to the nurse, and to a sufferer under sentence of lasting disease. But
instances have been known, perplexing to those inexperienced in pain, of
devout thankfulness for the suffering itself, under its immediate and
agonising pressure; and this in men far superior to the superstition of
believing present pain the purchase-money of future ease,--the fine paid
down here for admission to heavenly benefits hereafter.
Strange as this rejoicing in misery may appear, it is to some minds as
natural and authorised by the laws of our being, as the joy which
attends the acquisition of a great idea, or the verification of a potent
truth. It is as verification that such pain is welcome. To men of the
most spiritual tone of mind, every attestation of the reality of unseen
objects is a boon of the highest order; and no such attestation can
surpass in clearness that which is afforded by the sensible progress of
decay in the material part of the sufferer’s frame. All attempt at
description is here vain. Nothing but experience can convey a conception
of the intense reality in which God appears supreme, Christ and his
gospel divine, and holiness the one worthy aim and chief good, when our
frame is refusing its offices, and we can lay hold on no immediate
outward support and solace. It is conceivable to the healthy and happy,
that, if waked up from sleep by a tremendous earthquake, the first
recoil of terror might be followed by an intense perception of the
fixity and tranquillity of the spiritual world, in immediate contact
with the turbulence of the outward and lower scene. It is conceivable to
us all that the drowning man may, as is recorded, see his whole life, in
all its minute details, presented to him, as in clear vision, in one
instant of time, as he lapses into death. Well,--something like both
these experiences is that of extreme and dissolving pain, to a certain
order of minds. The vision and the attestation are present, without the
horrors caused, amidst an earthquake, by the misery of a perishing
multitude, though at the cost of more bodily anguish than in the case of
the drowning man. Though there may be keen doubts in a modest sufferer
how long such anguish can be decently endured,--whether the filial
submission will hold out against torment,--there is through, above and
beyond such doubts, so overpowering an impression of the vitality of the
conscious part of us, and of the reality of the highest objects for
which it was created and has lived,--so inexpressible a sense of the
value of what we have prayed for, and of the evanescence of what we are
losing,--that it is no wonder if the dying have been known to call for
aid in their thanksgivings, and to struggle for sympathy even in their
incommunicable convictions. If the shadows of the dark valley part, and
disclose to such an one the regions that lie in the light of God’s
countenance, it is no wonder that he calls on those near him to look and
see, though he is making the transit alone.
Those who speculate outside on the experience of the sick-room, are
eager to know whether this solitary transit is often gone over in
imagination, and whether with more or less relish and success than by
those at ease and in full vigour. In my childhood, I attended, as an
observer, one fine morning, at the funeral of a person with whom I was
well acquainted, without feeling any strong affection. I was somewhat
moved by the solemnity, and by the tears of the family; but the most
powerful feeling of the day was excited when the evening closed in,
gusty and rainy, and I thought of the form I knew so well, left alone in
the cold and the darkness, while everybody else was warm and sheltered.
I felt that, if I had been one of the family, I could not have
neglectfully and selfishly gone to bed that night, but must have passed
the hours till daylight by the grave. Every child has felt this: and
every child longs to know whether a sick friend contemplates that first
night in the cold grave, and whether the prospect excites any emotions.
Surely;--we do contemplate it--frequently--eagerly. In the dark night,
we picture the whole scene, under every condition the imagination can
originate. By day, we hold up before our eyes that most wondrous piece
of our worldly wealth--our own right-hand; examine its curious texture
and mechanism, and call up the image of its sure deadness and decay, And
with what emotions? Each must answer for himself. As for me, it is with
mere curiosity, and without any concern, about the lonely, cold grave.
I doubt whether any one’s imagination rests there,--whether there is
ever any panic about the darkness and the worm of the narrow house.
As for our real future home,--the scene where our living selves are to
be,--how is it possible that we should not be often resorting thither in
imagination, when it is to be our next excursion from our little abode
of sickness and helplessness,--when it is so certain that we cannot be
disappointed of it, however wearily long it may be before we go,--when
all that has been best in our lives, our sabbaths, all sunset evenings
and starry nights, all our reverence and love that are sanctified by
death,--when all these things have always pointed to our future life and
been associated with it, how is it possible that we should not be ever
looking forward to it, now when our days are low and weary, and our
pleasures few? The liability is to too great familiarity with the
subject. When our words make children look abashed, and call a
constraint over the manners of those we are conversing with, and cause
even the most familiar eyes to be averted, we find ourselves reminded
that the subject of a person’s death is one usually thought not easy to
discuss with him. In our retirement, we are apt to forget, till
expressly reminded, the importance of distinctions of rank and property
in society, so nearly as they vanish in our survey of life, in
comparison with moral differences; and, in like manner, we have to recal
an almost lost idea, that death is an awkward topic, except in the
abstract, when our casual mention of a will, or of some transaction to
follow our death, introduces an awe and constraint into conversation.
Such familiarity may be, and often is, condemned as presumptuous. There
may be cases in which it is so; but I think it would be hard to make the
censure general. The confident reckoning on the joys of heaven for one’s
self, on any grounds, while others are supposed to be condemned to a
contrary lot, is a superstition more offensive to my feelings than that
which renders a trembling soul, clinging to life, aghast at the idea of
meeting its Maker and Father. But a soul without any self-complacency,
or ignorant confidence, may yet be easy and eager in the prospect of
entering upon that awful new scene. Setting aside all the inducements
from the hope of relief and rest, the humblest spirit may be conceived
of as tranquil and aspiring in full view of the transition; and this
under a full sense of its sins and failures, and without reliance on any
imaginary security,--without need of other reliance than its Father in
Heaven. There may be--there is--in some, so continual a regard to God in
life, that there cannot seem anything very new and strange in going
anywhere where He is. There maybe--and there is--in some, so earnest a
desire to be purified from sin, that they would undergo anything on
earth to be freed from it, and therefore fear nothing, but rather
welcome any discipline which may be reserved beyond. Knowing that the
revelation of the evil of their sin must be most painful, but also most
necessary to their progress, they are ready, even eager for it, pressing
forward to the suffering through which they hope to be made perfect. If
with such dispositions is joined that ardent, reverential filial love
which generates perfect trust, and rejects any interposition between
itself and the benign countenance in whose light it lives, there may be
nothing blameable or dangerous in the readiness for death, or in the
happy familiarity with which the event may be spoken of. It is a case
in which every man should be slow to judge his neighbour, while the
natural verdict of thoughtful observers would seem to be that a sufferer
under irremediable illness, who preserves a general patience, cares for
others’ happiness more than for his own, and has always lived in view of
an eternal life, can hardly be wrong in anticipating that life with ease
and cheerfulness, whatever analysis or judgment dogmatists may make of
his state of mind.
Whether our imaginings of Death are more or less a true anticipation of
it, can be proved only by experience. It may be found that they are no
more just than my idea of the matter when I was a child, when my brother
and I dug a grave, and then lay down in it, by turns, and shut our eyes,
to try what dying was like. Practically, such failures of conception
cannot matter much. A person who is setting out on foreign travel for
the first time, takes no harm by expecting the voyage and the landing
among foreigners to be something very unlike what they prove. His
preconceptions answered their purpose, by rendering him ready and
willing to go, and preventing his being taken by surprise by the
summons. Still, those of us have greatly the advantage whose minds are
enlarged by knowledge, and their imaginations animated and strengthened
by exercise. Some of the most innocent and kind-hearted people I have
known have been the most afraid of death,--not from consciousness of
sin, but from dread of overpowering novelty--from a horror of feeling
lost among scenes where there is nothing familiar; while, in opposite
cases, a philosophic interest and wonder have been known to go far in
reconciling a highly intellectual man to leaving the companions he loved
best in life.
There can be no question as to the difference in the ease of departure
(moral conditions being supposed the same) of the housewife, whose days
and faculties have been occupied with the market, the shop, and the home
where her whole life has been passed, and the philosopher, whose nerves
thrill with delight, unmixed with terror, at the very first view of the
new wonders revealed by Lord Rosse’s speculum. It is striking, that a
man about to be thrust forth from life for a plot of murder on an
enormous scale, should, while waiting for death the next moment, whisper
to a fellow-sufferer, “Now we shall soon know the great secret;” while
a pure and beneficent being, beloved by God and his neighbour, should
pray to be loaded with any weight of years and sufferings rather than go
from the familiar scene on which he has opened his eyes every day for
sixty years. “Grand secrets” have no charms for him, but only horrors;
and as for new scenes, even within our own corner of the earth,
mountains and waterfalls overpower him, and he shuffles back to shops
and streets.
Let persons so constitutionally different be shut into a sick-room,
knowing that they will issue from it only by death, and what will they
do? By the habit of looking forward to this exit for relief, the timid
may come to speak and think of it as tranquilly as the speculative; but
then, when the sensation overtakes him, the difference is again
apparent. It does seem as if there were in the seizure of death a
sensation wholly peculiar, and which cannot be mistaken. Cases of
unconsciousness are no evidence to the contrary; and there are so many
instances of decisive declaration by the dying, as to make the fact
pretty certain. Then finally appears (supposing both conscious) the
distinction in the act of dying, between the enlarged and speculative
mind and the contracted one which clings to details. Then the harassed
sufferer, who has a hundred times exclaimed, in the struggles of
disease, “O! this is dying many times over!” shudders out at last, in
quite another tone, “O God! this is death!” Then the exhausted
debauchee, after every hollow show of preparation by decorous prayer,
mutters, in the terror of the reality, “O God! this is death!” At such a
time, the philosophic physician, seizing his sole opportunity of
experience of the phenomena of death, keeps his finger on his pulse as
his heart is coming to a stop, and notifies its last beat as a fact in
useful science. At such a time, the diligent Christian--a judge, a rich
man, without a crook in his lot--suddenly sentenced, struggles to
breathe into his wife’s bending ear his last words: “This is death! Our
children ... tell them--I have had everything man could enjoy ... and
all is nothing in comparison with holiness. Pure and holy--make them.
Care for nothing else! O! all is well!” When he could no longer speak or
move, his countenance was full of soul; not a trace of fear upon it, but
a whole heaven of joyful expectation. Here are differences!
Of course, there is no waiting till the last moment for these
differences to show themselves. Outside enquirers may be satisfied that
invalids’ anticipation of death varies with their habits of mind. Some
merely anticipate; some contemplate. With some, the anticipation is
merely of relief and rest; with others it is worthier of our human and
Christian hope. In no case of permanent illness can I conceive the idea
to be otherwise than familiar, under one aspect or another; so familiar,
as that it is astonishing to us that we can obtain so little
conversation upon it as a reality--a certainty in full view. To us this
seems more extraordinary than it would be if the friends of Parry, and
Franklin, or Back, were, as the season for a Polar expedition drew nigh,
to talk to them about everything else, but be constrained and shy on
that. I say “more extraordinary,” because it is not everybody that is
bound, sooner or later, to the North Pole, but only a few crews;
whereas, all have an interest in the passage of that other, that “narrow
sea,” and in the “better country” which is its further shore.
Perhaps the familiarity of the idea of death is by nothing so much
enhanced to us as by the departure before us of those who have
sympathised in our prospect. The close domestic interest thus imparted
to that other life is such as I certainly never conceived of when in
health, and such as I observe people in health do not conceive of now.
It seems but the other day that I was receiving letters of sympathy and
solace, and also of religious and philosophical investigation as to how
life here and hereafter appeared to me; letters which told of activity,
of labours, and journeyings, which humbled me by a sense of idleness and
uselessness, while _they_ spoke of humbling feelings in regarding the
privileges of my seclusion. All this is as if it were yesterday: and
now, these correspondents have been gone for years. For years we have
thought of them as knowing “the grand secret,” as familiarized with
those scenes we are for ever prying into, while I lie no wiser (in such
a comparison) than when they endeavoured to learn somewhat of these
matters from me. And besides these close and dear companions, what
departures are continually taking place! Every new year there are
several--friends, acquaintance, or strangers--who shake their heads when
I am mentioned, in friendly regret at another year opening before me
without prospect of health--who send me comforts or luxuries, or words
of sympathy, amidst the pauses of their busy lives; and before another
year comes round, they have dropped out of our world--have learned
quickly far more than I can acquire by my leisure--and from being merely
outside my little spot of life, have passed to above and beyond it.
Little ones who speculated on me with awe--youthful ones who ministered
to me with pity--- busy and important persons, who gave a cordial but
passing sigh to the lot of the idle and helpless; some of all these have
outstripped me, and left me looking wistfully after them. Such incidents
make the future at least as real and familiar to me as the outside
world; and every permanent invalid will say the same: and we must not be
wondered at if we speak of that great interest of ours oftener, and with
more familiarity, than others use.
Neither should we be wondered at if we speak with a confidence which
some cannot share, of meeting these our friends, and communing with
them, when we ourselves depart. We have no power to doubt of this, if we
believe at all that we shall live hereafter. I have said how intensely
we feel that our spiritual part is indestructible. We feel no less
vividly that of that spiritual part the affections are the true
vitality; that they are the soul within the soul--our inmost life. The
affections cannot exist without their objects; and our congenial
friends--the brethren of our soul--therefore survive as surely as God
survives. If God is recognisable by the worshipper, and Christ by the
Christian, the beloved are recognisable by those who love. To demur to
this to the sufferer who (all other life being weakened and embittered)
lives by the affections, divine and human, is, to him, much like
doubting whether the atmosphere bears any relation to music, or the
human understanding to truth.
If there are hours when, through pain and weakness, we would fain
decline existence altogether, as a sick and wearied child frets at
sunshine and music, and would rather sleep in darkness and silence,
there is no moment in which we do not believe, as if we saw, that the
departed righteous are in communion, full and active, in exact
proportion as the ardour and fidelity of their mutual love deserves and
necessitates. We believe this as if we saw it, whatever be our own
immediate mood, as, on every night of winter, however cloudy, we are
well assured that the constellations are in the sky,--that Orion and the
Wain have risen and are circling, steady, clear and serene, whatever be
the state of the elements below them. As the life of the sick-room must
necessarily be, whether its objects be high or low, one of faith and not
of sight, those who visit it may easily perceive that it is not the
appropriate field for demonstration. In its own province Demonstration
is supreme. There let it dictate and pronounce. But we sufferers inhabit
a separate region of human experience, where there is another and a
prophetic oracle; where the voice of Demonstration itself must be dumb
before that of the steadfast, incommunicable assurance of the soul.
Here are some of the aspects of Death to the long-suffering Invalid.
TEMPER.
“We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body.”
SHAKSPERE.
“Behold thy trophies within thee, not without thee. Lead thine own
captivity captive, and be Cæsar unto thyself.”
SIR THOMAS BROWN.
It is very surprising, and rather amusing, to invalids whose
constitution and disease dispose them to other kinds of ill-temper
rather than irritability, to perceive how this tendency, and no other,
is set up as a test of temper by persons inexperienced in sickness.
There are cases, and they are not few, where an invalid’s freedom from
irritability of temper is a merit of a very high order indeed: but there
are many,--perhaps more,--where, to award praise on this ground, is like
extolling the sick person for being worthy of trust with untold gold, or
for his being never known to game or get drunk. This last, indeed,
may,--amidst the sinkings of illness, with wine and laudanum in the
closet,--often be actually the greater merit. It is a case in which
every thing depends on the existence of temptation. Persons suffering
under frequent fever, or certain kinds of pain or nervous disturbance,
or afflicted with ill-qualified nurses, may be pardoned for almost any
degree of irritability, or may be unspeakably meritorious in resisting
the tendency, with more or less steadiness. But there are some of us who
cannot but smile at compliments on our freedom from irritability, when
we feel that we never have the slightest inclination to be cross, nor
have the least excuse for being so,--while we may be most abasingly
aware of other kinds of frailty of temper.
To me it appears that we are, for the most part, in greater peril from
other faults, because they are less looked for, less discussed and
recognised, and we are, therefore, less put upon our guard against them:
and also because their consequences are less immediately and obviously
detrimental to our own comfort. Besides that all persons grow up on the
look-out for irritability of temper, and therefore are more or less on
the watch against it when they come to be ill, it is clear to the idlest
and most selfish mind, that the whole hope of comfort in the sick-room
depends on the freedom and cheerfulness of the intercourse held in
it,--a freedom and cheerfulness forfeited by irritability on the part of
the sufferer,--necessarily forfeited, even if he were tended by the
hands of angels. Children are the brightest, if not the tenderest,
angels of the sick-room; and the alternative between their coming
springing in, not only voluntarily but eagerly, and their being brought,
for observance’ sake, with force and fear, is of itself inducement
enough to self-control on the part of the most fretted patient, in the
most feverish hour. Even in the middle of the night, when no one is by
but the soundly sleeping nurse, the invalid feels admonished to suppress
the slightest moan, when he sees in fancy his little friends the next
morning either leaping from their beds at the joyful thought that they
may visit him, or asking, with awe and gravity, whether they must go,
and how soon they may come away. It is the sweetest of cordials to the
heart of an invalid to learn, by chance, that children count the days
and hours till they may come, and that all their gravity is about having
to go away. It is the most refined flattery to let one know it: and the
knowledge of it may well be almost a specific against ill-temper. And
then again, the nurse. It is by no means sufficient for one’s comfort
that one’s nurse should be well qualified,--ever so trust-worthy, and
ever so kind: it is necessary too that she should be free and happy.
There must be no fear in her tread,--no reserve in her eye,--no
management in her voice--no choice in her tidings. There is no
ill-temper in that jealousy of the invalid’s spirit which requires
assurance of being no burden, and no restraint. It is a righteous
jealousy, and among the most effectual safeguards against the indulgence
of ill-humour. That there are disorders, and seasons of illness, which
almost compel the forfeiture of the mental and moral freedom and ease of
the sick-room, is a painful truth; and those who suffer under such
irresistible or unresisted irritation are supremely to be
compassionated, whether their actual pain of body be more or less. But
it is quite as certain that a large number of sufferers are exempt from
temptation to this kind of failure, being subject, the while, to some
other,--more tolerable, as affecting only, or chiefly, their own
happiness.