'Naked came I out of my mother's womb.'
We need not dwell on the figure 'mother,' suggesting the grave as the
kindly mother's bosom that gathers us all in, and the thought that
perhaps gleams forth that death, too, is a kind of birth.
But the truth picturesquely set forth is just the old and simple
one--that all possessions are transient.
The naked self gets clothed and lapped round with possessions, but
they are all outside of it, apart from its individuality. It has been
without them. It will be without them. Death at the end will rob us of
them all.
The inevitable law of loss is fixed and certain. We are losing
something every moment--not only possessions, but all our dearest ties
are knit but for a time, and sure to be snapped. They go, and then
after a while we go.
The independence of each soul of all its possessions and relations is
as certain as the loss of them. They may go and we are made naked, but
still we exist all the same. We have to learn the hard lesson which
sounds so unfeeling, that we can live on in spite of all losses.
Nothing, no one, is necessary to us.
All this is very cold and miserable; it is the standing point of law
and necessity. An atheist could say it. It is the beginning of the
Christian contemplation of life, but only the beginning.