but to the grave.

It is creditable to our humanity that at the grave animosities are
buried, and those who speak of the dead remember their virtues and pass
over their frailties.

Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are
extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping
sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn.

The reconciling grave swallows distinction first that made us foes;
there all lie down in peace together.

To the grave, "the world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil,"
we are all hastening. Earth's highest station and meanest place ends in
the common receptacle to which we shall all be taken. Dark and gloomy
indeed would be the grave without a hope in a personal immortality, a
belief that the soul survives the body, and that to this immortal part
the tomb is the gate to heaven. When one feels like Theodore Parker when
he said:

When this stiffened body goes down to the tomb, sad, silent, and
remorseless, I feel there is no death for the man. That clod which
yonder dust shall cover is not my brother. The dust goes to its
place; man to his own. It is then I feel my immortality. I look
through the grave into heaven. I ask no miracle, no proof, no
reasoning for me; I ask no risen dust to teach me immortality. I am
conscious of eternal life.

Or like Byron when he wrote:

I feel my immortality oversweep all pains, all tears, all time, all
fears, and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep into my ears
this truth--thou livest forever!

Death loses its terrors and the grave becomes a welcome goal for weary
and buffeted mariners on life's stormy sea--the gate to endless life.

By these oft-repeated scenes in this Chamber; by the frequent visits of
the stern messenger to both Houses of Congress to summon a member from
his field of labor here to the bar of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe
above; by the constant changes going on around us in obedience to the
inevitable law of nature, by which death everywhere succeeds to life,
we are reminded that we shall not long continue as we now are. It is
possible that as we are startled by the announcement of the death of an
associate we mentally ask ourselves, Who will be called next?

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall t