. I bless myself, and am
thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had my
faith been thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater
blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had the
advantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of
Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise
a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of
understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been
more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a
mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a
rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to
stoop unto the lure of faith.' The unreclaimed reader who is not already
allured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne's
autobiographic book. But he who feels the grace and the truth, the power
and the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to know
that the whole _Religio_ is full of such things, and that all this
author's religious and moral writings partake of the same truly Apostolic
and truly Platonic character. In this noble temper, with the richest
mind, and clothed in a style that entrances and captivates us, Sir Thomas
proceeds to set forth his doctrine and experience of God; of God's
providence; of Holy Scripture; of nature and man; of miracles and
oracles; of the Holy Ghost and holy angels; of death; and of heaven and
hell. And, especially, and with great fulness, and victoriousness, and
conclusiveness, he deals with death. We sometimes amuse ourselves by
making a selection of the two or three books that we would take with us
to prison or to a desert island. And one dying man here and another
there has already selected and set aside the proper and most suitable
books for his own special deathbed. 'Read where I first cast my anchor,'
said John Knox to his wife, sitting weeping at his bedside. At which she
opened and read in the Gospel of John. Sir Thomas Browne is neither more
nor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He writes as no other
man has ever written about death. Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas
Browne's books. And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven
itself, there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir Thomas
Browne's defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties and
impossibilities enough to exerc