Washington, D. C., January 8, 1882.
MY FRIENDS: I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I
wish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life
and death are equal kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all
the dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and
polluted by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds
and blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth,
patriarchs and babes sleep side by side.
Why should we fear that which will come to all that is? We cannot tell,
we do not know, which is the greater blessing--life or death. We cannot
say that death is not a good. We do not know whether the grave is the
end of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here
is not somewhere else a dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more
fortunate--the child dying in its mother's arms, before its lips have
learned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life's
uneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch.
Every cradle asks us "Whence?" and every coffin "Whither?" The poor
barbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions just
as well as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful
ignorance of the one, is as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words
of the other. No man, standing where the horizon of a life has touched a
grave, has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears.
May be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those we press
and strain within our arms could never die, perhaps that love would
wither from the earth. May be this common fate treads from out the paths
between our hearts the weeds of selfishness and hate. And I had rather
live and love where death is king, than have eternal life where love is
not. Another life is nought, unless we know and love again the ones who
love us here.
They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have
no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be,
tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know
that through the common wants of life--the needs and duties of each
hour--their grief will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will
be to them a place of rest and peace--almost of joy. There is for them
this consolation: The dead do not suffer. If they live again, their
lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all
children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too,
have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living--Hope for the
dead.