o stay and hear the falling of the grave clods upon the
coffin lid.

This emphasis of brevity and uncertainty has affected men more or
less from the beginning. In the hour when Christianity was born it
affected them well nigh unto delirium. So brief was the vision of
life, so tumultuous its incidents, so conscious were men of its
uncertainty, that they played with it as gamblers throw dice. It
became cheap, cheaper than the ground in which their bodies were so
soon to be laid; and in derision of its cheapness they built great
monuments to hold their scattered dust, monuments that should
outlast by centuries their latest breath; with light laughter they
rode past these chiselled tombs and scorned themselves as the
builders of a longevity their own being could never know.

This fact of death is impressing men now.

In proportion as life increases in knowledge; in proportion as men
become masters of nature's forces; in proportion as they measure the
universe, make daily incursions therein, and bring back always some
conquered thing, some new discovery as a tribute to the
limitlessness of mind, in this proportion the unequal brevity and
the disintegrating uncertainty of life, lead men to ask with more
and more insistence, whether, after all, it is worth while. Is it
worth while to carry burdens which force us to look down into the
dust of the highway, and not up and out to the wider landscape? Is
it worth while to put so much force of soul and spirit, brain and
heart into things from which we may be summoned without a moment's
notice? Is it worth while to live, and then go to pieces through the
effort at living, live on day after day like a machine out of gear
(held together oftentimes only by the surgeon's skill), then break
down completely, give a final sigh and be hurried away to add a lot
of useless fragments to the already accumulated scrap heap of the
still more useless graveyard?

Into this emphasis of brevity and uncertainty, there enters another
element which increasingly raises the question--"Is it worth while?"

That added element is the silence of the grave.

The grave is terribly silent.

You can hear the gravel rattling out of the grave digger's shovel
with a thud upon the coffin lid; or, you can hear the crunching,
jarring sound as the casket is slid into its place in the receiving
vault, and you can hear the turn of the key and the snap of the bolt
as the gate or door of the sepulchre is shut and lo