at though Decay's shapeless hand extinguish us? Its foreflung
and enervating shadow shall neither transform us into devils nor
degrade us into beasts. That shadow indeed only falls in the
valleys of ignoble fear and selfishness, leaving all the clear
road lines of moral truth and practical virtue and heroic
consecration still high and bright on the table land of a worthy
life; and every honorable soul, calmly confronting its fate, will
cry, despite the worst, "The pathway of my duty lies in sunlight;
And I would tread it with as firm a step, Though it should
terminate in cold oblivion, As if Elysian pleasures at its
Close Gleam'd palpable to sight as things of earth."

If a captain knew that his ship would never reach her port, would
he therefore neglect his functions, be slovenly and careless,
permit insubordination and drunkenness among the crew, let the
broad pennon draggle in filthy rents, the cordage become tangled
and stiff, the planks be covered with dirt, and the guns be grimed
with rust? No: all generous hearts would condemn that. He would
keep every inch of the deck scoured, every piece of metal polished
like a mirror, the sails set full and clean, and, with shining
muzzles out, ropes hauled taut in their blocks, and every man at
his post, he would sweep towards the reef, and go down into the
sea firing a farewell salute of honor to the sun, his flag flying
above him as he sunk.

The dogmatic assertors of a future life, in a partisan spirit set
upon making out the most impressive case in its behalf, have been
guilty of painting frightful caricatures of the true nature and
significance of the opposite conclusion. Instead of saying, "If
such a thing be fated, why, then, it must be right, God's will be
done," they frantically rebel against any such admission, and
declare that it would make God a liar and a fiend, man a "magnetic
mockery," and life a hellish taunt. This, however unconscious it
may be to its authors, is blasphemous egotism. One of the
tenderest, devoutest, richest, writers of the century has
unflinchingly affirmed that if man who trusted that love was the
final law of creation, although nature, her claws and teeth red
with raven, shrieked against his creed be left to be blown about
the desert dust or sealed within the iron hills,

"No more! a monster, then, a dream,
A discord; dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with Him!"

Epictetus says, "W