Ponce de Leon searched Florida for the spring of the elixir of
life; thousands of alchemists have attempted to concoct it;
innumerable patent medicines in every drugstore testify to the
universal effort to prolong earthly existence; a miser will
fling away his last piece of gold to save his life; lawyers will
battle to the last device of law to save a client from execution
if only to prolong his existence in a prison; and tho Bacon
says “there is no passion so mean as that it can not mate and
master the fear of death,” he was speaking only of sudden and
occasional passions. The rule is that passion to live outmasters
all other passions.
What a word then is this of Jesus when He says, “I came that they might
have life.”
(1804)