3. Here is a crowd of men in chains. They are all condemned to death, and every day a few of them are led forth to be killed in the sight of their fellow-convicts. And these why remain watch these executions and await their own turn with dread. Such is life for those who do not realize the meaning of their life. But if man realizes that the spirit of God dwelleth in him and that he can become one with it, there can be no death for such a man and therefore there can be no tear of death for him.
4. To fear death is to fear ghosts, that is to fear something which does not exist. <
5. I love my garden, I love to read books, I love to caress children. When I die, I am deprived of these things, and therefore I hate to die and I fear death.
It may be that the whole of my life is composed of such worldly desires and their gratification. If this be so I can not do otherwise than fear that which puts a stop to the pleasure derived from the gratification of such desires. But if these desires are transformed within me, being replaced by another desire—to fulfill the will of God, to give myself to Him in the form in which I now exist, and in all sorts of forms which I may assume—then to the extent that my physical desires are replaced by spiritual desires death appears to me no longer terrifying'. But when my wordly desires are altogether supplanred by the one desire to give myself to God, nothing but life Is left to me, and there is no death.
To substitute that which is eternal for that which is wordly and temporal—this is the path of life, the path to its blessedness.
6. The man who lives for his soul sees in the dissolution of the body only a release, and in suffering the necessary prerequisite of this release, В\Л "«Va.X K'i "^t ^"«s*.
of man who builds his life on his body when he sees that the one thing by which he lives, his body, is being destroyed and painfully at that?
7. The animal dies without seeing death and almost without experiencing any fear of it. But why is it given to man to foresee the end that awaits him, and why does it seem to him so terrible, why does it so rend his soul that men have been known to commit suicide for fear of death ? I cannot answer why, but Г know for what purpose: so that the conscious and rational man might betake his life from the domain of bodily life into that of spiritual life. This not only destroys the fear of death, but renders the expectation of death akin to the feeling of a wanderer who IS returning to his home.
8. Life has nothing in common with death. Therefore perhaps there is always bom in us the absurd hope which obscures our reason and compels us to doubt the certainty of our knowledge of the inevitableness of death. The life of the body strives to persist in being. Like a parrot in the fable it repeats even when being strangled: "That's nothing."
Amiel
9. The body is like unto walls which confine the spirit and obstruct its freedom. The spirit unceasingly strives to sunder these walls, and the whole life of rational man is in pushing these walls apart, in releasing the spirit from the captivity of the body. Death is its final complete release. And therefore death is not only not terrible, but is a joy to man who lives the true life.
10. Man resists death, even as the animal, but thanks to his reason he can always substitute for this resistance not only submission but even assent.
11. If death is terrifying, the cause is in us and not
in death. The better a man is the less he fears death. To a man of holiness there is no death.
12. You fear death, but think what would become of you if you were to live fo^-ever just as you are?
13. It is as unreasonable to wish for death as to fear it.
14. If a man lives after being cured from mortal illness he is like a truck which has just been pulled out of a mudhole and left on the wrong side of it. It can not escape the mudhole as it must go past it again.
15. Rational life is like unto a man who bears a lantern attached to a long pole. He can never reach the end of the illumined portion of his path, for it always goes on ahead of him. Such is rational life, and only such life knows no death, for the lantern does not cease lighting the path until the last moment, and you follow it to the end as calmly as all through the journey.
IV.
Man Must Live by that Which is Immortal
Within Him
1. The son lives permanently in his father's house, but the hired laborer for a season only. Therefore the son will not live like the hired man, but will take care of his father's house nor think only of his daily hire as the hired man will. If a man thinks that his life does not end with death he will live like the son in his father's house. But if life be just what it is in this world, he will live like the hired man seeking to make use of anything he can in this life.
And every man must first solve this question for himself —is he his father's son or only a hired laborer, whether he dies completely or only partly with the dissolution of his body. But if man realizes that though there is something in him that is mortal, there is also sotX№XVaw% >Jc«X 4^ \sx\.-
mortal, It IS clear that he will also pay more heed in life to that which is immortal than to that which is mortal, that he will live not as a hired man, but as a son in his father's house.
2. Only he can believe in a future life who has established in his consciousness a new relationship to the world for which there is no room in this life.
3. Whether life ends with the dissolution of our body is a most important question to which we can not escape devoting thought. According to whether we believe or do not believe in immortality our actions will be either rational or irrational.
Therefore our principal care must be to solve the problem whether we do or do not completely die with the dissolution of our flesh, and if not, what is it In us that is immortal. But if we realize that there is in us something that is immortal, it will be clear to us that in this life we must care more for that which is immortal than for that which is mortal.
The voice that tells us that we are immortal is the voice of God who dwelleth in us. Pascal.
4. Experience teaches us that many people familiar with the theory of a life beyond the grave and convinced of its truth nevertheless are given to vices and commit mean actions, inventing devices in order to escape through cunning the consequences of their actions which threaten them in the future. Yet there has hardly ever been a moral man who could reconcile himself to the thought that death ends all and whose noble mode of thinking did not attain a loftier elevation through the hope of future life. Therefore it seems to me that it would be more in harmony with human nature and good morals to base the faith in a future
life on the sentiments of a noble soul than vice versa to b«^e its noble conduct on the hope of a future life. Kant,
5. There is only one thing we know surely—that death awaits us. Like unto a swallow that flies across a room is the life of man. We come no one knows whence, we go no one knows whither. Impenetrable darkness behind us, dense shadows ahead of us. When our time comes what will it mean to us whether we ate delicate foods or not, wore soft raiment or not, left a large estate or none, bore laurels or suffered scorn, were considered learned or ignorant, compared with the question how we employed the talent entrusted to us by the Master?
What will be the value of all these things when our eyes grow dim and our ears grow dull? In that hour we shall know peace only if we not merely have unceasingly guarded the talent of spiritual life entrusted to out care, but ever increased it to such a degree that the dissolution of the body has lost its terrors. Henry George.
6. From the testament of a Mexican ruler:
All things on earth have their limit, the most powerful and the most joyful fall from their majesty and from their joy and turn into dust. The whole earthly sphere is merely a huge grave and there is nothing on its surface that shall not hide in the grave beneath the sod. Waters, rivers and stream strive to their destination and never return to their blessed source. All hurry forward to bury themselves in the depths of the infinite ocean. That which was yesterday is to-day no more. And that which is to-day will be no more to-morrow. The graveyard is full of the dust of those who were animated with life, reigned as kings, ruled nations, presided in assemblies, led armies to battles, conquered new