one. But all this is nothing compared with the consequences implied in
it. Death stops us; it stops our race. Men are engaged about their
work, or about their pleasure; they are in the city, or the field; any
how they are stopped; their deeds are suddenly gathered in--a reckoning
is made--all is sealed up till the great day. What a change is this!
In the words used familiarly in speaking of the dead, they are no more.
They were full of schemes and projects; whether in a greater or humbler
rank, they had their hopes and fears, their prospects, their pursuits,
their rivalries; all these are now come to an end. One builds a house,
and its roof is not finished; another buys merchandise, and it is not
yet sold. And all their virtues and pleasing qualities which endeared
them to their friends are, as far as this world is concerned, vanished.
Where are they who were so active, so sanguine, so generous? the
amiable, the modest, and the kind? We were told that they were dead;
they suddenly disappeared; that is all we know about it. They were
silently taken from us; they are not met in the seat of the elders, nor
in the assemblies of the people, in the mixed concourse of men, nor in
the domestic retirement which they prized. As Scripture describes it,
"the wind has passed over them, and they are gone, and their place
shall know them no more." And they have burst the many ties which held
them; they were parents, brothers, sisters, children, and friends; but
the bond of kindred is broken, and the silver cord of love is loosed.
They have been followed by the vehement grief of tears, and the long
sorrow of aching hearts; but they make no return, they answer not; they
do not even satisfy our wish to know that they sorrow for us as we for
them. We talk about them thenceforth as if they were persons we do not
know; we talk about them as third persons; whereas they used to be
always with us, and every other thought which was within us was shared
by them. Or perhaps, if our grief is too deep, we do not mention their
names at all. And their possessions, too, all fall to others. The
world goes on without them; it forgets them. Yes, so it is; the world
contrives to forget that men have souls, it looks upon them all as mere
parts of some great visible system. This continues to move on; to this
the world ascribes a sort of life and personality. When one or other
of its members die, it considers them only as falling out of the
sy