isking it! How
often I felt, in these days, that there is a fortitude needed by
man much greater than that of jeopardising his life! Life! what
is it? Here was that poor Crasweller, belying himself and all his
convictions just to gain one year more of it, and then when the year
was gone he would still have his deposition before him! Is it not so
with us all? For me I feel,--have felt for years,--tempted to rush
on, and pass through the gates of death. That man should shudder at
the thought of it does not appear amiss to me. The unknown future
is always awful; and the unknown future of another world, to be
approached by so great a change of circumstances,--by the loss of our
very flesh and blood and body itself,--has in it something so fearful
to the imagination that the man who thinks of it cannot but be struck
with horror as he acknowledges that by himself too it has to be
encountered. But it has to be encountered; and though the change be
awful, it should not therefore, by the sane judgment, be taken as a
change necessarily for the worst. Knowing the great goodness of the
Almighty, should we not be prepared to accept it as a change probably
for the better; as an alteration of our circumstances, by which our
condition may be immeasurably improved? Then one is driven back to
consider the circumstances by which such change may be effected.
To me it seems rational to suppose that as we leave this body so
shall we enter that new phase of life in which we are destined to
live;--but with all our higher resolves somewhat sharpened, and with
our lower passions, alas! made stronger also. That theory by which a
human being shall jump at once to a perfection of bliss, or fall to
an eternity of evil and misery, has never found credence with me. For
myself, I have to say that, while acknowledging my many drawbacks,
I have so lived as to endeavour to do good to others, rather than
evil, and that therefore I look to my departure from this world with
awe indeed, but still with satisfaction. But I cannot look with
satisfaction to a condition of life in which, from my own imbecility,
I must necessarily retrograde into selfishness. It may be that He who
judges of us with a wisdom which I cannot approach, shall take all
this into account, and that He shall so mould my future being as
to fit it to the best at which I had arrived in this world; still
I cannot but fear that a taint of that selfishness which I have
hitherto avoided, but which