 1651, 
 there were fifteen editions in forty-one years. It 
 was published in nearly every country in Europe. 
 There were more than twenty editions in England 
 and Scotland in little more than a hundred yeava. 
 Queen Mary, consort to William III., read it over 
 seven times. De Foe was so much pleased with it, 
 that he wrote a ghost-story for an introduction to 
 one edition, the better to sell it, representing Mrs. 
 Veal as coming from another world to recommend 
 this book ; and the indorsement proved so popular, 
 that it has been printed in every edition since. 
 There have been, at least, three American editions. 
 Drelincourt's fulness of learning, and quaintness 
 of illustration, might warrant another edition : it 
 
 3 
 
4 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 would, without doubt, attract many readers, espe- 
 cially if it were abridged, and edited with a view 
 to meeting modern wants. It is hoped that the 
 quotations acknowledged in the text, or referred to 
 in the index, will whet the appetite of the reader to 
 look up the original. The literature of the subject 
 comprises other treatises, which were once widety 
 read ; but there are so few readers of old books in 
 our large libraries, that these authors now stand 
 upon the shelves, year after year, without a reader. 
 
 In preparing this little book, the writer has no 
 ambition to take the place of the eminent French 
 pastor ; but he is convinced that the interest in the 
 topic is as permanent as the fact of our mortality. 
 He has himself been strangely drawn toward it ; 
 and a melancholy pleasure attaches to these studies 
 upon "The Silent House.' ' The contemplation of 
 the phases of the subject brought to view in these 
 pages has been a pleasing diversion in the season 
 of summer rest. 
 
 The text has not been largely cumbered with foot- 
 notes. The citation of authorities is desirable in 
 scientific treatises, but not in hortatory books. It 
 would be easy to fill man}^ pages b}^ a copious index 
 and full notes ; but the character of this work does 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 not seem to call for substantiating every statement 
 of fact, or verifying ever}" quotation. I have, there- 
 fore, fallen back upon the dictum of my right-hand 
 literary adviser, — "If any are anxious to know 
 about a point, they will hunt it up ; and, if they are 
 not anxious to know, they will not thank you for 
 telling them where to find it." The fidelity of an 
 author can be easily tested. A few notes and a 
 brief index are added to make clear some points, 
 and to make easy reference to the leading topics. 
 Scripture texts, commonly known to be such, are 
 used without quotation marks. Persons not familiar 
 with the Bible, who find any sentence particularly 
 apt, may safely look for it in the Old or the New 
 Testament. 
 
 The writer is not without hope that these pages 
 may be of service as a hand-book to those who are 
 constantly called to the bedside of the dj'ing, to 
 minister at the burial of the dead, or to remind the 
 living of those events which will so soon come to 
 ever}* man. And, if this little volume is placed in 
 the hands of any one who is walking toward home 
 in the dark, it is believed that this may be a guide- 
 book leading to the light. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 I. Building in the Dust .... 9 
 II. Near Home 42 
 
 III. The Dark Days . * . . . .65 
 
 IV. Searching for the Light . • .91 
 V. The Light 113 
 
^^ 09 THE ^ 
 
 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 L 
 
 BUILDING IN THE DUST. 
 
 One of the greatest of all modern poets 
 represents the planets as standing still in 
 terror, and turning to ashen gray at the sound 
 of the tolling hoofs of the death-steed ; the 
 heavens terrified as the earth by the woe which 
 followed sin. Other poets have pictured to us 
 young Cain, watching for the appearing of 
 Death, in the gloomy shadows at nightfall by 
 Eden. For God had said to the father of man- 
 kind, " In the day that thou eatest thereof, 
 thou shalt surely die." Upon that day moral 
 death entered the world. The fact that Adam 
 lived between nine and ten centuries shows 
 
10 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 that the emphasis of the penalty was moral, 
 not physical. 
 
 Physical death had long reigned over the 
 brute creation. It was, indeed, believed in 
 former ages, that the death of every living 
 creature was caused by tasting the forbidden 
 fruit at the hand of our first mother ; all par- 
 taking in man's sin save one undying bird, 
 which flew away from the temptation, and 
 lives to this day in the deserts. It is, perhaps, 
 commonly supposed, that, in like manner, the 
 physical death of the human race is owing to 
 Adam's sin. It is, however, likely, that men, 
 at some period of advancement, would have 
 been removed from this scene of life, even if 
 Adam had kept his first estate. The reign of 
 death over the lower animals before the appear- 
 ance of man makes it probable that this world 
 was not designed for the final abode of our 
 race. It is unquestionably true, that the mode 
 of the removal of man from this life might 
 have been different, as in the case of Enoch, if 
 sin had not entered. It is not safe to say that 
 the removal of man from this planet is certainly 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. \\ 
 
 the result of sin ; but it is true, that the amaz- 
 ing brevity of life, compared with that of the 
 fathers of the race, and the mastery of disease, 
 and the mode of our passing out of life, are so 
 intimately connected with sin as to make it 
 suitable to speak of our own physical death as 
 coming into the world with the fall of our first 
 father. Physical as well as spiritual death 
 began to take upon itself the shape in which 
 we see it, upon the day when Adam broke away 
 from God. So death entered by sin ; the decay 
 of the body the symbol of the soul's disaster. 
 The old curse which descended on Eden still 
 overshadows us. Sin is all the time weaving 
 shrouds ; and every grave to-day is dug by the 
 divine justice. In the Mosaic law, it is pro- 
 vided that when "leprosy, a certain kind of 
 mould, is found in the walls of a house, the 
 whole building must be broken down : so, when 
 sin has smitten the body, the body must be 
 broken down and removed. Dust thou art, 
 and unto dust shalt thou return. We dwell 
 in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the 
 dust, which are crushed before the moth. " The 
 
12 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 body," says an old writer, " is more astonishing 
 in onr life than in our death; as it is more 
 strange to see dust walking up and down in the 
 dust than lying down in it." 
 
 Death is universal. Death has passed on 
 all, for that all have sinned. It is in a sinning 
 world that we find it written, " One generation 
 passeth away, and another generation cometh." 
 There is a perpetual pilgrimage to the lands 
 of death. Crusades of men, women, and little 
 ones, are marching thither. Little do we think 
 how constant is the procession to the tomb. 
 Every day the sun gazes upon more than eighty 
 thousand funerals. The bier never stands still 
 for a moment. The tolling of the bell, and the 
 fall of clods upon the coffin, are sounds familiar in 
 every village. We merely ask, " Whose funeral 
 is it?" 
 
 " Whose feet to-day attain the goal, 
 And put their sandals by, 
 And, having filled their Lord's behest, 
 Are laid to moulder in the rest 
 Of many a century ? " x 
 
 1 These lines were the last rhymes written by the author 
 alluded to upon p. 120. 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 13 
 
 When we look over the lands which in every 
 town are devoted to death, it is no wonder if 
 such gloomy wastes alarm men. We dwell 
 among the tombs. The sexton is undermining 
 us all. The ruins of the race cover great tracts 
 of country, like the ruins of vast cities. In 
 peace and in war, death is busy strewing the 
 continents with the dead. In our war for the 
 Union, the very birds learned funeral-airs, and 
 battle-fields were turned into cemeteries. But 
 during those four years, in which it was esti- 
 mated that more than three-quarters of a mil- 
 lion soldiers died by disease or in battle, the 
 ordinary work of death went on in the world 
 as usual, and an army of more than three times 
 the entire population of the United States was 
 so quietly laid away under ground, that no one 
 thought to speak of it. More are beneath the 
 ground than above it. 
 
 "All that tread 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 That slumber in its bosom." 
 
 The thirteen hundred millions now upon the 
 
14 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 earth, in a few years will be all gone. For 
 more than fifty centuries, some have been dying 
 each moment ; while now and then a great 
 calamity has swept away many at once. 
 
 11 The dead are everywhere: 
 The mountain side, the plain, the wood profound, 
 All the wide earth, the fertile and the fair, 
 
 Is one vast burial-ground." 
 
 " The world," says Carlyle, " is built upon 
 the mere dust of heroes, once earnest wrestling, 
 death-defying, prodigal of their blood ; who 
 now sleep well, forgotten by all their heirs." 
 The grim humor of Holmes declares that, — 
 
 " One half our soil has walked the rest, 
 In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages." 
 
 In England the old graveyards increase in 
 height from century to century, the entire space 
 piled up by the precious dust of those who there 
 await the resurrection ; although, alas ! many 
 graves are not respected. The bones of the 
 dead, and their dust, have been often rudely 
 cast out, raised before their time with shame 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 15 
 
 and contempt, and mingled with the common 
 clods of the world. When Sir Christopher 
 Wren laid the foundation of St. Paul's, he 
 dug down through cemeteries piled one upon 
 another, — English graves and Norman, Danish, 
 Saxon, Roman, British. In some parts of 
 Europe, the wreck of animal life of former 
 periods of the world's history is spoken of by- 
 scientific men as forming almost the entire soil 
 in considerable regions of country. And one 
 has gone so far as to say that " no small part 
 of the present surface of the earth is derived 
 from the remains of animals that constituted 
 the population of ancient seas." x For example, 
 more than ten thousand minute chambered 
 shells have been found in an ounce and a half 
 of stone taken from the hills of Tuscany. And 
 extensive areas of land are made up in this 
 way in various parts of the globe. Add to 
 these cemeteries of shell-fish and land animals 
 some thousands of generations of the human 
 race, who have returned dust to dust, and the 
 whole world itself is one vast tomb. 
 
 1 Buckland: Bridge water Treatise, vol. i. pp. 112, 113, 110, 
 117. 
 
16 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 "The wheels of Nature," said an English 
 preacher, " are not made to roll backward : 
 evey thing presses on towards eternity. From 
 the birth of time, an impetuous current has set 
 in, which bears all the sons of men towards that 
 interminable ocean." " In reading the fifth 
 chapter of Genesis," says a very suggestive 
 commentator, " we seem to have entered the 
 antediluvian cemetery, and to be slowly de- 
 ciphering epitaphs of more than four thousand 
 years' standing. Passing from one gray tomb- 
 stone to another, we notice that the inscriptions 
 close thus, ' He died.' " " 4 And he died,' ' and 
 he died,' at the end of every name, rings out like 
 a tolling bell." The generations of men run 
 on, regardless of the dead, as the floods ran over 
 the resting-place of Alaric. When the fierce 
 warrior died, a river was turned out of its bed, 
 that the great barbarian might lie down in its 
 place ; then, over the grave the waters were 
 turned again, and the stream swept along, as if 
 no king was buried there. So the stream of 
 the world rolls on, and the current of life hurries 
 over the graves of the buried great. One day 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 17 
 
 men pause for the funeral ; but the next day 
 all the tide of life flows again. Joseph reigned 
 in power; but he "died," — the individual, — 
 " and all his brethren," — the family, — " and all 
 that generation," — the world swept clean, — and 
 straightway there rose a new king, who knew 
 not Joseph. " So Tibni died, and Omri reigned." 
 King after king mounts the throne, then lies 
 down in the dust to make room for his suc- 
 cessor. Will men mourn over our graves to- 
 morrow? Others yet will mourn over their 
 graves the day after. Therefore move away, 
 and make room for others. " Why," asks an 
 old philosopher, "do you crowd the world?" 
 So the generations of men perish, like decaying 
 nature. And the world does not miss a single 
 man, more than some forest goes into mourning 
 for one fallen leaf. 
 
 " Majestic heaven 
 Shines not the less for that one vanished star." 
 
 Amid all the throngs of the dying, we are 
 to fall unnoticed ; but " the day we die, 
 though of no importance to the world, is to 
 2 
 
18 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 ourselves of more importance than is all the 
 world." To us it is the day for which all days 
 are made, and for which, all our days, we are 
 preparing. 
 
 If, for the sake of emphasis, it is suitable to 
 make such a distinction, I will say that death 
 is not only universal, but also impartial, 
 showing no favor to any in its time of coming, 
 or mode of attack. 
 
 " Within the populous street, 
 In solitary homes, in places high, 
 In pleasure's domes, where pomp and luxury meet, 
 
 Men bow themselves to die. 
 
 The old man at his door, 
 The unweaned child murmuring in wordless song, 
 The bondman and the free, the rich, the poor, 
 
 All, all, to death belong. 
 
 The sunlight gilds the walls 
 Of kingly sepulchres inwrought with brass ; 
 And the long shadow of the cypress falls 
 
 Athwart the common grass." 
 
 Men might well run through the earth, as the 
 messengers at the time of the great plague in 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 19 
 
 London, crying through every street, " Bring out 
 your dead ! Bring out your dead ! " l Does 
 Death fail to heed the tears of the mourner? 
 does he bid them flow afresh? So, also, he 
 heeds no gayety ; but his arrows crash into the 
 house of our pleasures. It is written, " Both 
 the great and the small shall die in this land." 
 All graves are not of one length. As the 
 death-angel is often watching by the cradle- 
 side, eager to catch away life ere it is scarce 
 
 1 The reader of Whittier will recall a fine allusion to 
 this night-cry, though used hy the poet with a local applica- 
 tion. A single word is changed. Works, p. 271, vol. i. 
 
 M ' Bring out your dead ! ' The midnight street 
 Heard and gave hack the hoarse, low call : 
 Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet; 
 Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet, 
 Her coffin and her pall. 
 * What, only one ! ' the brutal cartman said, 
 As with an oath he spurned away the dead. 
 
 How sunk the inmost hearts of all 
 
 As rolled the dead-cart slowly by, 
 
 With creaking wheel and harsh hoof -fall ! 
 
 The dying turned him to the wall, 
 
 To hear it, and to die. 
 
 Onward it rolled ; while oft its driver staid, 
 
 And hoarsely clamored, ' Ho ! bring out your dead.' " 
 
20 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 begun, so, also, the old preacher tells us, death 
 " stops its ears to the requests of trembling old 
 age, and casts to the ground the gray heads as 
 so many withered oaks." Death comes to 
 middle life, takes the violent man from his 
 crimes, and the just man from his knees. 
 Death snatches the rich from his goods, the 
 scholar from his books, the man of pleasure 
 from his fashionable pursuits, the self-righteous 
 from his good deeds : the worst and the best 
 are borne away together. All ambitions are 
 laid low : 
 
 " High heart, high thought, high fame, as flat 
 As a gravestone." 
 
 Death is hewing down stalwart men engaged 
 in great enterprises, holy and unholy ; and so, 
 also, the humble in the earth are falling, day 
 after day, by the hand of the great execu- 
 tioner. Death holds his silent, solemn court in 
 palace and hut. Tents and towns are alike to 
 him. The Spanish proverb declares, that, " He 
 tramples just the same upon the high towers 
 of kings and the low cottages of the poor." 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 21 
 
 " It hath," again saith the preacher, " no more 
 respect for the crowns of kings, the pope's 
 mitre, and the cardinal's cap, than for the 
 shepherd's crook, or the slave's chains." 
 
 Now and then a man falls who makes half 
 the earth quake : the globe is rilled with terror ; 
 the feeble tremble as they see the most mighty 
 yielding to death. Death is this world's king. 
 We might repeat to one another the words 
 of the monarch in the old play : — 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings; 
 
 . . . For within the hollow crown 
 
 That rounds the mortal temples of a 
 
 Keeps death his court; and there the 
 
 Scoffing his state, and grinning at his 
 
 Allowing him a breath, a little scene 
 
 To monarchize, . . . 
 
 . . . and, humor'd thus, 
 
 Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
 
 Bores through his castle wall, and — farewell, king! " 
 
 Philip of Macedon had a page repeat in his 
 chamber, morning by morning, " Remember, O 
 king ! that thou art mortal." " He that is to- 
 
22 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 day a king to-morrow shall die." ! " Memento 
 mori " was the motto upon the seal of an em- 
 peror in early ages. We read, that, in the 
 Flowery Kingdom, a stone-cutter appears at the 
 coronation of the emperor, with specimens of 
 costly marble, saying, " Choose, O Celestial Em- 
 peror, the stone beneath which thy bones shall 
 one day rest." When the body of Constantine 
 the Seventh, of the Eastern Empire, was borne 
 forth to burial, a herald went before the funeral- 
 train, crying, " Arise, O king of the world, and 
 obey the summons of the King of kings." When 
 Alexander the Great died, he ordered that his 
 dead hands should be borne outside the bier, 
 that all beholders might see them empty. The 
 dying Saladin, if we are to believe old story, 
 directed a messenger to take his shroud, fasten 
 it to his flagstaff which had borne down so 
 many battles, and carry it through the streets, 
 crying, " This is all that is left of all his great- 
 ness to the mighty Saladin ! " 2 Cyrus, em- 
 
 1 Ecclus. x. 10. 
 
 2 Thomas Fuller (p. 140, History of the Holy War. Lon- 
 don, 1840) hased upon Sabell. Enn. 9, lib. v. p. 378. When 
 Gibbon (p. 267, vol. vii. : Boston, 1855) said that the Orientals 
 knew nothing of this story, he probably had Fuller in mind. 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 23 
 
 peror of Persia, chose this epitaph, " O man ! 
 whatsoever thou art, and whencesoever thou 
 comest, I know that thou wilt come to the same 
 condition in which I now am. I am Cyrus, who 
 brought the empire to the Persians : do not 
 envy me, I beseech thee, this little piece of 
 ground which covereth my body ! " The dust 
 of prince is very like the dust of beggar ; and 
 the whirlwind sports with both. A Persian 
 poet said that he saw a potter making pitchers 
 out of clay which had been used once before in 
 making the heads of kings and the feet of beg- 
 gars. 1 We may all sing the old Spanish song : — 
 
 M Our lives are rivers, gliding free 
 To that unfathomed, boundless sea, 
 
 The silent grave: 
 Thither all empty pomp and boast 
 Roll, to be swallowed up and lost 
 
 In one dark wave. 
 
 Thither the mighty torrents stray; 
 Thither the brook pursues its way, 
 
 And tinkling rill: 
 There all are equal. Side by side 
 The poor man and the son of pride 
 Lie calm and still." 
 
 1 Kkeyam ; eleventh century. 
 
24 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 The death-sentence has passed on all men; 
 and there is no partiality, and there is no 
 escape: death is inevitable. All flesh shall 
 perish together, and man shall turn again unto 
 dust. All that go down to the dust shall bow 
 before him ; and none can keep alive his own 
 soul. Earth's millions are to enter the grave. 
 It is appointed unto man once to die. There is 
 a house appointed for all the living. It is re- 
 served for them. All must call on the court of 
 Death, and nod at his gate. We must needs 
 die. What man is he that livejbh, and shall not 
 see death ? There is no man that hath power 
 over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither 
 hath he power in the day of death. " After 
 such a number of hours," saith one, "it will 
 unavoidably be night, and there is no stopping 
 the setting sun." Sang Confucius, a few days 
 before his death, — 
 
 44 The great mountain must crumble, 
 The strong beam must break, 
 And the wise man wither away like a plant." 
 
 Who can think to escape ? All men try for 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 25 
 
 it. Even the fatalists seek safety in flight. 
 " We are not worthy the high honor of ascend- 
 ing to heaven so soon," said the pious Muslims, 
 when they ran away from a plague-smitten city. 
 In some of the savage tribes of Borneo, a cus- 
 tom prevails of changing the name of any per- 
 son who rises from a severe sickness ; as if, by 
 a disguise and new personality, Death might 
 be deceived when he should think to approach 
 again. But every man falls when his time has 
 come ; and there is no remedy. An Arabic 
 fable tells us, that, as a man was one day walk- 
 ing with King Solomon, they two met the 
 Angel of Death. The man said to Solomon, 
 " The Angel looks as though he wanted me. 
 Order a wind to take me to India." Solomon 
 did so ; and when he was gone, the king asked 
 the Angel what he wanted. Said he, " I was 
 just ordered to take that man's soul in India ; 
 and I was wondering that he should be here 
 with you." So my next neighbor went in sad- 
 ness to his physician, saying, "J fear that Death 
 wants me. Order me to go to a foreign coun- 
 try." And now I have news that he died at 
 
26 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 his journey's end. Can any man escape ? At 
 about such a time, in whatever place, the body 
 will perish. Is there not, in the imagery of 
 Eastern poets, a tree in paradise which bears a 
 new leaf whenever a man is born into the 
 world ? And is not the name of the new-born 
 babe inscribed on that new unfolding leaf? 
 When that leaf upon the hills of paradise 
 begins to wither, the Death Angel goes forth 
 for his soul. We fall like withered leaves. By 
 the act of sin, our bodies are made lawful sub- 
 jects of King Death. Our clay belongs to him ; 
 and he will take it when the fatal hour strikes. 
 " No words or gifts," says the Buddhist scrip- 
 ture, " can conciliate him : no place is secure 
 from his approach. He walks about night and 
 day : his territory has nt) bounds. There is no 
 need of light or sun where he reigns. He enters 
 the house without passing through the door ; 
 and where he comes there is no escape." I 
 have read that in one country of the Orient, in 
 ancient times, the people did not die as else- 
 where ; but on a particular day, once a year, 
 they met on a plain near their chief cities, and 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 27 
 
 engaged in various amusements, " in the midst 
 of which persons of every age and rank would 
 suddenly stop, make a reverence to the west, 
 gird up their loins, and, setting out at full speed 
 towards that quarter of the desert, were no 
 more seen nor heard of." They were called 
 away by the Angel of Death, and went with him 
 upon a swift journey through deserts, and over 
 snow-clad mountains, and rivers of molten gold 
 and silver, and at last lay down upon a verdant 
 plain in the midst of a desert; and the turf 
 opened like a grave, and swallowed them up. 
 But, under whatever fable we disguise it, it is 
 always death, as threatened in Eden. When 
 you have come to the bound of life, you must- 
 cease your journeying. 1 
 
 God marks each one of us, pointing us out 
 to the deadly messengers, as a forester indicates 
 trees for the wood-chopper. So, in our early 
 colonial days, the officers of king or queen 
 used to go through our forests, and place upon 
 
 1 In the words of M. Antoninus, — Meditations: "Thou 
 hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come 
 to shore: get out!" 
 
28 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 certain trees the broad arrow of the British 
 navy, indicating that, one after another, they 
 should fall, and be put to the service of the 
 State. I myself bear a mark, to fall I know 
 not when. The first gray hair is changed by 
 the silver finger of the Death Angel : he is pre- 
 paring the body to lie down in the dust. So 
 bear we, upon our own heads, reminders of the 
 grave, like those pious Mussulmans who wear 
 the turban, which represents the pall of the 
 dead. 1 Do I stand in no need of the burial 
 robe? My winding-sheet may be already on 
 the shelf. Already, most likely, the bier is 
 made on which my clay will be borne to the 
 grave. In some forest is growing my coffin; 
 or perhaps it has gone through the mill, and 
 the carpenter has handled it, and it may be 
 waiting for me at this hour, in some unknown 
 shop, whose door I pass unheeding. And the 
 graves are ready for me. Somewhere is a burial 
 lot for me, I know not where ; but there the 
 grass is now springing, and the birds are sing- 
 ing as they fly over it or sit in branches hard 
 
 1 Vainbery, Travels in Central Asia: London, 1864. 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 29 
 
 by ; or the snowflakes now spread a great white 
 sheet there, and the winds are there singing the 
 wild songs of winter ; or perhaps the sea-birds 
 are screaming, and the waves are clapping their 
 hands over the last resting-place of this diseased 
 and weary body. How happy, if my death day 
 is to me a day of joy — better than having any 
 house above ground ; my pilgrim soul entering 
 that day into the house not made with hands. 
 
 Death we cannot escape. May we not, then, 
 like men, turn about, and make a friend of 
 death ? The penalty of sin has passed on all. 
 Death is universal, impartial, inevitable. Come 
 it will, — the last look on the earthly, the clos- 
 ing eyes, the laying-down of the body in the 
 narrow house, the opening of the eyes of the 
 soul upon the eternal world, the standing before 
 the final Judge, — come it will ; and the wise 
 will make ready. 
 
 Did you never think that death is always 
 close upon us, always sudden, unexpected, since 
 we always put far off the day of our own dying, 
 so that, whenever we lie down to die, it will be 
 
30 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 a new and surprising thing to us that our own 
 turn has come at last ? The Egyptian kings no 
 sooner began to reign than they began to build 
 their sepulchres ; yet, of fifty royal tombs at 
 Thebes, not one is finished. The Pharaohs were 
 surprised by Death before they were ready for 
 him. " Death is deaf," says the Spaniard, " and, 
 when he knocks at the door of life, is alway in 
 a -hurry, and will not be detained, either by fair 
 means . or force." An ingenious writer of the 
 sixteenth century represents Death as convers- 
 ing with his victims, as if he would know their 
 miserable excuses for delaying his work. " Were 
 I not absolute over them," says the rider upon 
 the pale horse, " they would confound me with 
 their long speeches ; but I have business, and 
 must gallop on." 
 
 " Of all the gods, Death only craves not gifts: 
 Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured 
 Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed 
 By hymns of praise.' ' 
 
 How many of Death's messengers give abso- 
 lutely no warning. In the tornado, Death rides 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 31 
 
 swift as the whirlwind. A burning mountain 
 pours destruction upon crowded cities in a 
 moment. Dwelling-houses become tombs, when 
 the earth itself is rising and falling like the 
 waves of the sea. Men, women, and children 
 are, in a second of time, snatched from their 
 ordinary employments, and hurried at once into 
 eternity. " I was sitting, playing with my kit- 
 ten, and just going to breakfast," says a writer, 
 when Lisbon was destroyed. " I had one slip- 
 per on, and the other was in pussy's mouth, 
 when my attention was roused by the sudden 
 sound of thunder. The floor heaved under me, 
 and I saw the spire of the Church of the Holy 
 Virgin come tumbling to the ground like a 
 plaything overturned by a child. I rushed into 
 the street, unknowing what I did and where I 
 went, and beheld such a scene as made it come 
 into my mind that the end of all things was at 
 hand, and that this was the judgment-day ap- 
 pointed by God. By this time the air was filled 
 with the screams of the mangled and the dying. 
 The dwellings of men, the trophies of conquest, 
 the temples of God, were falling all around me, 
 
32 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 and my escape appeared impossible. I made 
 up my mind for death." We read in the 
 ancient records of Israel that a wall fell upon 
 twenty-seven thousand of the men left. Ca- 
 lamities like that of the Pemberton Mill in 
 Lawrence are of old time, and common to all 
 ages. 
 
 Death rides as figure-head of our great ships 
 of life, or at the helm ; and in mist, or storm, 
 or sunshine, men perish, going down into the 
 waters of death as a ship suddenly sinking at 
 sea. A packet strikes an iceberg, and many 
 passengers go down asleep. The cyclone comes 
 sweeping through the sky, without cloud or 
 warning, often not even touching the surface 
 of the sea to ruffle the smooth waves ; But in an 
 instant the masts may be torn out of the ship 
 or the ship founders, and all the crew sink 
 unheralded into the gloomy caverns of the 
 deep. There is only one moment of time be- 
 tween voyaging in the Indian Ocean or the 
 Chinese seas, and sailing the unknown waters 
 of the realms of death. Or how often, upon 
 the land, there is one crash, and a throng of 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 33 
 
 swift travellers are lying beside the track, amid 
 the ruins of a train. 
 
 " How many souls o'ertake, ere night, 
 The prayer they poured in the morning light! " 
 
 Death is always close at hand. It is writ- 
 ten : — 
 
 " If a man could see 
 The perils and diseases that he elbows 
 Each day he walks a mile, which catch at him, 
 Which fall behind him as he passes, 
 Then he would know that life's a single pilgrim, 
 Fighting unarmed amongst a thousand-soldiers. ' ' 
 
 Death is ever close by us, though he be 
 noticed only as the beating of our own hearts is 
 noticed in moments of fear. This fact is the 
 grand secret which has given popularity to those 
 singular pictorial representations that have ap- 
 peared now and then in times past, some in ages 
 quite remote. " Death " is not much called for 
 in our public libraries ; but the pictorial lite- 
 rature of the subject is by no means without 
 interest. Every little while, some artist has 
 turned preacher, and shown the figure of Death 
 
 3 
 
34 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 mingling in our common pursuits. For exam- 
 ple, a countess is represented as receiving from 
 her maid a splendid dress ; and Death stands 
 behind, placing a necklace of bones about her 
 neck. A fop and a fine lady are exhibited in 
 the latest style ; but one-half of each figure shows 
 the skeleton. Death is pictured as helping gird 
 the armor upon a warrior in the morning that 
 he goes forth to be slain. It is Death who leads 
 a blind man by the hand to the last fatal step. 
 A youthful poet sits penning an ode to Immor- 
 tality; and JDeath stands grinning behind his 
 chair. An artist paints the figure of Death 
 with his scythe ; and, in a moment after, he 
 himself feels the clipping of the scythe. The 
 Great Destroyer is pictured in the act of remov- 
 ing a wheel from a carriage upon the street, or 
 attacking a ship at sea, breaking the mast, and 
 preparing to plunge all into the deep. Death 
 " waylays the alderman in the last spoonful of 
 turtle." Hogarth, in the last work that he did, 
 painted what he thought about his own nearness 
 to death : it was called " The World's End," 
 representing the wreck of all things. There was 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 35 
 
 a ruined tower and a crumbling crown, a map 
 of the world on fire, an old broom worn to the 
 handle, an unstrung bow, a broken bottle, and 
 a cracked bell, a waning moon, a stranded ship,, 
 the scythe and glass of Time broken, and a 
 painter's palette broken with it. 
 
 So Death is always near by, watching us, and 
 turning his hour-glass, waiting for our sands to 
 run out. Death approaches secretly, as the 
 unseen springs of a watch cease to uncoil, or as 
 the clock-weight runs down unseen. One mo- 
 ment it is ticking, then it ceases. You know 
 not how soon life will stop. Daily dying, we 
 draw near to death every day by a certain num- 
 ber of steps: on the actual day of dying, the 
 same steps are taken ; and they lead into the 
 open grave. We are nearing the grave daily, 
 although engaged in various occupations ; as 
 men on a ship are borne towards their port in 
 hours of slumber or of diverse employments. 
 Little by little we are approaching our final 
 destiny. We walk in our common paths, and 
 there is nothing unusual to warn us of the near- 
 ness of the eternal world ; and the last steps are 
 
36 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 taken before we are aware of it. If we are to 
 die by lingering illness, we go to our bed, and 
 deliberately lie down upon it, to rise no more ; 
 or, if we are to die suddenly, we carefully and 
 surely and boldly and thoughtlessly, pick our 
 steps to the place where we are to fall. Here 
 is a neighbor, perhaps, who is at work in his 
 orchard, and he suddenly loses his hold, and 
 drops to the ground, and is dead. And here is 
 a place, by the side of our highway, where man 
 and beast stop to quench their thirst. A stran- 
 ger, in alighting from his carriage, makes a mis- 
 step ; and we see him on the ground under the 
 iron hoofs, and he is dead. When the fatal hour 
 arrives, the life is ended, whether it be by the 
 hand of disease, or of distressing accident. So 
 it is that men step from their common business 
 into the presence of God. 
 
 If, therefore, we are doomed to die by strange 
 deaths on account of sin, and if the sentence 
 embraces the whole human family, and if no 
 condition is exempt, and if death is certain as 
 the decrees of fate, and if we are to be surprised, 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 37 
 
 as it were, without warning, we shall act wisely 
 if we are always prepared for it. Those who 
 are exposed to great peril should be always 
 ready to die. In respect of danger, this planet 
 we call home is a mere powder-mill, and any 
 moment may send us flying hence. But un- 
 heeding men do not think. A blinding pros- 
 perity may bear one to the very edge of the 
 grave. Waving harvests, rising warehouses, 
 increasing riches, and the joys of life, song and 
 fruit and flower, may be ours even up to the 
 very morning of our last sunrise. " In an hour 
 that he is not aware of," the Lord cometh. See- 
 ing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, 
 what manner of persons ought ye to be in all 
 holy conversation and godliness ? Said Rabbi 
 Eliezer to his disciples, — 
 
 " Turn to God one day before your death." 
 " How can man," they asked, " know the day 
 of his death ? " 
 
 "True," answered Eliezer: "therefore, you 
 should turn to God to-day ; perhaps you may 
 die to-morrow : thus every day will be employed 
 in turning to him." 
 
38 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 It is certain you will die, uncertain when. 
 Do you put on airs as if to live on the earth 
 forever ? Will you build a house at the grave's 
 mouth? Your pulse will quickly cease, your 
 eyes darken, your face pale, your frame chill ; 
 men will forget you ; and others will move into 
 the home you now occupy, and make merry in 
 the room where you died. 
 
 If I revisit, for the first time in twenty years, 
 a town in which I once knew all the families, I 
 am startled at the havoc death has made : whole 
 families have moved into the burial-ground. I 
 feel my insecurity, and, for the moment, won- 
 der at my own escape. But it is only for the 
 moment. My mind turns like that of Justice 
 Shallow : — 
 
 " The mad days that I have spent ! And to see 
 how many of mine old acquaintance are dead ! " 
 
 Silence, — " We shall all follow, cousin." 
 
 Shallow. — " Certain, 'tis certain ; very sure, 
 very sure. Death, as the Psalmist saith, is cer- 
 tain to all : all shall die. — How a good yoke of 
 bullocks at Stamford Fair?" 
 
 The price of oxen will not allow long moral- 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 39 
 
 izing on the certainty of death. So the world 
 goes. We shall soon die ; and we stand like 
 brutes, gazing into the barnyard. What is the 
 price of bullocks ? 
 
 " All men think all men mortal but themselves." 
 
 " Well, what do you think of the world to 
 come?" — "Truly, my lord, I think of it as 
 little as I can." * But no effort to keep out of 
 mind all thoughts that relate to death and eter- 
 nity can change the circumstances in which we 
 find ourselves. It is with us in this life as if 
 we were transacting our common business in 
 ferrying to and fro upon some strong current, 
 like Niagara, which will, on some unknown day, 
 certainly bear us over the rapids and the preci- 
 pice into the eternal world. Frequently, by 
 sickness or accident, we are actually borne 
 downward almost to the brink : God arrests our 
 course, and brings us back to our ordinary em- 
 ployments. We are to make it one of our em- 
 ployments, every day, to prepare for the hour 
 when we ourselves shall quit our hold upon 
 
 1 Swift's Polite Conversation. 
 
40 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 the earth to enter the unseen world. Are not 
 graves opening all around us ? By the newly- 
 opened graves let us lay aside all our careless 
 unconcern for the eternal world, that we may 
 prepare in good earnest for the life to come. 
 Can we long tread these streets ? There are 
 whole fields not far from us, which are billowed 
 with graves. Our ordinary employments call 
 upon us to go past the sleeping-places of the 
 dead. Do we never think to pause, and count 
 the faces that are turned upward ? How many 
 eyes are closed close under our feet ! Close 
 beside our path are many feet crossed, — feet 
 once busy, walking where we walk to-day, now 
 waiting to move toward the bar of judgment. 
 Ere our feet are crossed, and we lie down beside 
 them, let us make many steps on the highway 
 of heaven. Men are so engrossed in their com- 
 mon affairs, that they need the very touch of 
 the dead to arouse them. It is said that the 
 ancient Thebans used to carry coffins into their 
 banquet-rooms, that they might never forget 
 the presence of death at every festival. Almost 
 every day we are brought into contact with 
 
BUILDING IN THE DUST. 4J 
 
 some coffin. We are called from our regular 
 work to attend upon the dying, to bury the 
 dead, and to weep over the grave. Shall not 
 such scenes remind us of our own nearness to 
 Death, and of his inevitable approach to us? 
 It is related that a man was once drifting in the 
 sea upon a life-preserver, after a wreck. He 
 was alone in the night, floating in the darkness ; 
 and his soul was in dense darkness, and he 
 expected to die before the morning. He was a 
 bad man. He had long despised Christ, and he 
 still rejected him. He could not, during two 
 hours, make up his mind to apply to Jesus for 
 mercy, when, suddenly, the body of one dead, 
 borne on the waves, struck him. This broke 
 the spell ; and he gave himself up to God at 
 once, and found Christ as his personal Saviour. 
 Is it possible that any one can be so insensible 
 as to receive no shock from the sudden touch 
 of the dead ? 
 
 " Be wise to-day; 'tis madness to defer." 
 
 Prepare to meet thy God. In such an hour as 
 ye think not, the Son of man cometh. 
 
42 THE SILENT HOUSE, 
 
 II. 
 NEAR HOME. 
 
 In some year, it will be written of each of us, 
 as once of the lying prophet, u This year thou 
 shalt die." It will be written, — This year, thy 
 clay shall crumble, and thy spirit flee ; this year, 
 thine eyes shall close to this world, and open 
 upon eternal scenes ; this year, the music of 
 earth shall cease to please thine ear, and thou 
 shalt hear immortal songs or wailings. Shall 
 that busy tongue of thine this year go down 
 into the land of silence ? Shall thy feet step 
 off the brink of the common life to visit the 
 grave ? Shall thine industrious hands be sud- 
 denly folded, and laid to rest ? 
 
 This year thou shalt die. This year, — before 
 the winter snows are gone, or in the bright 
 spring-time, or in the heated summer, or in the 
 burdened autumn, — thy body shall enter a new 
 
NEAR HOME. 43 
 
 grave. This year thou shalt die. Thou, the 
 strong child, or youth, or man, or hoary head. 
 Thou enfeebled one, having had so long the 
 finger-marks of death about thee, thou shalt go 
 to thy grave. Thou, the man of large plans 
 and pressing business, and thou who only seek- 
 est bread for a day. Careless one, thoughtless 
 of God and eternity, thou shalt this year enter 
 the unseen world. Praying man, this year thou 
 shalt die, and see God. Mourning one, this 
 year thy tears shall cease. 
 
 Suddenly and soon your eyes will be opened 
 to behold another world. Perhaps not this 
 year is it written of you, — This year thou shalt 
 die ; but soon it will be. A few more vain 
 struggles of vain days, and all will be over: 
 your funeral prayer will be said, and you will 
 be beyond the reach of prayers. No one looks 
 to die this year. Many are ill fitted to die this 
 year. Yet who knows whether his own name 
 may not be on the secret record, where it is 
 written, — This year thou shalt die ? 
 
 We shall readily believe that we are liable to 
 
44 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 die at almost any moment, and that we shall die 
 very soon, if we consider the ancient Scriptures, 
 which set forth to us, by various symbols, the 
 brevity of life. And if, besides, we look about, 
 and see with what armory death is furnished in 
 the diseases which finally carry us off, we shall 
 think there is nothing certain about life, save 
 its uncertainty. And we shall ask each other 
 whether we ought not, as men of good judgment, 
 to make certain preparation for certain death. 
 
 The Scriptures continually remind us that 
 our spiritual treasures are given us in earthen 
 vessels. The men of the East saw the imagery 
 of death appearing in the common transactions 
 of the daily life. The story-telling Orient is 
 reminded by the great Hebrew lawgiver, that 
 we spend our years as a tale that is told. The 
 exciting plot is quickly finished. We hurry 
 from one incident to another, and it soon ap- 
 pears how all will end : the tragic scenes and 
 the comic are talked over, and death carries us 
 away. The lives of a thousand and one men 
 are very like the Thousand and One Arabian 
 
NEAR HOME. 45 
 
 Nights ; each tale occupying the attention for 
 an hour, and then it is gone by forever. Again, 
 some called death a sleep : we do not notice 
 that we are asleep till we wake up, and it is all 
 over. Zophar, the Naamathite, reflected on the 
 unsubstantial nature of dreams: and he said 
 that the memory of a man's life upon the earth 
 would fly away like a dream, and not be found ; 
 chased away as a vision of the night. 
 
 The sacred poets, also, looked upon the 
 handcraft of men as declaring most forcibly 
 the shortness of our life. When, for example, 
 Job saw the weavers at their work, and the 
 swift-flying shuttle, he said, that, every time it 
 passed across the loom, it was like one of his 
 days, running so quickly. And when King 
 Hezekiah saw the workman cutting his thread 
 or his web, he said that was the way disease 
 had nearly cut off his life. When, also, the 
 king, journeying through the country, saw the 
 little shelter-tent of a shepherd on the hillside, 
 with the flocks grazing near by, and then, on 
 returning the next day, saw that the tent- 
 dweller had gone, he looked upon it as the 
 
46 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 symbol of his own life, which would be re- 
 moved like a shepherd's tent. And when a 
 royal messenger went through the country, 
 riding in hot haste, — appearing over the rim 
 of a basin in the desert, dashing through it, 
 and disappearing over the next ridge, — an 
 old patriarch stood in his tent-door, and said, 
 "My days are swifter than a post; they flee 
 away, they see no good." And he who looked 
 forth upon the Red Sea or the blue Mediter- 
 ranean, and saw white sails, then, in an hour, 
 looked and saw them no more, said that the days 
 of man are passing away like the swift ships. 
 
 So, too, when these thoughtful men looked 
 abroad upon the objects of Nature, it was only 
 to see Death riding in the sky, or darkening 
 the earth. The sky above, and the earth 
 beneath, are covered with the signs of our mor- 
 tality : fleeting clouds, and falling leaves, and 
 fading grasses are everywhere expressing the 
 fact, that under the unchanging heavens, and 
 on the enduring earth, all things are passing 
 away, like the vain life of him who is proudly 
 called " the lord of creation." A voice said, — 
 
NEAR HOME. 47 
 
 Ciy. And he said, What shall I cry? All 
 flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is 
 as the flower of the field : the grass withereth, 
 the flower fadeth ; because the spirit of the 
 Lord bloweth upon it : surely the people is 
 grass. We hear the mowers in the heat of 
 summer ; but it is always harvest-time with 
 the reaper Death. Every day is heard the 
 sharp ring of his scythe. But as men sigh, 
 and move straight on when flowers fade, so 
 the work of death is scarcely heeded. " We 
 all do fade as the leaf," said the Hebrew 
 prophet. Men appear on the earth like forest- 
 leaves, and they perish in myriads year by year. 
 So, too, the Greek poet saw the generations of 
 men coming and going : — 
 
 " The wind in autumn strews 
 The earth with old leaves ; then the spring the woods 
 
 with new endows : 
 And so death scatters men on earth ; so life puts out 
 
 again 
 Man's leavy issue." 
 
 These imaginative people of the Orient, in 
 like manner, watched the shadows day by day ; 
 
48 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 and they said, that man fieeth as a shadow, 
 and continueth not. Again one prayed, " Re- 
 member that my life is wind." Yesterday a 
 wind murmured, shrieked, and was no more ; 
 to-day the breeze sings sweetly, or drearily 
 howls and dies ; to-morrow another and an- 
 other wind may sweep over the earth : and so 
 it is with the lives of men, — "a wind that 
 passeth away, and cometh not again." " As 
 the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no 
 more." Life, moreover, is like a cloud driven 
 before the wind, — a cloud dark and gloomy, or 
 bright in the noonday, or painted at sunset, — a 
 vapor that appeareth for a time, then vanisheth 
 away. What is your life ? It is consumed 
 like a cloud, melting into the blue of heaven, 
 or borne beyond sight by the breath of the 
 tempest. 
 
 One of our own poets has said, — 
 
 11 1 am : how little more I know! 
 Whence came I ? Whither do I go ? 
 A centred self, which feels and is; 
 A cry between the silences; 
 A shadow-birth of clouds at strife 
 With sunshine on the hills of life; 
 
NEAR HOME. 
 
 A shaft from Nature's quiver 
 Into the future from the past; 
 Between the cradle and the shrouayc ; 
 A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud." 
 
 The great dramatic poet of England has 
 given us the seven ages of man, — the mewling 
 infant, the whining schoolboy, the sighing 
 lover, the bearded soldier, the well-rounded 
 magistrate, the tremulous old man, and the 
 second childhood. So men and women pass 
 over the world's stage as mere players. If, 
 likewise, we open our Scriptures, we find dif- 
 ferent words, for seven ages, to represent man's 
 life. At first, human existence was measured 
 by centuries. But the Ninetieth Psalm records 
 threescore and ten years as the limit of life. 
 Job, however, spoke not of years, when he 
 declared that the number of a man's months is 
 with God. Again, it was said that man that is 
 born of a woman is of few days. Once more, 
 prayer is made that God will wait till a man 
 accomplish as an hireling his day; as though 
 one day's work might cover it all. A New 
 Testament saint, who reflected much on the 
 
 4 
 
50 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 future blessedness which will never cease, de- 
 clared that our light affliction in this life is but 
 for a moment. And one dwelling under the 
 shadow of Him who is from everlasting declared 
 unto God, "Mine age is as nothing before thee." 
 The centuries give place to years ; the years, to 
 months ; the months, to days ; the days, to one 
 day ; one day, to a moment ; the moment, to a 
 cipher, as the true symbol of the life of man. 
 
 The philosophers and poets of every age 
 have delighted to set forth the brevity of life 
 by like symbols. The poet Euripides called 
 life " a little day." Aristotle described certain 
 creatures on the River Hypanis, that live only 
 one day : those which die at eight in the morn- 
 ing die in youth, and those that die at five in 
 the evening reach old age: so the life of an 
 aged man is little longer than that of a child. 
 Do we weep for one who has gone before noon- 
 day? Our separation is short, since we our- 
 selves shall follow before nightfall. When Sir 
 Thomas More was threatened with death, he 
 answered, " Is that all, my lord ? Then, in good 
 faith, the difference between your Grace and me 
 
NEAR HOME. 51 
 
 is but this, — that I shall die to-day, and you 
 to-morrow." When Saadi met a man in Damas- 
 cus, who was dying at one hundred and fifty 
 years old, he heard him lamenting, "I said, 
 coming into the world by birth, 4 1 will enjoy 
 myself for a few moments.' Alas ! at the varie- 
 gated table of life I partook of a few mouth- 
 fuls ; and the fates said, 4 Enough ! '" 
 
 Shadow, cloud, smoke, wind, swift arrow, 
 fading flower, bubbles rising and breaking on 
 the stream, snowflakes falling on the sea, — 
 these are the emblems of life. Is the body 
 called the house of the soul, it soon crumbles ; 
 is it the tent, the tabernacle, it is moved away ; 
 is it the clothing of the soul, the vesture soon 
 decays ; is it called the casket holding a precious 
 jewel, the clay cracks, and the treasure is 
 removed. " Surely every man walketh in a vain 
 show." So many die every day, that men think 
 of it as of the common sunset, or the fading of 
 the rainbow from a summer sky. A man's 
 cradle and his coffin may be made from the 
 same tree. Life is a short journey, but very 
 grievous ; as one makes a painful passage over 
 
52 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 rough seas between ports near each other. He 
 who floats for a moment on life's troubled 
 waters soon sinks beneath the waves ; and the 
 noise of the sea, — the rush and tumult of tide 
 and storm, — is still lifting up its voice as 
 proudly as before. Unmeasured years are in 
 the eternal state ; and the years that can be 
 counted soon go by, like the ships which pass 
 out of shallow harbors into the deep sea. 
 
 We shall do wisely, if we all join in the 
 prayer of the man of God: "So teach us to 
 number our days, that we may apply our hearts 
 unto wisdom." " Of all numbers," said the 
 Puritan pastor, " we cannot skill to number 
 our days. We can number our sheep, and our 
 oxen, and our coin; but we think that our 
 days are infinite, and, therefore, we never go 
 about to number them. We can number other 
 men's days and years, and think they will die 
 ere it be long, if we see them sick, or sore, or 
 cold ; but we cannot number our own." And, 
 if we turn to the Genevan Reformer, we hear 
 him saying, u Even the most accomplished ac- 
 countant is unable to calculate the fourscore 
 
NEAR HOME, 53 
 
 years of his own existence. . . . They can tell 
 how far asunder are the several planets, and how 
 many miles it is from the centre of the moon 
 to the centre of the earth; but they cannot 
 measure the threescore years and ten which 
 divide the cradle from the grave." We see, all 
 around us, men spending their lives in reckon- 
 ing, who find it difficult to count up their own 
 age ; and, as they approach the limit of life, 
 they lieed not the increasing years. In Eng- 
 land, a man l has been, for some time, employed 
 in reckoning up the limitations of life ; and it 
 is found, that, where a million persons set forth 
 together, more than a quarter part die before 
 they are past five years old ; nearly four hun- 
 dred thousand of them drop out by the way 
 before thirty years are past ; at forty-five, only 
 one-half still pursue their journey ; at seventy, 
 only twenty-three men out of a hundred main- 
 tain the thinned ranks ; at fourscore and ten, 
 ninety and nine in every hundred have become 
 weary of the road, and repose in the last sleep; 
 at the end of the century, only two out of ten 
 
 1 Dr. Farr, register-general. 
 
54 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 thousand still struggle forward; and soon the 
 work of numbering is finished. But is it not, 
 we ask, a mistake, to say of any man that he 
 has really lived a hundred years ? Some, per- 
 haps, have remained upon the earth so long. 
 But, when we ask how much true living there 
 has been, we must apply to the ancient Jews, 
 who, in numbering man's days, took out in one 
 stroke one-half the years for sleep, and then all 
 the years of youth which Solomon called van- 
 ity, then the days of sorrow, in which a man 
 would rather die than live, — and what is left 
 is called life. Who can so number his days, 
 and look on them as desirable ? Let us hear 
 the voice of Augustine : " Sooner or later every 
 man must die ; and we groan and pray, and 
 travail in pain, and cry to God that we may 
 die a little later." " Men desire thousands of 
 days, and wish to live long here: rather let 
 them despise thousands of days, and desire 
 that one which hath neither dawn nor darken- 
 ing, to which no yesterday gives place, which 
 yields to no to-morrow." 
 
NEAR HOME. 55 
 
 Our sense of the brevity of life, and the 
 nearness of the eternal world, may, perhaps, be 
 quickened, if we turn to look upon some of 
 the weapons which death is always handling in 
 the assault upon human life. 
 
 The Scandinavian mythology relates that 
 Hela, or Death, dwells in the hall Elvidnir; 
 that Hunger is her table, and Starvation her 
 knife ; that she is waited upon by Delay and 
 Slowness for man and maid ; that her bed is 
 Care ; and that Burning Anguish furnishes the 
 hangings of her apartments; and that her 
 threshold is a precipice. In some strange pal- 
 ace, Death is now holding high court ; and the 
 attendants bear names that strike terror into 
 the human soul. Famine invades the country, 
 and pestilence breaks in upon the city. There 
 is heard a great cry ; for there is not a house 
 where there is not one dead. 
 
 " The plague runs festering through the town, 
 And never a bell is tolling; 
 And corpses, jostled 'neath the moon, 
 Nod to dead-cart's rolling." 
 
56 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 An eminent German physician estimated, that, 
 in the middle ages, the black death, within six 
 years, took away twenty-five million victims, — 
 one quarter of Europe; in some towns, half 
 the inhabitants. But, in these very days in 
 which we live, death sweeps away from the 
 earth every year a population equal to three- 
 fourths of the United States. We need not, 
 therefore, turn to exceptional and violent mani- 
 festations of the power of Him who cuts down 
 earth's inhabitants. It is the common every- 
 day mortality which is the most alarming. In 
 many homes, in this very hour, mothers are 
 closing the eyes of their babes, or children 
 are watching the passing breath of father or 
 mother. In some house, the wife is this mo- 
 ment clinging to the hand of her husband, not 
 willing to believe that he is dead : in some 
 other house, the husband is holding in his arms 
 the clay, not yet cold, of his dead wife. Many 
 a physician is now watching by a death-bed, 
 noticing the changes wrought by approaching 
 death. "By the stillness of the sharpened 
 features," says one, "by the blackness of the 
 
NEAR HOME. 57 
 
 tearless eye, by the fixedness of the smileless 
 mouth, by the deadening tints, by the con- 
 tracted brow, the dilating nostril, we know 
 that the soul is soon to leave its mortal tene- 
 ment, and is already closing its windows, and 
 putting out its fires." 
 
 In how many cases is life no sooner begun 
 than it is done. Children are born, merely to 
 die. Lines of death straightway gird about 
 every one entering this world, — infantile dis- 
 eases, and unnumbered perils in childhood and 
 youth. In adult life, also, diseases lie down- 
 like spies in our bodies, ready to attack us any 
 moment we are off our guard. The presence 
 of the deadly enemy may, perhaps, be never 
 suspected, till suddenly, as by the lightning 
 stroke, the strong man falls at his work. Si- 
 lent decay is upon us, so that our life naturally 
 runs into death, like a .river running into the 
 sea ; falling into it suddenly, as a cataract ; or, 
 by lingering disease, the life plays with the tides 
 of death for a long time before it yields itself 
 up. In the market, the street, the field, our 
 houses, or the house of God, we often see those 
 
58 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 who have upon them the signs of death, or who 
 have the dying at their homes. Our first ques- 
 tion is, " How is your health ? " or, " How is 
 my friend ? " lest, since we last took that hand, 
 death may have touched it. Often we go into 
 a company, thinking that there will soon be so 
 many funerals as there are persons present. 
 Sometimes we fix our eyes upon a particular 
 man, and imagine how he will look when his 
 clay is cold, and his face is upturned in the 
 coffin, waiting the last gaze of his companions. 
 How soon will those who bear the dead go into 
 every house in a neighborhood, and carry the 
 men out, that their bodies may be planted in 
 God's acre. Death is so near us, that at all 
 funerals it is the dead burying their dead : those 
 who are about to die bury those just dead. 
 All our struggle of life is to run away from 
 death. Men busily patch up the body, as 
 some half-ruined building, even when the soul, 
 — for which the body was made, and to make 
 room for which the body will soon be torn 
 down, — is left hungry, naked, wounded, dying 
 of neglect. 
 
NEAR HOME. 59 
 
 Could we be introduced into every hospital, 
 every infirmary, every sick-chamber, and see 
 Death's servants preparing for his coming, we 
 should suddenly fear. It is likely we should be 
 of the same mind as Thomas Fuller, when he 
 debated of the different modes of dying, and 
 said frankly, " None please me ; " but added, 
 that it were ill in the mark to choose the arrow 
 by which it should be hit. Death shoots his 
 arrows all around us ; and the longer we escape, 
 the greater the wonder. The engines of death 
 pour a continual storm of weapons into the 
 citadel of life. The elements around us conspire 
 with elements within the body to lay beauty 
 and strength low in the dust. This world was 
 designed for the abode of a dying race. Heat 
 and cold and damp, extremes of temperature, 
 and sudden changes, are servants to bring men 
 to the house appointed for all the living. Death 
 is always watching. He sees a woman going 
 often out into the cold winds with bare head, 
 and with shoulders exposed ; and some morning 
 he shoots his dart into her unshielded sides. 
 The death-angel goes into the real estate busi- 
 
60 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 ness in city and village, and among country 
 farms. Certain unhealthy locations seem to be 
 set apart for him ; and whoever builds a house 
 on these death-lands has life shortened. Fever 
 and consumption, and a great variety of dis- 
 eases, spring up out of the deadly soil, and seize 
 any one found within the fatal precinct. Every 
 spring and autumn in New England we have 
 frequent sudden changes of temperature, each 
 one of which sows the seeds of death in cer- 
 tain human bodies; and then the next series 
 of severe changes, that occurs a few months 
 later, carries off those enfeebled bodies. The 
 autumn reaps what the spring has sown ; or 
 the spring gathers what the autumn has planted. 
 We commonly say of one whose disease is de- 
 veloped one season, that the next change will 
 finish the work. So Death is busy, sowing and 
 reaping evermore. A rise of two or three de- 
 grees of cold above the average winter weather 
 takes away a multitude of old people. There 
 are, also, acute diseases, whose office is quickly 
 fulfilled. What is it to lie down and die ? It 
 is to take a little cold, to keep quiet a few days, 
 
NEAR HOME. 61 
 
 to have a short delirium, and enter upon the 
 last sleep. Perhaps there is some sickness re- 
 quiring only hours instead of days. 
 
 These diseases are so common, that they are 
 unheeded by the multitude. Men see so much 
 of sickness and of dying, that they are indif- 
 ferent. So I have read, that, during a long 
 siege at the rock of Gibraltar, the soldiers 
 became so accustomed to danger, that they 
 would not move from their places when they 
 saw bomb-shells smoking through the air, and 
 about to burst at their sides : the officers had 
 hard work to stir them up. Is it needful for us 
 to have warning voices from men, because we 
 will not heed the warnings given us by Death 
 himself? Diseases and infirmities are warnings. 
 Are they unheeded ? There is a fable, that a 
 man once made a contract with Death, that he 
 should have three warnings before he should be 
 borne away; and one day he was surprised, 
 amid all his common affairs, by the appearance 
 of the dread messenger come for him. 
 
 " How is this ? " he said. " You Agreed to 
 give me three warnings." 
 
62 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 Death answered, " I gave you the warnings ; 
 but you did not notice them." 
 
 There comes, to every man and woman, a 
 time when a part of life's burden must be 
 definitely laid aside as too heavy. It is found 
 that strength is failing. It is long before 
 the fact is confessed, and long before one 
 can settle down to doing less than formerly; 
 but by and by the new habits are adjusted, 
 and the remaining years are on another plane. 
 This crisis occurs, sometimes early, sometimes 
 late, often in middle life. It is a premonition 
 of death. It is the first parallel occupied in 
 the approach of death, besieging life's fortress. 
 The enemy is drawing nearer and nearer ; the 
 lines are more circumscribed ; and we shall 
 fall before him. Instead of complaining of 
 ill health, which is only Death knocking at 
 our door, let us thank God if he does not break 
 in on us without warning. 
 
 To-day let every man hear the warning, " Set 
 thy house in order, for thou must die." Al- 
 ready the death of dear ones, or one's own 
 
NEAR HOME. 63 
 
 bodily weakness, says that death is near. Fre- 
 quent bereavement, and the signs of death hang- 
 ing about our own persons, ought to make us 
 amazed at ourselves, — it is madness unspeak- 
 able, — if we defer taking decisive action in 
 preparing to meet God. It is written that 
 " death is always sudden to him who has not 
 shaken off his sins." 
 
 How soon men will speak of us as already 
 dead ! In one of my walks I met an aged man 
 who had been brought up some hundreds of 
 miles to the eastward ; and he had some forms 
 of speech unfamiliar to our New England ears. 
 
 " Who has gone home to-day ? " he asked. 
 
 And I wondered what he meant. He had 
 heard the tolling bell, and asked, "Who has 
 gone home ? " Some one had gone to the nar- 
 row house, and to the everlasting home, — to 
 wretchedness or joys eternal. Gone home ! 
 There is no home here. Soon the passing bell 
 will lead that man to ask concerning you, "Who 
 has gone home to-day ? " Where will be your 
 home ? You will go to your own place. Soon 
 Death will put his finger upon your ears, and 
 
64 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 shut out all sound of salvation. Hear, then, 
 to-day. " To dress the soul for a funeral," says 
 Jeremy Taylor, " is not a work to be despatched 
 at one meeting." In the midst of the common 
 business of life, the wise man will pause, and 
 make his peace with God, and refuse to engage 
 in any thing else till this be done. So did 
 Montcalm, at Quebec, saying, — 
 
 "I'll neither give orders, nor interfere any 
 further. I have business to attend to of greater 
 moment than your ruined garrison and this 
 wretched country. My time is short : I shall 
 pass this night with God, and prepare myself 
 for death." 
 
 Do we not all, in this very hour, recall a 
 death-bed scene in which some loved one has 
 passed away ? And, as we bring to mind the 
 solemn reflections of that hour, are we not 
 ready to hear and to heed the voice with which 
 a dying wife once addressed him who stood sob- 
 bing by her side : — 
 
 " My dear husband, live for one thing, and 
 only one thing; just one thing, — the glory of 
 God, the glory of God I " 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 65 
 
 III. 
 
 THE DARK DAYS. 
 
 " Never have I known 
 That the base perish: such the gods protect, 
 Delighting from the realms of death to snatch 
 The crafty and the guileful; but the just 
 And generous they in ruin always sink. 
 How for these things shall we account, or how 
 Approve them? " 
 
 So sang the Greek poet. 1 And in one of the 
 sweet songs of Israel we read, "For I was 
 envious at the foolish when I saw the prosper- 
 ity of the wicked. For there are no bands in 
 their death ; but their strength is firm. They 
 are not in trouble as other men; neither are 
 they plagued like other men. ... Is there 
 knowledge in the Most High? Behold these 
 are the ungodly, who prosper in the world ; they 
 
 1 Sophocles: Philoctetes. 
 
66 THE SILENT HOTTSE. 
 
 increase in riches. Verily I have cleansed my 
 heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocen- 
 cy. . . . When I thought to know this, it was 
 too painful for me, until I went into the sanc- 
 tuary of God; then understood I their end." 
 
 We cannot justify the wa}^s of God to men 
 till we go into the sanctuary, and there, under 
 the divine light and guidance, seek to solve the 
 problems that perplex us. We ourselves have 
 often noticed the apparent prosperity of men of 
 marked wickedness ; and it has not been always 
 clear to us that their death has been in obe- 
 dience to the divine behest, or that, in dying, 
 they have had any peculiar sense of the folly 
 of their lives, with compunctions of conscience, 
 and decided apprehensions of spiritual evil 
 beyond the grave. We have said, " There are 
 no bands in their death." When, however, we 
 bring this matter to the test of the sanctuary, 
 we understand better the divine word and prov- 
 idence. Wicked men are removed from the 
 world in obedience to a divine law of moral 
 progress in this universe ; and though the most 
 die heedlessly, as they live, it is sometimes true, 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 67 
 
 that, in the dying-hour, the hands of the wicked 
 gather about them, and their future life is over- 
 hung with gloom. Not unfrequently the valley 
 of death appears very dark ; and, alarmed by a 
 sense of sin and vague terror, they confess the 
 vanity of all merely earthly pursuits and pleas- 
 ures. It is suitable, therefore, to enter into the 
 sanctuary, and seek to know the end of the 
 ungodly. And we shall need no very laborious 
 studies to discover, with the writer of the He-' 
 brew song, that it is a mistake to say of wicked 
 men, that there are no bands in their death. 
 Their dying-days are days of darkness. 
 
 I will, at first, ask how often you have 
 thought of the relief which this world experi- 
 ences when hardened sinners are taken away ? 
 It must be a galling reflection to a dying man 
 to think, that, after all his life-work, the most 
 intelligent and the best men are glad to be rid 
 of him, or, at the least, feel that he is no loss, 
 that moral goodness will triumph the sooner 
 for his departure. It is, however, a consoling 
 thought to those who have the best interests of 
 
68 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 mankind at heart, that Death serves a very im- 
 portant part in removing from the world those 
 who hinder the advancement of God's king- 
 dom. If the moral universe is to go forward, 
 some way must be found, not only for advan- 
 cing holy souls to their final reward, but also for 
 transplanting the wicked to their own place. 
 Death is, therefore, the messenger of God, 
 bearing his sons heavenward, and also ridding 
 this world of the most desperately depraved 
 characters in it. 
 
 Before the flood, it seemed as if wickedness 
 was well-nigh immortal ; and this world became 
 a sort of hell, quenched only by opening the 
 windows of heaven, and breaking up the deep. 
 Surpassing skill and power and hardihood in 
 sinning increased with every year of their 
 lengthened lives. If, also, we turn the other 
 way, and look forward to the millennial state, 
 we are apt to think, from the hints of Scripture, 
 that life will be much longer then than now. 
 This, in itself, will be a certain preparation for 
 the falling-away to come thereafter ; when long- 
 lived depravity will stalk abroad, with guilt 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 69 
 
 like that of the antideluvians which will then 
 be cut off by a flood of fire. It is, therefore, 
 a mercy to-day, which cuts off bad men in 
 comparative immaturity. If, all the uneasy 
 schemers of past ages could have lived till 
 now, their violence would have made the globe 
 intolerable. If Alexander the Great could be 
 still mapping out new conquests, or if Charles 
 the Twelfth, Frederick, and Napoleon were still 
 with us in immortal vigor ; and if the worst 
 men now dead in America — Arnolds and Burrs 
 — were still among us, the earth might well 
 groan under the heavy burden. And if, side by 
 side with them, we should see the men who 
 have been valiant for truth in the earth, still 
 contending in full vigor, it would seem that 
 their mighty warfare might jostle some of them 
 off this planet. Imagine Herod and John the 
 Baptist, Paul and Nero, Luther and Leo, 
 William the Silent and Charles the Fifth, Crom- 
 well and the Cavaliers, contending for centuries, 
 and still in the field of battle. If we could 
 suppose such things to be, there would, doubt- 
 less, be singular scenes on this globe, — many 
 
70 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 mighty men entombed in dungeons, or immured 
 effectually under the crushing weight of some 
 lost cause. We are, therefore, to look upon 
 Death as a great friend to the world in reliev- 
 ing society of the worst men in it, — vigorous 
 villains, — conveniently laying them away in 
 cool graves. " These fierce passions of their 
 minds," says an old Roman poet, " and these 
 inveterate contentions, are composed to rest by 
 the weight of a little dust thrown upon them." 
 How often, in reading history, we find an un- 
 looked-for death relieving an oppressed people, 
 and defeating plots which threaten the nations. 
 We are thus called, in a moment, to laugh over 
 a new farce, instead of moaning over a new 
 tragedy. There is, to confess the truth, some- 
 thing a little comical in thinking of the mighty 
 John of Austria, dying in a dovecot, and 
 then his body dangling in three bags from 
 troopers' saddles, and dashing through the 
 country to find a tomb. Death revenged many 
 men, when Charles the Bold " was found dead, 
 naked and deserted, and with his face frozen 
 into a pool of water." Death handles kings 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 71 
 
 roughly when he gets hold of them. And, 
 though their courtiers sometimes prop them up 
 for a few days, he soon shows the sham. So 
 Constantine's body was, after death, still kept 
 in regal state, and his law still went out to the 
 people as if he were alive ; but the worm and 
 decay crept within the bright robes, and a soul- 
 less emperor was soon powerless. The Peruvian 
 incas were buried in great pomp ; and in vast 
 halls their bodies were stationed on thrones, in 
 solemn rows, as if they were worshipping in the 
 Court of Death ; but the fear of them passed 
 away, and graceless robbers overturned them in 
 their hunt for treasures. Many a ploughshare 
 has driven right on over the hearts of mighty 
 men. The honorable tombs of ancient cities 
 have fallen into the dust ; and there is no man 
 to do honor to forgotten heroes. Goethe saw an 
 Italian shoemaker using the head of the statue 
 of a Roman emperor for his laps tone. We may, 
 therefore, quietly console ourselves, and think 
 contemptuously of the short-lived threats of 
 wicked men, as Socrates did, when it was told 
 him, " The thirty tyrants have sentenced thee 
 
72 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 to death." — "And Nature, them," he answered. 
 Even in this life, the arms of the wicked shall be 
 broken. The wicked cease from troubling, and 
 the weary have rest ; the prisoners rest together ; 
 they hear not the voice of the oppressor. 
 
 Allow me, for another point, to call to your 
 notice the fact, that, when they go down to die, 
 the wicked are often filled with strange alarms 
 as they remember their sins. It is not said that 
 this is usually the case ; but it is not unfre- 
 quently so. And some degree of terror is so 
 common, that it may be suitably numbered as 
 one of the bands in the death of the wicked. 
 
 It is, indeed, true, that the multitude do not 
 appear to be disquieted. A careless life is often 
 closed by hard indifference upon the death-bed. 
 Those who have spent their lives in stifling 
 conscience now find it easy to conceal their 
 religious emotions, and die with ill-affected 
 resignation, or sink sullenly into the grave. 
 Some are like stage-players when the curtain 
 drops. " Have I played well my part ? " asked 
 the dying Augustus. " Then give me your 
 
THE DARK DA VS. 73 
 
 applause." " Let down the curtain : the farce 
 is over," said the dying Rabelais. High over 
 the cemeteries, in the great French Revolu- 
 tion, hung the motto, " Here is eternal sleep." 
 "Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with 
 flowers, that I may thus enter upon eternal 
 sleep," said the dying Mirabeau. When Dan- 
 ton stood upon the scaffold, his self-conceit did 
 not slink away even at the fatal block : " Thou 
 wilt show my head to the people. It is worth 
 showing." When Charles the Second of Eng- 
 land was dying, — a bad Protestant and good 
 Catholic, — he did not forget that native polite- 
 ness and lightness which won him the title 
 " Merry Monarch," which jested even in the 
 presence of death. He could not leave the 
 world without an apology to those around him 
 for the trouble he had made them ; saying to 
 those who had waited long, that he had been 
 a most unconscionable time dying, but hoped 
 they would excuse it. There is, with venerable 
 though less illustrious authority, an old report, 
 that, when Henry the Eighth was given over by 
 the physicians, he called for a glass of sack, and, 
 
74 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 after lie had finished it, said in a jest, " All's 
 gone, all's gone," — and died. The first Darius 
 thought it an epitaph worthy of himself: U I 
 could drink a great deal of wine, and bore it 
 well." The Roman Emperor Vitellius, on the 
 approach of death, drank himself drunk. So 
 men have died like brutes. Nameless men in 
 every generation go down to their graves with- 
 out apparent trepidation. Atheists have plead- 
 ed for a life of infamy, and a death that asks 
 no question. De St. Evremond, who made 
 the pursuit of pleasure his chief study for fifty 
 years, was asked in the dying-hour if he would 
 " have a priest to reconcile him with " — " I 
 lost my stomach, I'd fain be reconciled with it," 
 was his quick answer. So hardened rogues jest 
 under the gallows. Let it not be supposed, 
 however, that indifference or jocularity in the 
 presence of death is a sign that one's spirit- 
 ual state is what it should be. It is, on the 
 other hand, a mere proof of God's permission 
 that the moral stupor of life should be unshocked 
 by death. Those who reject God to-day may 
 not care any thing more for Him when they 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 75 
 
 come to die. It is not uncommon to meet those 
 who are physically insensible to danger. Their 
 animal constitutions are so vigorous that their 
 nerves never fail. They will stand on the deck 
 when the ship is about to go down, with as little 
 mental emotion as they would experience in 
 taking a salt water bath on a beach. I have 
 known such men. It is not so much courage as 
 stupidity. They are more calm than bullocks 
 would be under the circumstances, because they 
 have been trained to more self-control. And we 
 may not be surprised when they die, as they have 
 lived, without a sense of sin. Perhaps their 
 consciousness of guilt was quenched years be- 
 fore ; and they are calm now, in dying, because 
 they have been already so long unanimated by 
 spiritual life. It is the quiet of a diseased body 
 just about to slough itself off from the^ dead 
 soul. " With this penalty is a sinner punished," 
 says Augustine, " that, when he dieth he forget- 
 eth himself, who, in his lifetime, thought not 
 upon God." This accounts for the fact which 
 we often find in our common life, where impeni- 
 tent men die so contentedly, that it is asked, 
 
76 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 " Was not this\ Christian's death ? " Domestic 
 friends are comforted by it ; and unbelief takes 
 new courage. 
 
 But we have abundant evidence that this is, 
 not unfrequently, far otherwise. Whenever 
 the stupor induced by disease allows one to 
 realize that it is the death-bed to which he has 
 come at last, it is not very uncommon to find 
 men alarmed. Sometimes, long before the hour 
 comes, a man starts with a sudden vision of 
 his old sins, and for a little while has sober 
 thoughts, as if fearing to fall at once into the 
 hands of Infinite Holiness and Justice Im- 
 mutable. "When one supposes himself,'' says 
 Plato, " near the point of death, there enter into 
 his soul fear and anxieties respecting things 
 before unheeded; for then the old traditions 
 concerning Hades — how those who in this life 
 have been guilty of wrong must there suffer 
 the penalty of their crimes — torment his soul. 
 He looks back upon his past life, and if he 
 finds in the record many sins, like one start- 
 ing from a frightful dream, he is terrified, and 
 filled with foreboding fears." That was the 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 77 
 
 way wicked Greeks felt in view of death, 
 twenty-three hundred years ago. We have, 
 besides this ancient witness, the words of a 
 pastor in France, a few generations since, whose 
 observation of the manner in which his gay 
 countrymen died led him to say, " The moment 
 of death is a fatal period, in which are united 
 the excesses of our youth, the distractions of 
 our manhood, the avarice of our old age. Our 
 pride, our ambition, our impurity, our covetous- 
 ness, our treacheries, our perjuries, our calum- 
 nies, our blasphemies, our lukewarmness, our 
 profanations, all these crimes will" [over our 
 death-beds] " form one black cloud, heavy, and 
 hanging ready to burst on our heads." A pas- 
 tor in Old England, in the time of Cromwell, 
 has also told us how the people of his pastor- 
 ate were affected by their coming to the verge 
 of life. M There are," he says, " few of the 
 stoutest hearts but will hear us on their death- 
 beds, though they scorned us before. They 
 will then be tame as lambs, who were before as 
 untractable as madmen. I find not one in ten 
 of the most obstinate, scornful wretches in the 
 
78 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 parish, but, when they come to die, will humble 
 themselves, confess their faults, seem penitent, 
 and promise, if they should recover, to reform 
 their lives. With what resolution will the 
 worst of them seem to cast away their sins, 
 exclaim against their follies and the vanities of 
 the world when they see that death is in earnest 
 with them ! " Whenever or wherever we open 
 the pages of history, we find the same story. 
 Perhaps our attention is called by some one to 
 " Nero, crying or creeping timorously to his 
 death; " or, again, one points us to " Judas pale 
 and trembling, full of anguish, sorrow, and 
 despair ; " or we are told to listen to " the 
 groanings and intolerable agonies of Herod." 
 William the Conqueror had no courage when 
 he came upon his dying-bed. " Laden with 
 many and grievous sins," he exclaimed, " I 
 tremble ; and, being ready to be taken soon into 
 the terrible examination of God, I am ignorant 
 what I should do. I have been brought up in 
 feats of arms from my childhood ; I am greatly 
 polluted with effusion of much blood ; I can 
 by no means number the evils I have done these 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 79 
 
 sixty-four years, for which I am now constrained, 
 without stay, to render an account to the Just 
 Judge." 
 
 In this hand-to-hand struggle with death, the 
 stoutest unbelievers have often given way, and 
 have made some outcry like that of the dying 
 apostate Julian, " O Galilean ! thou hast con- 
 quered." Voltaire was shaken in his unbelief; 
 and Paine died in mental terror. " If there is 
 a God," said an English atheist in dying, — "if 
 there is a God, I desire that He may have mercy 
 on me." " These great realities," wrote a 
 young nobleman, 'falling by the hand of dis- 
 ease, " which, in the hours of mirth and vanity, 
 I have treated as phantoms, as the idle dreams 
 of superstitious beings, — these start forth, and 
 dare me now in their most terrible demonstra- 
 tion. My awakened conscience feels something 
 of that eternal vengeance I have often defied." 
 " That there is a God, I know," said the dying 
 unbeliever, "because I continually feel the 
 effects of His wrath ; that there is a hell, I am 
 equally certain, having received an earnest of 
 my inheritance there already in my heart ; that 
 
80 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 there is a natural conscience, I now feel with 
 horror and amazement, being continually up- 
 braided by it with my impieties, and all my 
 sins are brought to my remembrance." 
 
 It is not unlikely, therefore, that when we 
 ourselves approach the grave, — if we are con- 
 scious that all earthly things are fading from 
 sight, — the sense of sin may become more and 
 more vivid, and more and more terrible to 
 bear, unless we have found faith in Christ as 
 our personal Redeemer. The experience of 
 all the ages shows, that, according to the 
 death-bed test, the only thing worth living for 
 is to be a Christian. In hours of health, we 
 know this to be true ; and it will be indorsed 
 and made emphatic in our last moments, 
 though it be then too late for normal and 
 healthful spiritual action. 
 
 It is time, however, to turn to another point. 
 There is often, in the dying-hour, a free con- 
 fession of the vanity of merely earthly pursuits 
 and pleasures. 
 
 Men live merrily in full sight of others dying 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 81 
 
 around them ; and they can hardly pause for 
 the funeral. Though the earth be dark with 
 the gloomy reign of death, men kindle festive 
 lights, and crowd around them, till their own 
 turn comes to be snatched away. As, in the 
 fifteenth century, it grew to be a custom among 
 certain people in England and France to enter 
 the catacombs, or to go elsewhere among the 
 tombs, and hang up a skeleton for a banner, 
 and dance under it, naming their grim amuse- 
 ment " The Dance of Death : " so there are 
 to-day, among us, myriads whose merriment 
 in a dying world seems as unsuitable as that 
 of the half-savage rioters of Gaul or Britain 
 four hundred years ago. 
 
 " The noisy world in masquerade 
 Forgets the grave, the worm, the shade." 
 
 The sight of the cemetery, or the passing 
 funeral-train, commonly calls forth no thought 
 of our own mortality, unless some acquaintance 
 or friend is buried, and not always then. 
 
 But when careless men of business, and of 
 high ambitions and eager pleasures, come to 
 
 G 
 
82 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 take their own turn at dying, they are some- 
 times arrant cowards as any. Have you not 
 seen men throwing up their treasures, their 
 power, their pleasures, calling them all mere 
 " vanity," when they stand upon the edge of 
 the grave ? 
 
 Riches are a vain thing for safety when the 
 attack of the Pale Horse is imminent. Wealth 
 cannot resist the hand of disease. The gilded 
 vehicle will stop at the grave. The first use 
 of money which was ever entered upon earthly 
 records was the purchase of a burial-place. 
 " The rich," says Augustine, " are like beasts 
 of burden, carrying treasure all day, and at 
 the night of death unladen: they carry to 
 their graves only the bruises and marks of 
 their toil." Thomas Boston writes, " This 
 world is a great inn on the road to eternity, 
 to which thou art travelling. Thou art at- 
 tended by these things, as servants belonging 
 to the inn where thou lodgest : they wait upon 
 thee while thou art there; and, when thou 
 goest away, they will convoy thee to the door. 
 But they are not thine : they will not go away 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 83 
 
 with thee, but return to wait on other stran- 
 gers, as they did on thee." Cortes, having 
 ravaged Mexico, on fleeing the city had to 
 leave vast treasure on the floor of his late 
 lodging-place : so the man of wealth, called 
 into eternity, suddenly quits his grasp, drops 
 his sovereigns and crowns, and is off in haste. 
 When the sweat-drops of the last agony fall 
 on the coin, the shining turns to rust, the 
 heaps look small. The greatness of dust piled 
 up in the coffer looks mean when its owner's 
 dust is about to be piled up in the coffin. 
 M How much did he leave ? " asked my neigh- 
 bor concerning a man just dead, who had been 
 taxed for six hundred thousand dollars. " He 
 left every dollar," was the answer. " Two 
 hundred thousand pounds," said Erskine, — " a 
 pretty sum to begin the next world with ! " 
 So feels the victim with no further use for 
 earthly currency. " Why," said the dying 
 Rachel, as she gazed on the gifts of many 
 princes, — " why have I to part with all 
 these so soon ? " Think not, my friends, to 
 take comfort in wearing pearls to the edge 
 
84 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 of the grave, since the tears of penitence are 
 more precious than pearls in that hour. The 
 Cardinal Mazarin, having two months to live, 
 was found, with night-cap and dressing-gown, 
 tottering through his gallery, pointing to his 
 pictures, and crying, " Must I quit all these ? " 
 And he asked, " Oh, my poor soul ! what will 
 become of thee ? Whither wilt thou go ? " 
 But, when the last hour came, he was dressed 
 and painted, and had courtiers pass before 
 him ; and he died with that kind of cards in 
 his hands which seems most fit if one thinks 
 of visiting at Satan's gate. How vain is the 
 possession of all earthly treasure when the 
 hour of parting comes ! 
 
 " Why dost thou heap up wealth which thou must quit, 
 Or, what is worse, be left by it? 
 Why dost thou load thyself when thou'rt to fly, 
 O man ! ordained to die ? 
 
 Why dost thou build up stately rooms on high, — 
 Thou who art under ground to lie? 
 Thou sowest and plantest, but no fruit must see ; 
 For Death, alas ! is reaping thee." 
 
 And how vain a thing is the possession of all 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 85 
 
 earthly power, when one is about to come under 
 the reign of the powers of the world to come. 
 The dying Niel grasped the badge of the 
 Marshal of France, and said, " Alas ! this is a 
 mighty fine thing in this country; but I am 
 going to a country where it will be of no use to 
 me." These are the words of Warwick the 
 king-maker : — 
 
 " Lo! now, my glory smeared in dust and blood! 
 My parks, my walks, my manors that I had, 
 Even now forsake me ; and of all my lands 
 Is nothing left me but my body's length. 
 Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? 
 And, live we how we can, yet die we must." 
 
 It is a Spanish king dying, who says, " What 
 doth all my glory profit, but that I have so 
 much the more torment in my death ? " "I am 
 already nothing," said Charles the Second of 
 Spain, bursting into tears as he lay upon his 
 dying-bed, tormented by the politicians who 
 were henceforth to handle the kingdom. How 
 soon is the man, whose word is every thing, 
 made nothing by entering the tomb. Wolsey, 
 for several years before he died, had been pre- 
 
86 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 paring a magnificent monument of brass for 
 himself by an Italian artist : but lie died dis- 
 honored ; and his grave is now unknown. The 
 king took the fittest part of the monument, and 
 called it his own. After many years had passed, 
 one man rose in England, who sought to honor 
 the memory of Wolsey by furnishing tools and 
 men to hunt for his remains; but, when he 
 asked that others would contribute to bear part 
 of the expense, only one person could be found 
 in all the kingdom, and he was willing to give 
 twelvepence to the project. Vanity of vani- 
 ties! So true are the words of the Hebrew 
 song : " Like sheep they are laid in the grave ; 
 death shall feed on them." It was a Roman 
 emperor who said, " I have been all ; and all is 
 nothing." On the morning before Prince Tal- 
 leyrand died, there was found upon his table, 
 near the bedside, a paper with these words: 
 " The whole eighty-three years passed away, 
 what cares ! what agitation ! what anxieties ! 
 what sad complication ! And all without other 
 result except great fatigue of body and mind, 
 and disgust with regard to the past, and a pro- 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 
 
 found sentiment of discouragement and despair 
 with regard to the future." 
 
 " Know," says the Koran, " that this present 
 life is only a toy and a vain amusement." The 
 heart is vacant when it has the whole world in 
 it. Men of wealth and power, and men of 
 pleasure, rarely speak well of this world when 
 they leave it. One whom men called great, 
 when he had lost the power of speech, upon his 
 death-bed drew upon a sheet of paper two large 
 ciphers to indicate that all of earth was merely 
 — nothing, nothing. In such days of grief, we 
 appreciate the old poet, who summed up the 
 exceeding glory of this world as a " nothing be- 
 tween two dishes ; " and we shame ourselves for 
 having tried so long to get the cover off. Then 
 it is that we compare pottage and the birth- 
 right, the plumes of earth and the wings of 
 angels. Oh, my friends, will you not abandon 
 the world before the world abandons you ? 
 
 I wish it were possible, in some way, for us 
 to know how lonely will be the passage of the 
 human so id from its earthly abode. It is this 
 
88 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 sense of loneliness which makes it easy for one 
 to cry out, confessing his sins, as if he were 
 already before God, and to stand appalled in 
 that presence which removes him from all he 
 has clung to — every prop giving way in that 
 hour. In this life, we are so crowded with 
 company, and we are so engrossed with the 
 mad strife for riches and power and pleas- 
 ure, that we think little about the solitary 
 journey each one of our souls is soon to make, 
 as we quit all the earthly and move forward 
 into the untried regions of eternity. In the 
 very midst of all our schemes, we must soon 
 stop to lie down and die ; and, when we do stop, 
 we shall be left out of the great company with 
 whom we are moving on the track of traffic. 
 So I have read 1 that the Muslims, when they 
 travel in the desert, always carry with them 
 their grave-linen ; and it is often needed. For 
 they sink suddenly under deadly disease, or 
 they are overcome by their privations; and, in 
 the dangerous journey, their companions cannot 
 wait for them to die or to recover. He, there- 
 
 1 Lane's Egypt. 
 
THE DARK DAYS. 89 
 
 fore, who falls out of the caravan by sickness, 
 is often left to die alone, and to bury himself. 
 He performs his ablutions with sand, and digs a 
 trench in the treacherous floor of the desert : 
 he covers himself all over, except his face, and 
 then he waits for death. But he is no more 
 lonely in the dying-hour than if he were to die 
 amid a crowd of mourning friends ; for with 
 each one, in dying, there comes the moment 
 when the last farewell is uttered. The lips are 
 pressed, and the hand is touched, for the last 
 time ; the departing spirit turns away from the 
 visions of this world, and the eye fastens on 
 the unseen ; and henceforth the dying man is 
 as lonely, so far as concerns earthly company, 
 as if he were lying alone on the great plains of 
 the distant West, or perishing amid the ice-floes 
 of the North, or dying on a white reef amid 
 the dashing surf of the South Sea, or going 
 down in a foundered boat alone in mid-ocean. 
 Whether one falls in the thick of fight, amid 
 the roar of the battle-field and the movement 
 of armies, or drops upon the crowded street, or 
 breathes his last in some unknown hovel, — he 
 
90 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 is alone when he dies. Do you never think to 
 commiserate the fate of the strangers who die, 
 almost every day, in our large cities? More 
 than three hundred unknown persons die in 
 New York every year. But these are no more 
 lonely in the last struggling, when Death gains 
 the mastery, than you and I shall be when we 
 turn our faces from this world to enter the 
 unseen. The loneliness of death to each one 
 who passes through it is calculated to awaken 
 thoughtfulness on the part of those who mer- 
 rily live in crowds. The sensibilities of the 
 most unheeding must be awakened by the near 
 contemplation of the solitude of the soul in the 
 hour of its last mortal agony. I would, there- 
 fore, that we "might keep this in mind; that we 
 may be able to say in that dread moment, " I 
 am not alone, because the Father is with me." 
 
 " Gay wanderer in a homeless world, 
 Poor pilgrim to a dusty bier, 
 On Time's great cycle darkly hurled 
 From year to year, 
 See in the sky these words unfurled : 
 * Thy home is here \>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<Mf 
 
 that the physical contortions which are thought 
 to be evidences of pain, and which sometimes 
 so distress those who linger in the room, are 
 most usually passed through in a state of 
 unconsciousness. In the last hours, the dying 
 are most frequently in a state of stupor, which 
 bears with it a sense of repose. This numbness 
 preceding death alleviates physical pain, even 
 when it is so slight as to allow the dying some 
 use of the mind in conversing with friends up 
 to the very moment of departure. The pains 
 before dying are incident to the disease ; the 
 patient might suffer the same, if he were to 
 recover : these pains are no part of dying. As 
 death approaches, the patient becomes less con- 
 scious of suffering. Death is the cessation of 
 sensibility ; so that there can be no suffering at 
 the very close, when sensibility becomes extinct. 
 One passes from life to death almost insensibly, 
 so far as concerns physical pain. The crisis 
 comes and goes in merely closing the eyes to 
 'the earthly, and opening them upon the eternal 
 scenes ; the mind conscious all the time, but, 
 like a traveller, one moment gazing on familiar 
 
116 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 faces, and the next moment seeing beyond the 
 ken of earthly sight. 1 
 
 Then it is that there often comes about that 
 mysterious change which restores the face to 
 the look it had in health. The body calms 
 itself after the soul has left it. Before death, 
 there may be an expression of care and weak- 
 ness and suffering ; but, as soon as the vital 
 functions cease, the body, as if by instinct, 
 composes itself for a quiet and natural sleep, 
 the face not uncommonly putting on that 
 beauty of character which was worn in days 
 of health. We behold then that which is far 
 more lovely than any flowers that adorn the 
 casket, a beauty which no sculptor can equal, — 
 the cold chiselled features of the marble dead. 
 Poets and men of letters have commemorated 
 this change in the body, when passion is stilled, 
 and the face is glorified. And we who walk in 
 humbler ranks have noticed in our own hours of 
 sorrow that the young appear more mature, and 
 the aged brow smoother, after Death has placed- 
 
 i Vide Papillon, Nature and Life, p. 309, American edition ; 
 and, more fully, Philip, Nature of Sleep and Death, pp. 197, 
 219, 228, &c. : London, 1834. 
 
THE LIGHT. 117 
 
 his seal upon the clay ; and we have seen that 
 faces which have been pinched and sharpened 
 by poverty sometimes come to wear the peace 
 of God, as though the radiance of heaven shone 
 upon them ; and we are conseious of having 
 less fear of death after gazing upon these 
 changes wrought by the last sleep. 
 
 Probably it is the constitutional fear of death 
 which leads so many minds to look toward the 
 dwelling-place of the dead with feelings of 
 gloom. When men are downcast through the 
 final failure of their grandest ambitions, they 
 naturally fall into a churchyard style of talk, 
 like the despairing king in the old tragedy : — 
 
 " Of comfort no man speak; 
 Let's talk of graves and worms and epitaphs ; 
 Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes 
 Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth." 
 
 It is the thought which every man has of his 
 own destiny, — to lie down, some day, in God's 
 acre, — that casts a shadow upon the burial- 
 ground. Men think of 
 
 " The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, 
 The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm." 
 
118 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate the influence of 
 our Christian faith in giving more cheerful 
 views of the act of dying and of the last 
 resting-place. Anticipations of future good 
 unconsciously lighten the weighty fears which 
 attach to the death-bed, and make the grave a 
 place of repose. These ideas have exerted 
 their power during many centuries. The old 
 Hebrews wrote that the dead slept with their 
 fathers : " He giveth his beloved sleep." Of 
 those to whom Christ appeared, it is written 
 that " some are fallen asleep." " Lazarus 
 sleepeth." " Stephen fell asleep." At the 
 death of Christ, the saints which " slept " arose. 
 The early Christians chose to use the word 
 " cemetery," which means sleeping-place. At 
 the first they wrote over all Christian graves, 
 " He rests in peace." When unbelief came in, 
 it was written, " May he rest in peace ! " If we 
 look upon death as a sleep, there is something 
 very attractive in those parcels of ground 
 which are set apart for " the noiseless kingdom 
 of the dead." The Egyptian custom of adorn- 
 ing the burial-place, and bestowing less care 
 
THE LIGHT. 119 
 
 upon the homes of the living, made the tombs 
 of the rich far less repulsive than the hovels 
 of the poor. 1 The beauty of many modern 
 cemeteries accords with our highest Christian 
 sentiments, and with the most cheering customs 
 of antiquity, in making the resting-places of 
 the dead as home-like as possible. 
 
 Some, indeed, have looked upon the last 
 sleep with such singular favor as to anticipate 
 it in an eccentric manner. Our New England 
 lord, Lord Timothy Dexter, was not more wild 
 than the kings of the Old World. Did not 
 the royal father of Philip the II. place him- 
 self in shroud and coffin, and hear his own 
 dirge, and lie quietly for a time in his own 
 tomb ? Philip the IV. used sometimes to 
 repose in the niche he had selected for himself 
 in the royal burial-place, and there meditate 
 
 1 "The Egyptians call the houses of the living inns, 
 because they remain there hut a little while. The sepul- 
 chres of the dead they call everlasting habitations, because 
 they abide in the grave to infinite generations. Therefore 
 they are not very curious in the building of their houses ; 
 but, in beautifying their sepulchres, they leave nothing 
 undone that can be thought of." — Diodorus Siculus. 
 
120 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 on death. Mr. Jacox, 1 in his diligent compila- 
 tion, also instances the case of the Spanish 
 painter, Louis de Vargas, " who used to lie in 
 a coffin some hours daily, meditating upon 
 death." The historians, however, do not relate 
 that these men lived better lives for their day- 
 dreams concerning the last sleep. 
 
 An old-time friend of mine, — whose general 
 course of life was wholesome, but who had a 
 most singular taste for visiting every cemetery 
 within the circuit of her travels, and who 
 made an old hearse her favorite seat when she 
 lived in the house of an undertaker, — visited 
 one of our great cities of the dead. And I 
 have certain memoranda she made upon her 
 visit, which are the more noteworthy as being, 
 with a single exception, 2 the last literary work 
 she undertook; and this writing itself was 
 never finished. It was one bright May morning 
 that she entered this home of the dead; and 
 her own body was soon laid to rest with the 
 other sleepers '. She began by setting forth 
 rhymes. 
 
 1 At Nightfall and Midnight, pp. 396, 397. 2 Vide, p. 12. 
 
THE LIGHT. 121 
 
 " In a city of marble palaces 
 I walked at the break of day, 
 
 When the gushing notes from the song-birds' throats, 
 Echoed on every spray. 
 No casement was opened to greet the morn, 
 No children ran forth in glee." 
 
 But the rhymes and the measure did not 
 quite suit ; and they were left forever. I have 
 taken in hand the rough notes, in pencilled 
 prose, which indicate the line of thought she 
 might have followed, if death had not inter- 
 fered. Her imagination went back to remote 
 antiquity, when, in geologic ages, this place was 
 set apart and prepared for its present use. After 
 this, it was, for many centuries, the home of the 
 Indian. » Even then, ancient trees were standing 
 as hoary sentries upon these sweet hills ; and, 
 when a great city grew up near by, this forest- 
 clad mount and these quiet' glens were famous 
 for beauty. The living loved to walk here, and 
 to dream of repose under the venerable shade. 
 To-day this spot is densely peopled by a most 
 varied population. " The old and the young, 
 the rich and the poor, orators, singers, poets, 
 
122 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 scholars, — all are here. But the poet has left 
 his pen ; and the voice of song and of eloquent 
 speech is silent. All children have left their 
 play ; and their fathers and mothers have laid 
 aside all busy cares. Here they sleep. Their 
 chapel bell does not call them to prayer. There 
 is no sound of strife or toil, nor any alarm of 
 war. No thrill of earthly joy, or quivering of 
 human sorrow, disturbs the sleepers. -Winter 
 and summer are alike to them. Neither sun- 
 shine nor storm can penetrate the walls of their 
 houses. Poverty and riches are not heeded ; 
 and all the great social differences are made 
 equal. Here is the dust of one who was long 
 a servant in this house of death, a workman, 
 who graded these walks, and trimmed those bor- 
 ders; and near at hand is the monument of 
 one whom the world honored as an illustrious 
 statesman. Not far off is the grave of a soldier 
 who survived many fierce battles ; and here is 
 the unhewn monument which marks the rest- 
 ing-place of a beloved teacher whose words 
 have gone throughout the world. Here they 
 will sleep till the morning of the resurrection. 
 
THE LIGHT. 123 
 
 These grassy nooks will all be occupied, and 
 these bounds enlarged ; yet all will be filled, 
 and some day this will be a sealed cemetery. 
 Age after age a deeper solemnity will rest upon 
 it. These oaks and pines will thrive, become 
 venerable, and perish ; and other generations of 
 trees will take their place. Distant shores may 
 attract the tide of civilization ; and men may 
 visit this spot, as now they go to Thebes and 
 Arabia Petreea. 
 
 " Whether we suffer our thoughts to wander 
 in the mighty past, or reach out into the distant 
 future, we are impressed with the brevity of 
 this present life : it is a mere plank, to which 
 we cling for an hour; and all around us are 
 illimitable waters, whose shores there are none. 
 I ask, \ What, then, am I ? ' and I hear a voice 
 from heaven declaring that my soul is more en- 
 during than the material creation. This will be 
 proved in the hour of the resurrection. These 
 monuments of stone will endure till the names 
 upon them become illegible, till granite and 
 marble crumble under the action of frost and 
 rain, the sunshine and the lichen; but there 
 
124 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 will come a morning when these silent sleepers 
 will start at the sound of the trumpet, and go 
 forth to stand upon the right, or upon the left, 
 of their final Judge." 
 
 These notes were never touched again. The 
 Death Angel came in, and called away the poet ; 
 and her body is now resting by the side of her 
 childhood companion. Neither was this child 
 friend afraid to go to her rest ; for, after she had 
 passed away, I found a little slip of paper in her 
 Bible, with these words upon it : u Let us lie 
 down in peace, and take our rest : it will not be 
 an everlasting night, nor endless sleep." 
 
 Caryl the commentator has said, that " sleep 
 is a short death ; and death is but a long sleep." 
 " I close mine eyes in security," are the words 
 of Sir Thomas Browne, "content to take my 
 leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrec- 
 tion." This feeling of restfulness on the part 
 of those who are about to die is in strong con- 
 trast with the apprehensions entertained -by 
 many who keep much company with the guilty 
 and unforgiven. It is common to meet those 
 who have for years entertained gloomy views of 
 
THE LIGHT. 125 
 
 death, as if there were no hope ; blighting fears 
 cursing the heart of childhood, vexing middle 
 life, and terrifying old age. Disguise it as w£ 
 may, it is certain that many in our Christian 
 communities have so great a dread of death, 
 that they are ready to adopt the choice of 
 Achilles, when he declared to the wisest of the 
 Greeks that he would rather be a swineherd in 
 this world than to walk the Elysian Fields ; or, 
 to make the words of Euripides their own, 
 " It is better to live ill than to die well." But 
 those who persist in such pagan fears ought, at 
 the least, to be cheered by even such poor hopes 
 as some pagans have had. Was it not said, of 
 old time, that one who was beloved of the gods 
 asked Apollo for the best gift ? " At the end 
 of seven days," was the answer, "it shall be 
 granted." When the hour came, he closed his 
 eyes in sweet sleep, and saw the earth no more 
 forever. So great is the boon of immortality, 
 that Plotinus thanked God that his soul was 
 not tied to an undying body. Are there no 
 evils in this life, that we should so cling to it ? 
 Are there no hopes in the future ? There is, 
 
126 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 according to Mr. Lecky, an old Irish legend 
 concerning two islands in a certain lake in 
 Minister. " Into the first, death could never 
 enter ; but age, and the paroxysms of fearful 
 suffering, were all known there ; and they did 
 their work, till the inhabitants, tired of their 
 immortality, learned to look upon the opposite 
 island as upon a haven of repose. They 
 launched their barks upon its gloomy waters ; 
 they touched its shore, and they were at rest." 
 Richter says, that he once saw in his dreams 
 an old man who was never to die, and that 
 his life was full of sorrow. Having heavenly 
 aspirations, he was chained to this globe. In 
 the springtime he was miserable ; for the days 
 of hope, prophesying of a better future, gave 
 no hope to him. And if he heard the sound 
 of music, which arouses all one's capacity for 
 the infinite, he was unspeakably sad. When 
 lie thought on God and truth and virtue, he 
 grieved, knowing how little a child of eartli 
 would ever know of that which alone makes 
 life a joy to the good man. And, when he 
 looked toward the stars, he said, " So, then, I 
 
THE LIGHT. 127 
 
 am parted from you to all eternity by an impas- 
 sible abyss. The great universe of suns is 
 above, below, and round about me ; but I am 
 chained to a little ball of dust and ashes." 
 
 We need not turn to the New Testament 
 story to discover one, who, amid pagan dark- 
 ness, sought the heavenly light, and made con- 
 stant preparation for the noble employments of 
 a future life, by sturdy attempts to live nobly 
 now. And to him death had no terror. " It 
 would be ridiculous," said Socrates, "for a 
 man, who, during his life, has habituated 
 himself to live like one who was very near 
 to death, to be afterwards distressed when this 
 event actually overtook him. Shall one who 
 verily loves wisdom, and entertains the strong 
 hope that he shall find that which deserves 
 this name nowhere except in the other world, 
 instead of rejoicing to depart, be afflicted at 
 dying? Does not the spul thus conditioned 
 depart to that which is congenial to its nature, 
 — to the unseen, the divine, the undying, the 
 wise ? Arriving there, its lot is to be blessed, 
 to be emancipated from error and ignorance, 
 
128 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 fears, wild appetites, and all other earthly 
 
 evils." 
 
 We must, however, turn to the New Testa- 
 ment story to find the fullest record of those 
 principles which lead men to triumph over 
 death, and find in the Christian Church the 
 lives of those who have not only had no fear in 
 the hour of departure, but have looked forward 
 with intelligent joy, anticipating future blessed- 
 ness. 
 
 The great ground of fear in meeting Death is 
 not so much the contest with him as that 
 which lies beyond. " Death being a fact," said 
 a wise man of the East, " I have no fear of it. 
 That which I alone fear is not having lived 
 well enough." Right living, and the immortal 
 hope which comes with it, is best secured 
 through our Christian faith. It is not only 
 true that Christianity^ has introduced into the 
 world at large more cheerful views of death, 
 but it has enabled multitudes of individual 
 souls to approach the end of life in triumph. 
 The Son of man was revealed "that through 
 
THE LIGHT. 129 
 
 death lie might destroy him that had the power 
 of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them 
 who, through fear of death, were all their life- 
 time subject to bondage." 
 
 Our dread of dying is in part removed by 
 the thought that Christ has honored the article 
 of death by passing through it. We can 
 certainly follow in the steps of the Master, 
 although the foot thereby fall into the grave. 
 Two men have gone to heaven without dying ; 
 but God's Son chose the common lot, that we 
 ourselves might pluck flowers from the garden 
 of his burial, and adorn the mounds so dear to 
 us. Death is only a change in the mode of 
 existence. The Incarnate Word could pass 
 through what we call death, and merely drop 
 off the flesh ; the spiritual life remaining 
 untouched. 
 
 We are further taught in the New Testament, 
 that the followers of Christ die in answer to 
 the prayer of their Lord : " Father, I will that 
 they also whom thou hast given me be with me 
 where I am, that they may behold my glory." 
 Every day God answers this prayer of Jesus. 
 
130 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 " And, if I go and prepare a place for you," 
 said our Saviour, "I will come again, and 
 receive you unto myself, that where I am there 
 ye may be also." " Having prepared a home 
 for his children," adds the commentator, "he 
 does not leave them to find their way to it alone 
 and unguided ; but he comes back himself, and 
 takes them there." Christ reaches out after his 
 own, and comes eagerly to meet them, as he 
 said he would. And, when he comes, the 
 child of Christ does not fear : death is merely 
 the coming of God's Son. " Tell them," said a 
 South Hadley school-girl in dying, when she 
 learned that her parents could not reach her 
 before she saw the coming of the Son of man, 
 — " tell them that Jesus called me, and I could 
 not wait for them. ' For he that loveth father 
 or mother more than me is not worthy of me.' " 
 Death is thus changed from a curse to a 
 blessing. " What do you think of death ? " 
 asked one. "Why, when death com'es, I shall 
 smile upon him, if God smiles upon me." " My 
 brother," said a young man when he saw the 
 coming of the Saviour, " they call this the 
 
THE LIGHT. 131 
 
 River of Death. It is no such thing : it is 
 the River of Life." 
 
 " Is that a death-bed where the Christian lies? 
 Yes, but not his: 'tis death itself there dies." 
 
 Wherever the Angel of Death sees the mark 
 of atoning blood sprinkled, he passes by. 
 
 " Out of the shadow into the sun," 
 
 is the fit epitaph for one who looks upon death 
 as the day-dawn. The gloomy gates of death 
 are illuminated by rays of celestial light. 
 Death is a door, ushering from life to life. 
 Chambers of painful disease are thus trans- 
 formed into the ante-chambers of heaven : the 
 door may suddenly open, leading one from earth 
 to heaven in a moment. Death is the servant 
 of God, leading us forward to undying life. 
 " Death," says Dr. Sears, 1 " is a stage in human 
 progress, to be passed as we would pass from 
 childhood to youth, or from youth to manhood, 
 and with the same consciousness of an ever- 
 unfolding nature." And, it is added, under 
 
 1 Foregleams of Immortality. 
 
132 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 healthful conditions, "immortality would not 
 come upon us by surprise, but as manhood 
 comes upon youth, as childhood comes upon 
 infancy, or as day comes upon the darkness, 
 melting away the bars of night in soft surges of 
 golden fire." 
 
 It was written concerning the founder of 
 the church that " he sojourned in the land of 
 promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in 
 tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs 
 with him of the same promise ; for he looked 
 for a city which hath foundations, whose 
 builder and maker is God." The mediseval 
 men commonly talked of heaven as " our coun- 
 try," and this world as " the way," and all men 
 as " travellers." It was an ordinary mode of 
 speech : " We will do thus and so as long as we 
 are ' in the way.' " In accordance with this, we 
 find the words of a French preacher of the 
 seventeenth century : "He that travels in a 
 strange country may gather some flowers in his 
 passage, or take with him a few ears of corn ; 
 but, if he be wise, he will never tarry to build 
 him a palace." Life is a pilgrimage ; but our 
 
THE LIGHT. 133 
 
 palmer's weeds will not be worn forever. And 
 we ought to look on this world merely as on 
 a field, — a field of labor, in which, indeed, we 
 have a place to lodge, sometimes in one part of 
 the field, sometimes in another ; but our home 
 is in our Father's house ; and the call of Death 
 sounds in our ears " like a friend's voice from 
 a distant field, approaching through the dark- 
 ness," asking us to go home. James Martineau 
 has written, that " Death, under the Christian 
 aspect, is but God's method of colonization, 
 the transition from this mother-country of our 
 race to the fairer and newer world of our 
 emigration." The most eloquent among the 
 Romans expressed himself in like manner : "I 
 consider this world as a place which Nature 
 never intended for my permanent abode ; and I 
 look on my departure from it, not as being 
 driven from my habitation, but simply as leav- 
 ing an inn." This world does not offer a true 
 home. It was a wise answer which Richard 
 Baxter made upon his dying-bed to one who 
 asked how he was, " Almost well, and nearly at 
 home." " I am going home as fast as I can," 
 
134 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 said another believer ; " and I bless God that I 
 have a good home to go to." An eminent 
 preacher represents the dying Christian as re- 
 joicing in his nearness to the everlasting home : 
 " Here, in this chamber, on this bed, my exile 
 and my wanderings cease." So. confident did a 
 quaint German divine in the time of Luther 
 feel concerning this home, that, when he was 
 told his son could not reach his death-bed, he 
 sent word to him that he need not hurry, for 
 they should see one another in the eternal life. .« 
 It is this home-like feeling concerning the 
 future state which leads many to desire to de- 
 part, waiting day by day for Christ's coming, 
 hearkening for his steps. " You have every 
 thing to live for," it was said to one dying 
 woman. But she answered, " I have every 
 thing to die for." " Look up, and lift up your 
 heads ; for your redemption draweth nigh." 
 "What a superlatively grand and consoling 
 idea is that of death ! " says John Foster. 
 " Without this radiant idea, this delightful 
 morning star, indicating that the luminary of 
 eternity is about to rise, life would, to my view, 
 
THE LIGHT. 135 
 
 darken into midnight melancholy." Sailing on 
 life's bitter sea, we rejoice with joy unspeaka- 
 ble when we approach the land, and the high 
 headlands of heaven heave in sight : in a day 
 or two we shall touch the shore, and walk the 
 streets of the better country. It will be a 
 happy day, in which we are released from the 
 earth, and bidden to ascend the skies. 
 
 Is it not a day for song and flowers, when 
 the dead are laid away in honor ? Is it not an 
 hour for congratulation, when the children of 
 mortality enter into the life everlasting ? Did 
 not a pagan sage speak of the dying-day as 
 the birthday of eternity ? Christians in former 
 ages called death a new birth. 
 
 ii Mortals cried, — A man is dead : 
 Angels sang, — A child is born. ' ' 
 
 Those whose names are inscribed in the book 
 of life are not to be counted with the dead. 
 "Soon you will be numbered no more in the 
 land of the living," said one very cautiously 
 to a beloved friend. But she made answer, 
 " Soon. I shall be in the land of the Kving : 
 now I am in the land of the dying." 
 
136 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 It is the prospect of entering at once into 
 the presence of the Bridegroom of the soul, 
 which satisfies the longing of those who are 
 about to die. " The nearer I come to death, 
 somehow Jesus and I get nearer together," 
 said an aged slave. Governor Dunlap of 
 Maine weighed the words, as, slowly, with 
 failing breath, he declared, "If I know any 
 thing, I know that I love Christ." The dying 
 Melancthon rejoiced that he should soon find 
 out the harmony of the two natures of the 
 man Christ Jesus. " Thou canst not see my 
 face, and live," answered God to Moses ; and 
 St. Austin replies, " Then, Lord, let me die, 
 that I may see thy face." 
 
 This nearness to Christ in the hour of dying 
 has led some persons to feel impatient with 
 the despondency of those around them, who 
 appear to look toward heaven as a wild coast, 
 upon which it is unfortunate for one to be 
 cast. When a friend asked Payson whether 
 he felt " reconciled " to die, he answers, " That 
 word is too cold. I rejoice ; I triumph ; I seem 
 to be swimming in a river of pleasure. . . . 
 
THE LIGHT. 137 
 
 The celestial city is now full in my view. . . . 
 Nothing separates me from it but the river of 
 death ; and that appears an insignificant rill, 
 that may be crossed by a single step, whenever 
 God shall give permission." I confess that 
 I do not understand the use of this word 
 " reconciled," when applied to a Christian's 
 willingness to die. Do we ask a weary wan- 
 derer, if he is merely " reconciled " to go to 
 the heavenly home ? Is the sick man merely 
 "reconciled" to get well? Is the hungry man 
 " reconciled " to enter on eternal feastings ? 
 Is the thirsty man "reconciled" to taste at 
 last the fount of God? Said an old martyr 
 going to be burned, " Only two stiles more to 
 get over, and I am at my Father's house." 
 The Christian in conversion submits himself 
 to God for all eternity ; and mere physical 
 death, the entering into everlasting rest, is 
 nothing concerning which we should quarrel 
 with God, and talk about-being "reconciled." 
 Let us, then, lie down quietly, not unwilling 
 to go to our rest. We spend the day for God, 
 and are glad when night comes. 
 
138 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 Through our Christian faith the timid are 
 made bold ; and the humble in the earth 
 triumph when they lie down to die. "Me 
 certain Jesus Christ no forget poor Indian," 
 said a red-man a hundred years ago. " Me 
 never forget him one day. Me hope see him 
 and pale missionary 'fore morning. Me no 
 fear. Inside eyes all open like Lake Sa-hillan." 
 Then he closed his bodily eyes, praying that 
 Christ would make him white as snow, and 
 beautiful as the rainbow. An aged woman 
 of my acquaintance died a little while ago ; and 
 she lifted up her hands, exclaiming, " They are 
 coming ; they are coming I Oh, how blissful is 
 dying!" What wonder that John Wesley's 
 mother in dying, said, " Children, when I am 
 dead, sing a song of praise to God " ! Labor 
 gives place to repose ; grief gives place to joy; 
 gloom gives place to glory ; sing, then, a song 
 of praise to God. Among our own homes we 
 have seen the triumphs of faith ; one and 
 another and another calmly facing death, and 
 with quietness or gladness entering into the 
 presence of the unseen Saviour. An aged 
 
THE LIGHT. 139 
 
 father goes eagerly to repose in Christ, or one 
 in the early bloom of manhood has faith with- 
 out fear. A sister or a mother, during many 
 months of wasting disease, has perfect rest, 
 welcoming death afar off. We hear a voice, 
 saying, " As soon as I close my eyes, I shall 
 see the Saviour ■ face to face ; and I long to 
 behold Him. ... I have had hold of the 
 Saviour's hand all winter ; and now I want 
 to see Him." 
 
 From all our homes the people of God are 
 gathering. " Heaven," says Robert Hall, " is 
 attracting to itself whatever is congenial to its 
 nature ; is enriching itself by the spoils of earth, 
 and collecting within its capacious bosom what- 
 ever is pure, permanent, and divine." And 
 Robertson has said, " Every day his servants 
 are dying modestly and peacefully ; not a word 
 of victory on their lips, but Christ's deep 
 triumph in their hearts; watching the slow 
 progress of their own decay, and yet so far 
 emancipated from personal anxiety, that they 
 are still able to think and to plan for others ; 
 not knowing that they are doing any great 
 
140 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 tiling. They die, and the world hears nothing 
 of them ; and yet theirs was the completest 
 victory. They came to the battlefield, — the 
 field to which they had been looking forward 
 all their lives ; and the enemy was not to be 
 found. There was no foe to fight with." We 
 ask, therefore, the triumphant question of Paul, 
 " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where 
 is thy victory ? " 
 
 Is it not written, that " the harvest takes 
 upon itself the color of the sun when it is ready 
 to bow before the sickle " ? So, in preparing 
 for heaven, the soul ripens for it ; and, already 
 upon the bed of dying, it is " beginning to wear 
 the golden coloring of the skies." The life- 
 work prepares for an abundant entrance into 
 the glory which is laid up for the Son of man 
 and his servants. " Father, I have glorified 
 thee on the earth : I have finished the work 
 which thou gavest me to do. . . And now come 
 I to thee." " The time of my departure is at 
 hand. I have fought a good fight; I have 
 finished my course; I have kept the faith: 
 henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of 
 
THE LIGHT. 141 
 
 righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
 Judge, shall give me at that day ; and not to 
 me only, but unto all them that love his appear- 
 ing." We can little wonder, then, at the defiant 
 words of the German reformer when he laughed 
 his enemies to scorn : " They threaten us with 
 death. If they were wise as they are unwise, 
 they would threaten us with life." And we 
 can but believe there are many quiet, unassum- 
 ing persons who are in heart ready to rejoice 
 in view of death, to take up triumphant words 
 like those of Hugh M'Krail, the young Scotch 
 Covenanter, who, in the close of his address 
 to the people when he was brought to martyr- 
 dom, hailed his future home : — " And now I 
 leave off to speak any more to creatures, and 
 turn my speech to thee, O Lord. And now 
 I begin my intercourse with God, which shall 
 never be broken off. Farewell, father and 
 mother, friends and relations; farewell, the 
 world and all delights; farewell, meat and 
 drink; farewell, sun, moon, and stars. Wel- 
 come, God and Father ; welcome, sweet Jesus, 
 the Mediator of the New Covenant ; welcome, 
 
142 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 blessed Spirit of grace, and God of all consola- 
 tion ; welcome, glory ; welcome, eternal life ; 
 welcome, death. O Lord, into thy hands t 
 commit my spirit ; for thou hast redeemed my 
 soul, Lord God of truth." 
 
 " The tongues of dying men 
 Enforce attention, like deep harmony." 
 
 We are accustomed, I think, to lay no small 
 stress . upon the last words of those whose 
 voices will be heard upon the earth no more 
 forever. Yet the Bible places no peculiar em- 
 phasis upon a triumphant death-bed, or the lack 
 of it. An unrighteous prophet desired to die 
 the death of the righteous ; but the ancient 
 record gives few particulars relating to such a 
 death. Indeed, the stoning of Stephen is 
 almost the only instance in which we are per- 
 mitted to be present to overhear the last words 
 of any Bible saint. This silence is remarkable, 
 else we are at fault in caring so much for the 
 " tongues of dying men." It was the life of 
 Paul, not his death, which was of value to the 
 
THE LIGHT. 143 
 
 world. The death-bed testimony impresses us 
 only as it is the outgrowth of a life. The life 
 is the test. Triumphant living is better than 
 triumphant dying. Those who have already 
 overcome sin and the fear of death count it no 
 great victory if they conquer death itself. 
 Those who have fought a good fight are ready 
 jo be offered. 
 
 To die is to be taken only as a part of the 
 straightforward work of life. It is a part of 
 our business to die. And what matters it ? 
 If we live, God dwells with us ; and, if we die, 
 We dwell with God. 1 We find upon a tomb in 
 Pompeii, cut in marble, a ship brought to an- 
 chor, and the seamen furling the sails : Death 
 brings the soul to harbor. " Heaven is as near 
 by sea as it is by land," said Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert, as he sat, book in hand, upon the deck 
 of his little craft, with mountain waves rising 
 around him; and, when the wild midnight came, 
 he took the watery way to heaven. " Heaven 
 heaves in sight," said another man of the sea. 
 
 1 These were, in substance, the words of a Scotch pastor 
 near the close of life. 
 
144 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 The next day he said, " I am almost in ; " and, 
 the next day, — "Let go the anchor." He 
 quietly sailed into heaven just as he had many 
 times into port. By compass, by common 
 sense, crowding on all sail ; by long tacks, com- 
 pelling even contrary winds to aid him ; by a 
 good fight with wind and wave, — he found a 
 quiet haven. " When Death calls the roll, be 
 always ready to answer, ' Here,' " was the old 
 trapper's motto in Cooper's story. When an 
 American general was told that he could live 
 only a few hours, he answered, " Let the drum 
 beat. . . . My knapsack is strung : I am ready 
 to go." The commentator Bengel was sturdily 
 opposed to all parade, — the making of a scene 
 in the dying-hour. He stood to the business 
 of correcting proof-sheets as usual the day 
 when Death called upon him. Shall we not do 
 well if we can die in the earnest work of the 
 daily life, like a man in battle, falling in hot 
 blood, and thinking nothing about the last 
 breath, or the posture of dying? In some 
 battle we shall perish, no matter when or 
 where. Our only care is to fight the good 
 fight. 
 
THE LIGHT. 145 
 
 " What boots it where the high reward is given, 
 Or whence the soul triumphant springs to heaven ? " 
 
 Upon removing the ashes of Vesuvius from a 
 buried city, there was found a Roman senti- 
 nel in armor, standing for eighteen hundred 
 years in the place where his captain had placed 
 him upon the fatal morning, — standing to his 
 charge amid the terror and ruin of the perish- 
 ing city. To do present duty, to die doing it, 
 is more important than to behold unutterable 
 glory in the dying moment. 
 
 The strength and ripeness of character 
 which make the earth mourn when good men 
 are taken away is in itself the best preparation 
 for the hour of departure. Precious in the 
 sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. 
 The life of his saints is precious to the Lord, 
 but their death likewise. God's plans are not 
 disturbed by the work of the Death Angel. 
 The divine kingdom is still carried forward. 
 " The withdrawal of any man from His harvest- 
 field," said the missionary Judson, " however 
 learned and wise and good, however well pre- 
 pared, even by a life-long discipline, for that 
 10 
 
146 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 particular field, is no loss to Him. As though 
 the omnipotent God had so few weapons in his 
 armory, that we must tremble and faint at the 
 loss of one." Is it possible that our own self- 
 conceit makes us dread being cut off from our 
 life work ? Does not God know where we may 
 be most useful? Men are removed when their 
 powers are ripe. The merchant has just learned 
 skill ; the physician, by hard years of toil, has 
 become wise ; the earnest Christian has just 
 found out how he can best serve the souls of 
 men : has God no use for such instruments in a 
 higher state of being ? This vigor of life and 
 usefulness is the very preparation we need for 
 the last hour. " It is nothing to die," said the 
 aged Storrs of Braintree, u for one whose heart 
 is all absorbed in Christ's service." When men 
 are fully taken up with trying to do the Mas- 
 ter's will in this world, we. think of it as a very 
 slight transition, if they are called upon to do 
 God's will in another life. The one work pre- 
 pares for the other. Concerning this and that 
 venerable Christian disciple, we may say, — 
 
THE LIGHT. 147 
 
 c< How well he fell asleep! 
 Like some proud river, widening towards the sea : 
 Calmly and grandly, silently and deep, 
 Life joined eternity." 
 
 If we make it the leading question in life, 
 How shall we live ? we need not trouble our- 
 selves with asking, How shall we die ? We 
 begin to climb the true Jacob's ladder, round 
 upon round, in each day's duties ; so ascending 
 from earth to heaven. The quaint device of 
 Goldsmith, in his "Vicar of Wakefield," may 
 be suitably set before every man and every 
 woman ; whereby, he would have the good wife 
 train herself daily in the virtues she was most 
 deficient in, that she might live up to the epi- 
 taph her husband had prepared for her and 
 placed before her eyes as a pattern. Live as 
 you would die. A life in this world which ill 
 accords with the realities of the future state is 
 as inappropriate as the recording of jests upon 
 a tombstone. " May we so live," was the 
 Puritan prayer, " that to us a sudden death 
 may be the most happy ! " I think that I 
 should reverse the directions of an old book, 
 
148 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 in which it is written that we ought to think 
 much about dying. " Art thou going to any 
 meeting, or entering into any company, or 
 marching to the holy assemblies? Discourse 
 with thyself in this manner : It may be that I 
 shall never go into any other company until 
 I come to the church and congregation of the 
 first-born, whose names are written in heaven." 
 " Imagine that it may be this is the last time 
 that thou shalt sit at the table ; that next thou 
 mayst sit with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with 
 all the blessed martyrs ; . . . and that it may 
 be thou shalt never taste any more, but of the 
 food of the angels, and of the fruit of the tree 
 of life ; and that thou shalt never drink, but of 
 the new wine in the kingdom of heaven, and of 
 the rivers of eternal pleasures that run from the 
 throne of God." I would rather bid men 
 think much about living, — living to the pur- 
 pose, fulfilling life's noblest end. Art thou 
 going to any meeting ? Consider how thou 
 mayst bring men from this company to taste 
 of angels' food, and to eat of the tree of life. 
 Think how best you can bring those who sit at 
 
THE LIGHT. 149 
 
 table with you, to sit down with holy patri- 
 archs and martyrs in their reward ; and forget 
 not to 'bring to your table the hungry and poor 
 of the earth. Then you need not care, whether, 
 at next meal, you sit in this part of your 
 Father's house, or hear the call to go up higher. 
 It is this noble life which is its own best 
 monument. " Lay me quietly in the earth," 
 said John Howard : " place a sun-dial over my 
 grave, and let me be forgotten." But men will 
 never forget him. His life is always shining, 
 like the sun, which hastens not to go down. 
 He needs no sun-dial over his grave. We are 
 glad that the grave of the Genevan Reformer 
 is unknown. And we ourselves indorse the 
 judgment, that " it is right that Luther's grave 
 should be left without any inscription. All 
 words would have been tame ; just as it would 
 have been impossible to find a fitting inscrip- 
 tion for the tombs of the apostles." Concern- 
 ing the men whose fame is the possession of 
 all mankind, we use the words of Pericles, 
 " The whole earth is the sepulchre of illus- 
 trious men." And, even concerning the most 
 
150 THE SILENT HOUSE. 
 
 obscure men, we feel that their tombstones are 
 matters of indifference, if their lives were 
 noble. How many have lived on the earth, 
 and died, leaving little more trace than a leaf 
 which nourished one summer, and decayed a 
 thousand years ago. Yet many of these name- 
 less men have died with unspeakable' dignity, 
 having characters ripened and beautified with 
 tints which will never fade ; whose influence 
 on the earth, though apparently little as that 
 of one leaf, is abiding as the life of the human 
 race, which endures from generation to genera- 
 tion, built up by individual lives ; as massive 
 trees, which grow during thousands of years, 
 are built up by single leaves. Is it written, 
 " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord " ? 
 " Blessed are the valiant that have lived in the 
 Lord," adds Thomas Carlyle. Henceforth they 
 rest from their labors, and their works do 
 follow them. " Give her of the fruit of her 
 hands, and let herown works praise her in the 
 gates," is the epitaph upon Mary Lyon's tomb- 
 stone. Whether we are conscious of it, or not, 
 our works, whatever they may be, will follow 
 
THE LIGHT. 151 
 
 us. Happy are they whose works shall praise 
 them in the gates. The word "Health" was 
 written npon an ancient tombstone. Health, 
 wholeness, holiness, are one in root. The holi- 
 ness of saints is not perfected, not whole, till 
 death completes life. When -this life is rounded 
 out by death, and the career of heaven is open 
 to the soul, we shall do well if we write the 
 word "Health" upon the tombstone. Con- 
 cerning one who has lived wholly for God, and 
 who has departed this life that he may con- 
 tinue the service, we cannot say that he has 
 died: he lives forevermore. Our Christian 
 faith writes the word " Life " in the place of 
 " Death." 
 
 It*** • 
 
TOPICAL INDEX. 
 
 STATING SUCH SUBDIVISIONS OF THE GENERAL SUBJECT 
 AS ABE TREATED WITH SOME FULNESS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Bands in the death of the wicked .... 65-90 
 Brevity of life, Scripture symbols of . . . 44-54 
 
 Burial-places 117-124 
 
 Death, by sin 9-12 
 
 dance of 81 
 
 awakening a sense of sin . . . . 72, 76-80 
 constitutional fear of . . . . 113-116, 125 
 
 impartial 18-23 
 
 indifference to the presence of . . 72-75, 80, 81 
 inevitable ....... 24-29 
 
 loneliness of 87-90 
 
 pictorial literature of s 33-35 
 
 preparation for . . . 36-41, 62-64, 111, 112 
 of sinners a relief to the world . . 67-72 
 
 sudden 29-36 
 
 triumph over 127-142 
 
 of unbelievers 79 
 
 universal 12-18 
 
 Diseases the instruments of death . . . . 55-62 
 
 153 
 
154 
 
 Topical Index* 
 
 Dying thief, the . . . . ' . , 
 Emptiness of earthly riches . . . 
 power . . 
 pleasure 
 Faithful dealing with the dying . 
 Repentance on the death-bed . 
 
 thought to be offensive to God 
 true, unlikely in sudden death 
 in acute diseases 
 in long sickness 
 in the feebleness of clos 
 ing life . > . 
 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 
 
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