Euthanasy : or, Happy talk towards the end of life

Front matter

HAPPY TALK

TOWARDS THE END OF LIFE.

By WILLIAM MOUNTFORD,

Chapter I. Page

On Old Age — The State of Religion. — On Affliction 1

CHAPTER IT.

Trust in the Mysteriousness of Life . . . . 19

CHAPTER ni.

The Hopefulness of Spring-time. — The Death of Birds and Flowers. — On. Prayer. — The Hope of Immortality 28

CHAPTER IV.

The Dread of becoming afraid of Death. — Death as Natural as Life 37

CHAPTER V.

On Faith in a Future Life, and how to increase it . 47

CHAPTER VI.

On Resignation 57

V1U CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

A Dream 62

CHAPTER Vm.

On living in the Thought of Mortality. — Death a New Birth 70

CHAPTER IX.

On some Unfinished "Works of Genius . . . 77

CHAPTER X.

On Despondency 90

CHAPTER XT.

The Soul consciously immortal 95

CHAPTER XH.

Recollections and Thoughts on a Birthday . . . 101

chapter xrn.

Death to be waited for in Eaith 118

CHAPTER XIV.

On Remembrances of Youth, Pain, Pleasure, and Departed Friends. — On Old Age. — Anticipations of Heaven. — Listening to the Past 122

CHAPTER XV.

Misfortune a Test of Character. — Uses of Old Age . 135

CHAPTER XVI.

A Sermon . . . 143

CONTENTS. IX

CHAPTER XVII.

On Poverty. — Posthumous Influence. — Life after Death 164

CHAPTER XVIII.

On Knowledge of Human Nature. — Shakspeare. — Everlastingness of Truth. — Heirship of the Past . . 176

CHAPTER XIX.

On Flowers and on Beauty. — York Minster. — God in Nature. — The Witness of the Spirit. — The Feeling of Infinity 195

CHAPTER XX.

The Swiftness of Time. — On Heaven. — The Vastness of the Universe. — Knowledge proportioned to Duty. — The Wisdom of Humility. — The Will of God. — On

I George Herbert 209

CHAPTER XXI.

The Uncertainty of Life 226

CHAPTER XXII.

On the Feeling of Beauty 229

CHAPTER XXni.

Plotinus. — George Fox. — Henry More. — The Song of the Soul. — Gratitude to Great Authors . . . 240

CHAPTER XXIV.

Human Greatness. — Humility. — God in the Soul. — Nature and the Soul. — Faith in Christ. — Religious Melancholy 262

X CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXV.

The World full of Promise. — Man made for Happiness. — On Sympathy with Others. — What Heaven will be 281

CHAPTER XXVI.

One Spirit in Men. — One Meaning of Heroic Lives. — On Art. — On Civilized Life. — The Human Hand. — The Present Life suggestive of the Next . . .291

CHAPTER XXVII.

On Action. — The Way of Providence in Life . . 307

CHAPTER XXVIII.

On Creation. — The Law of Progression. — Man the Infinity of God's Purpose in the World . . .317

CHAPTER XXIX.

■ The End of Summer. — Perfect Love. — Hope of Immortality. — On Spiritual Longing .... 332

CHAPTER XXX.

Dying daily. — Changes of Eeeling. — Old Age. — On Affliction 342

CHAPTER XXXI.

Patience. — Readiness for Heaven. — Immortality . 358

CHAPTER XXXII.

The Effects of Prayer. — How to grow in Faith. — Endurance and Forgiveness. — Righteous Failures. — The Good of Affliction. — On Sincerity. — On Troubles. — On Music. — The Thought of God. — The Instinct of Prayer. — The Wonder of this Present Life . . 3G5

CONTENTS. XI

CHAPTER XXXIII.

On Embalming. — Right Thoughts about the Dead. — On Bodily Changes. — Spirit its own Evidence. — How the Body lives. — On Burial 389

CHAPTER XXXIV.

On Epitaphs. — How some Men have wished to die . 398

CHAPTER XXXV.

The Last Vision of Tasso 408

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Nature in Autumn. — A City renewing its Population. — Thoughts of Ancient Times. — Another Life in Justice to this. — The Witness of the Spirit. — Faith in God. — Expectation of Death . . . . . . 431

CHAPTER XXXVH.

On Nature and Man. — On Memory .... 449

CHAPTER XXXVIH.

Human Evanescence. — The Stars. — Mysteriousness of Life. — God in Nature 463

CHAPTER XXXIX.

A Scene revisited. — A fine Day. — On Old Age . 475

CHAPTER XL.

On the Love of Life. — On Virtue and Vice . . 484

CHAPTER XLI.

Seven Conclusions from a Week of Sad Evenings . 491

Xll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XLII.

Thoughts while in Pain 494

CHAPTER XLin.

The Manifold World. — On Fitness for Heaven. — The Recognition of Eriends hereafter. — Kindred to the Blessed Great 501

EUTHANASY.

CHAPTER I.

A soul by force of sorrows high

Uplifted to the purest sky

Of undisturbed humanity. — Wordsworth.

There never lived a mortal, who bent His appetite beyond his natural sphere. But starved and died. — Keats.

May you never Regret those hours which make the mind, if they Unmake the body ; for the sooner we Are fit to be all mind, the better. Blest Is he whose heart is the home of the great dead, And their great thoughts. — Bailey.

MARHAM.

Now, Oliver, you are settled with me, to live with me as long as I live myself. And that is your side of the fireplace, and that is your chair. And a comfortable room this library is ; is it not ? There shall be a sofa brought into it, and every thing else that will be for your comfort shall be got. And here will we wait till our change come, for many, many pleasant hours,. I 1 a EUTHANASY.

hope. For me, Oliver, it is a happiness to see you so resigned. And to hear you talk does me good. But it is of little use my company can be to you. I am old, and I am older than my years, I think. I am not the man I was once. Still, I am not declining into second childhood yet, I hope.

AUBIN.

No, uncle, you are not, and never are to be, I hope ; though, if you were, it would not be a thing to be mourned for, dear uncle, would it ? For the second childhood of a saint is the early infancy of a happy immortality, as we believe.

MARHAM.

What you say does cheer me so, Oliver ! But, indeed, I am often distressed at being so useless in my old age.

AUBIN.

Useless ! You are of great use, uncle Stephen, you really are. How are you useful ? By being a man that is old. Your old age is a public good. It is, indeed. For out of all the boys and girls, and young men and women of this neighbourhood, probably not ten, and perhaps not even one, will ever be as old as you. But something of the good of old age they may all get, through sympathy with you.. No child ever listens to your talk without having a good done it that no schooling could do. When you are walking, no one ever opens a gate for you to pass through, and no one ever honors you with any kind of help, without being himself the better for what he does ; for fellow-feeling with you ripens his soul for him. At the longest, I cannot have long to live ; and I shall never be old. But through living with you, uncle, and loving you, I hope to understand, and feel, and make my own, those changes which come over the soul with length of life.

MARHAM.

When the powers of the body fail, the feelings do alter much ; and with me they grow melancholy, which, perhaps, they should not do. But they are sad experiences, when sight and hearing and motion fail.

AUBIN.

Not sad, uncle Stephen, but serious ; and not so serious as solemn. Is your eyesight dimmer ? Then the world is seen by you in a cathedral light. Is your hearing duller ? Then it is just as though you were always where loud voices and footsteps ought not to be heard. Is your temper not as merry as it was once ? Then it is more solemn ; so that round you the common atmosphere feels like that of the house of the Lord. Yes, for twilight and silence and solemnity, old age makes us like daily dwellers in the house of the Lord ; and a mortal sickness does this, sometimes, as well as old age. But it is our own thoughts that have to supply the service, and our own hearts that have to make the music triumphant, or else like a dirge. And the sermon is preached to us by conscience from some text taken out of the book of our remembrance. While to it all, Amen has to be said by ourselves ; and when it is said gladly, then there is an echo to it in heaven, and joy among the angels.

MAR.HAM.

You are so at home in religion, Oliver ! And that is why your talk pleases me so much, I think. For with most persons, it is as though they had forced themselves to be religious.

ATJBIN.

At present, in men's minds, religion is not as spontaneous as poetry is ; and, indeed, is not genial at all.

MARHAM.

And in this room are books which are weary reading to us, but which, a hundred years ago, our forefathers wept over, and prayed upon, and thanked God for.

ATJBIN.

We cannot feel as they did, because we do not think as they thought. Once, men thought themselves to be the only creatures in a state of probation ; and this little earth was fancied to be

EIJTHANASY. O

almost the only spot, excepting hell, that was not heaven. From astronomy, we know this to have been an error. And many, very many things which our forefathers were sure of one way, in science and philosophy, we are sure of otherwise. And so, under these errors, what they said and wrote religiously is either lower than our feeling, or else beside it. But some time religion will be familiar to men again, although we have got among different circumstances from what our fathers worshipped in ; for there is religion in all things, just as there is poetry, though as yet it is waiting to be discovered ; but when once it has been found, all persons will see it at last, and it will be natural to them. Immortality is not now believed in, commonly, in the manner it ought to be. The doctrine of it wants to be familiarized into feeling ; and especially, I think, there want to be developed such corroborations of the great truth as are latent in science, history, philosophy, and in the fresh experiences which, as human beings, we are always passing through. The Greek Gospels require to be made English, for common use ; and for daily, homely feeling, the great doctrine of immortality wants familiarizing.

MARHAM.

You are hinting at what would be as great as a new Reformation in the Church.

O EUTHANASY.

AUBIN.

And greater, I think.

MARHAM.

There is no chance of it, I am afraid.

AUBIN.

There was none of Luther, till he was born. Religion will be natural to men again ; and he that is merry will sing psalms yet. And even the soul is growing, perhaps, that is to bless the world this way.

MARHAM.

And it will be soon, we will hope, and with a welcome.

AUBIN.

That will not be ; for to bless the world implies being above it, and to be above the world is to have few or no friends in it. For the first of the earnest believers that are to be, we will wish some likely thing, and what they will want ; we will wish them courage to speak on, though it seem to be to the winds, and courage enough to think of dying in a garret at last, without being frightened.

MARHAM.

I must hope the world is better than you think it, Oliver. Though your experience of it has been very disheartening.

AUBIN.

Nay, dear uncle, I was not thinking of myself at all.

MARHAM.

But, Oliver, I have been thinking of you, and what you had to bear.

AUBIN.

And which I am the better for. Yes, when I remember what I was, I am sure of my misfortunes having been messengers to me from God ; for they were so exactly suited to do for my character what it wanted.

MARHAM.

And perhaps the greatest grace that came to you from God was willingness to know those messengers.

ATJBIN.

Poverty came to me, and she said, " I must dwell with thee." And while I held the door of my room half open, she was hideous and ragged, and her voice was hoarse. But when I said to her, " Thou art my sister," her face looked divinely thoughtful, and there was that in her voice which went to my heart, and she was ragged no longer, nor yet gay, but like the angels, whom God so clothes. And through looking into her eyes, my sight was cleared. And so I first saw the majesty of duty, and that beauty in virtue which is the reflection of the countenance of God. For, before this, my eyes could see only what coarse worth there is in medals, and stars, and crowns, and in such character as gets itself talked )f and apparelled in purple and fine linen.

EITTHANASY.

MARHAM.

O Oliver !

AUBIN.

I was ambitious, uncle, once ; very greatly so I was. And from my own knowledge, I know that pride is a fearful peril. I was a student, and truth was my business ; but now it seems to -me that I must have loved it basely, and for tha fame of stamping it with my own name.

MARHAM.

Hardly so, Oliver. I am sure you judge yourself not justly. For the love of fame is not always lust of flattery, but something not unwise nor unhealthy. For fame is a great thing for a man ; it is silence for him, when he wants to speak ; it is a pulpit to preach from, more authoritative than an archbishop's throne ; and it is affectionate attention from a multitude of hearers. Badly ambitious I do not think you could have been.

ATJBIN.

My ardor was too much of a worldly fever, as I know by this ; that when, time after time, Disappointment stepped between me and my object, he was like ice to my heart. But now I can embrace him as a friend ; and I do hold him as a dear friend ; and I bless God for his having found me. Though latterly I have known him by another than the mournful name by which he is called on earth.

MARHAM.

You have been afflicted, and it is a happy thing for you to feel that it has been good for you. As human creatures, we have all of us to suffer, and to have some of our dearest plans spoiled.

AUBIN.

And it is well ; for if we could be half sufficient to ourselves, we should soon lose the secret sense of dependence upon God. We build our plans up about us, and so we shut out the sight of heaven, and very soon the thought of it, and we say to ourselves that we will be merry with the goods we shall have stored up with us. But some earthquake of Providence shakes our building, and overhead it is unroofed, and the walls of it give way. And then there is heaven to be seen again, and infinity is open round us, and the dews of the Divine grace can fall on us again, and again we feel ourselves at the mercy of God, to be spared from cold, and storms, and enemies. And so, among the ruins of our pride, we grow to be loving children of the Most High, instead of worldly creatures.

MARHAM.

And you have felt that. But now you will be able to tell me all your experiences ; and you must, whenever they come into your mind.

ATJBIN.

For some time I have wished to write a book

10 EUTHAXAST.

on the immortality of the soul, and if I had been well enough, I should have done it ; for I think on that subject I could write as not many have done. I have been without a friend in the world. And that is a state in which a man knows whether he believes in God or not ; for if he does, his soul craves God, in such a way as that almost he is seen in the clouds, and felt in the air and in the coming of thoughts into the mind. I have known the want of food, and, one whole winter, the want of warm clothing ; and I have known what it is to need medical help, and not to have it, because unable to pay for it.

M ASSAM.

Have you ?

AUBIN.

Yes, I have. And in such circumstances, I know that life looks quite another thing to what it does to a man at ease.

MAEHAM.

Poor Oliver ! life must have looked stern to you, very stern.

AUSIN.

For a while it did, and then it grew sublime ; for I saw God in it all. And, besides, there is in the soul an instinct of her having been made for a foreordained end, of her having been created for a special purpose, which only she herself can answer, and not any one other out of a hundred million other souls. So the more lonely I was, and the poorer, and the more the pain in my forehead grew like the pressure of a crown of thorns, and the more I was an exception among men, so much the more I was persuaded of having a destiny of my own, and a peculiar one. And I said to myself, " What I am to be, I can suffer for, and I will." So as my lot in life grew strange, I had a trembling joy in it for the sake of what I thought must spiritually come of it. But, dear uncle! those tears, — I cannot bear them. Besides, I am happy now. And now our souls, yours and mine, have found one another.

MARHAM.

But to have suffered as you have, and been alone r

ATJBIN.

Lonely I never was ; indeed I was not.

MARHAM.

For God was with you. And I do believe he was.

AUBIN.

And so were the souls of many saints, and heroes, and noble thinkers, — men of like sufferings with my own.

MARHAM.

True saints and true heroes. But now, Oliver, tell me, were you never tempted to forego your scruples, and enter

AUBIN.

No, uncle, not for a moment.

MARHAM.

If you had flattered a little, or been less nobly scrupulous, your genius would have been acknowledged and well paid very soon. No doubt you felt this ; and was not it ever a temptation ?

AUBIN.

No, uncle.

MARHAM.

My noble boy ! And you sat down so long to poor food, and scanty, perhaps.

AUBIN.

But I ate it, like the sacrament, in a high communion of soul. For sometimes I felt as though there stood about me Tasso, and others like him. And I thought of one who was so holy, that priests could not understand him, and who was therefore so poor and unfriended, that he had not where to lay his head ; I thought of Christ in the wilderness, hungry and alone.

MARHAM.

And in that way you held faithful to your convictions.

AUBIN.

Yes.

MARHAM.

And yet, — am I right, Oliver ? Surely I must be, for you are young still. And was not a home sometimes a hope with you ?

EUTHANASY.

AUBIN.

And so a temptation ? No, uncle.

MARHAM.

But with such prospects as I found you with, you must have been in dread of starvation, as not an unlikely thing for you some time.

AUBIN.

One while I had that, fear ; but I made an Ode to the Poor-house, and then I was not afraid of poverty any more.

MARHAM.

What do you mean ?

AUBIN.

And I was the better man, besides. I mean, that I made up my mind to die in rags and want, and then I was not afraid of doing so. And as soon as there was nothing in this world that could frighten me, at once, with ease of mind, goodness grew easier with me.

MARHAM.

Ease of mind ! But I think I can guess at what you mean. God became every thing to you, as the world grew nothing.

AUBIN.

But the world never did become nothing to me ; for always, even from the middle of a city, it felt great and wonderful about me ; but when no temporal good could come of it to me, then the eternal meaning of it entered my soul freshly every day. The more I felt the world was not mine at all, and could not be, the more blessedly I felt it was God's ; and so, another way, it was mine again, gloriously.

MARHAM.

And so the world was yours through not being yours, was it ? Your experience was like St. Paul's, — as having nothing, and possessing all things. Have you the Ode to the Poor-house which you wrote ? I should like to see it.

AUBIN.

I have not it, uncle. You think the writing of it a curious cure for poverty.

MARHAM.

But before writing it, your feeling of misery must have been abating.

AUBIN.

Yes. As soon as my poverty felt poetical, it ceased to be only wretched. But always I have found, that any thing bad is most bearable by knowing the worst of it, — by thinking, and feeling, and living it all over.

MARHAM.

And so draining the cup of sorrow at a manly draught.

AUBIN.

Many years ago, when my mother died, I was in an agony of grief till I saw her body and held her dead hand, and then I was calmed. I suppose the reason of it was this, that what we see with our eyes is seen at once to be finite ; and finite evil but serves by its endurance to quicken into intensity that presentiment of infinite good which has been made instinctive in us.

MARHAM.

To some persons, it is a satisfaction to know the worst, because it is never so bad as their fears ; and others, I think, like to know it, because they are uneasy at any thing that is uncertain ; and others like to know it for other reasons, perhaps.

AXJBIN.

Perhaps so. But I would rather think that all these reasons have one source, and from it I would draw this truth, or, at least, some confirmation of it, that the inner is the more real and the intenser world. While we have only heard of misfortune, we only know it as though spiritually ; and the unrestrained grief of the spirit, like the spirit itself, partakes of the infinite. But as soon as with our bodily eyes we see an evil, we see that it is finite, measurable, little. And then against this littleness the soul measures her own almost infinite power of endurance. And from this comes that complacency, that almost joy in misfortune, which some sufferers have felt, when once they have learned the worst of it.

MARHAM.

Oliver ! I am proud of what you are, but over what you have been as a sufferer I could cry ; and yet I think I am proud of that too, for you are my sister's son. Oliver, you are not well, you look

AUBIN.

Uncle, one thing I have to ask of you, and that is, that you will not for a while ask me any thing about my past life. I can think it over on my knees, and be thankful to God for it ; but your pitying it is too much for me. For I have not been as manful as you think, or else my courage was only just enough. For now that I am out of my troubles, I could cry for hours sometimes, though a month ago I could have said that I had not had a tear in my eyes for years.

MARHAM.

And now you are ill. O, very sorry I am that, — that

AUBIN.

That I should only have been helped out of my wretchedness just against my death. But better men than I will die in worse miseries than mine were.

MARHAM.

1 do not think so, Oliver, and I should be very sorry to believe it. For I have never heard of another instance like yours in all my life. For opportunity to help a good man and a man of genius is a treasure

AUBIN.

Which not many men are good enough to value. But this is a thing which it is better not to say, even if quite true. And so I will not say it. For the soul gets embittered with saying bitter things. And then even good men may not find one another out, as I ought to remember from the way in which even you and I did not know one another for so long, and never should have done but for an accident, ■ — no, a providential event ; for so it was for me.

MARHAM.

And for me, too, Oliver. But you suffered so strangely ! Why, O, why did not I know of it, or guess it ? And why did I let my foolish prejudices, — foolish and worse

AUBIN.

No, dear uncle, uncle Stephen ; do not talk so. But let our not knowing one another be among the strange things of the world, and they are very many. Why they are allowed, we cannot tell always. But they are wisely allowed, no doubt. Why, why is this ? But for any of us asking so, there is no special answer vouchsafed. The wheels of the universe do not stop for us to examine their mechanism ; for if they did, there would be no progress ; because, at every moment, 2

18 E17THANASY.

the self-will of some creature or other is in collision with that Divine will which is the mainspring of creation.

MARHAM.

It does my heart good, and it does my soul good, to see you so happy, Oliver, and so at peace with the world, after having been so hardly used in it.

AUBIN.

It would be a shame if I were not so ; and the more I have suffered, the greater shame. Because, with a Christian, at the end of a grievous trial, and when the soreness of it is abating, there is a strange and sublime experience. There is the feeling of sorrow, and there is that of infinite goodness ; and the two blend into a consciousness like that of having been just about to be spoken to by God. And this is not a deceptive feeling, though God is silent towards us all our lives ; for with him a thousand years are as one day ; and when he will justify himself to us, it will not be our fleshly impatience which he will address, but the calm estate of spirits everlasting like himself.

Chapter II

The very spirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh ; and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another ; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity : we form our words with the breath of our nostrils, — we have the less to live upon for every word we speak. — Jeremy Taylor.

All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature throughout is life ; it is not death which kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form. — J. G. Fichte.

MARHAM.

Out of our hearts, and out of our reasons, many things are said to us about our immortality ; but they would not be listened to believingly, if it were not for our Christian courage. Christ said, that because he lives we shall live also. This is what emboldens our faith.

AUBIN.

Twice did Christ enter this world, and twice did he depart from it, and so the other world and this were made to feel the nigher.

MARHAM.

Twice, did you say, that Jesus came into this life ?

AUBIN.

Once through his mother's womb and his mother's cares, and once from withinside the grave of the Arimathean. To and fro, between this and the other world, Christ passed. So that to us believers this earth feels like the fore-court of heaven, and death like the door into eternity.

MARHAM.

At that door, threescore years and ten make a loud knocking for me ; and old age is like an anxious waiting for the door to open. And awful waiting it would be, were it not for Christ inside. But for him, it would be dreadful leaving this known for the unknown world.

AUBIN.

This known world, you say. But now, uncle, is it known ? No, it is not. It feels known, because we feel foolishly. For every grain of sand is a mystery ; so is every daisy in summer, and so is every snow-flake in winter. Both upwards and downwards, and all round us, science and speculation pass into mystery at last.