"And by it he being dead yet speaketh." Hebrews xi. 4.
Much of the communion of this earth is not by speech or actual contact,
and the holiest influences fall upon us in silence. A monument or symbol
shall convey a meaning which cannot be expressed; and a token of some
departed one is more eloquent than words. The mere presence of a good
and holy personage will move us to reverence and admiration, though he
may say and do but little. So is there an impersonal presence of such an
one; and, though far away, he converses with us, teaches and incites us.
The organs of speech are only one method of the soul's expression; and
the best information which it receives comes without voice or sound. We
hear no vocal utterance from God, yet he speaks to us through all the
forms of nature. In the blue, ever-arching heaven he tells us of his
comprehensive care and tender pity, and "the unwearied sun" proclaims
his constant and universal benevolence. The air that wraps us close
breathes of his intimate and all-pervading spirit; and the illimitable
space, and the stars that sparkle abroad without number, show forth his
majesty and suggest infinitude. The gush of silent prayer--the sublimest
mood of the spirit--is when we are so near to him that words cannot come
between; and the power of his presence is felt the most, felt in the
profoundest deep of our nature, when the curtains of his pavilion
hang motionless around us. And it is so, I repeat, with all our best
communions. The holiest lessons are not in the word, but the life. The
virtues that attract us most are silent. The most beautiful charities
go noiseless on their mission. The two mites reveal the spiritual
wealth beneath the poor widow's weeds; the alabaster box of ointment is
fragrant with Mary's gratitude; the look of Christ rebukes Peter into
penitence; and by his faith Abel, being dead, yet speaketh.
Yes, even the dead, long gone from us, returning no more, their places
left vacant, their lineaments dimly remembered, their bodies mouldering
back to dust, even these have communion with us; and to speak of "the
voices of the dead" is no mere fancy. And it is to that subject that I
would call your attention, in the remainder of a brief discourse.
"He being dead yet speaketh." The departed have voices for us. In order
to illustrate this, I remark, in the first place, that the dead speak to
us, and commune with us, through the works which they have left behind
them. As the islands of the sea are the built-up casements of myriads
of departed lives,--as the earth itself is a great catacomb,--so we who
live and move upon its surface inherit the productions and enjoy the
fruits of the dead. They have bequeathed to us by far the larger portion
of all that influences our thoughts, or mingles with the circumstances
of our daily life. We walk through the streets they laid out. We inhabit
the houses they built. We practise the customs they established. We
gather wisdom from books they wrote. We pluck the ripe clusters of their
experience. We boast in their achievements. And by these they speak to
us. Every device and influence they have left behind tells their story,
and is a voice of the dead. We feel this more impressively when we enter
the customary place of one recently departed, and look around upon his
work. The half-finished labor, the utensils hastily thrown aside,
the material that exercised his care and received his last touch, all
express him, and seem alive with his presence. By them, though dead, he
speaketh to us, with a freshness and tone like his words of yesterday.
How touching are those sketched forms, those unfilled outlines in
that picture which employed so fully the time and genius of the
great artist--Belshazzar's feast! In the incomplete process, the
transition-state of an idea from its conception to its realization, we
are brought closer to the mind of the artist; we detect its springs
and hidden workings, and therefore feel its reality more than in
the finished effort. And this is one reason why we are impressed at
beholding the work just left than in gazing upon one that has been for
a long time abandoned. Having had actual communion with the contriving
mind, we recognize its presence more readily in its production; or else
the recency of the departure heightens the expressiveness with which
everything speaks of the departed. The dead child's cast-off garment,
the toy just tossed aside, startles us as though with his renewed
presence. A year hence, they will suggest him to us, but with a
different effect.
But though not with such an impressive tone, yet just as much, in fact,
do the productions of those long gone speak to us. Their minds are
expressed there, and a living voice can do little more. Nay, we are
admitted to a more intimate knowledge of them than was possessed by
their contemporaries. The work they leave behind them is the sum-total
of their lives--expresses their ruling passion--reveals, perhaps, their
real sentiment. To the eyes of those placed on the stage with them, they
walked as in a show, and each life was a narrative gradually unfolding
itself. We discover the moral. We see the results of that completed
history. We judge the quality and value of that life by the residuum. As
"a prophet has no honor in his own country," so one may be misconceived
in his own time, both to his undue disparagement, and his undue
exaltation; therefore can another age better write his biography than
his own. His work, his permanent result, speaks for him better--at least
truer--than he spoke for himself. The rich man's wealth,--the sumptuous
property, the golden pile that he has left behind him;--by it, being
dead, does he not yet speak to us? Have we not, in that gorgeous result
of toiling days and anxious nights,--of brain-sweat and soul-rack,--the
man himself, the cardinal purpose, the very life of his soul? which we
might have surmised while he lived and wrought, but which, now that it
remains the whole sum and substance of his mortal being, speaks far
more emphatically than could any other voice he might have used. The
expressive lineaments of the marble, the pictured canvas, the immortal
poem;--by it, Genius, being dead, yet speaketh. To us, and not to its
own time, are unhoarded the wealth of its thought and the glory of its
inspiration. When it is gone,--when its lips are silent, and its heart
still,--then is revealed the cherished secret over which it toiled,
which was elaborated from the living alembic of the soul, through
painful days and weary nights,--the sentiment which could not find
expression to contemporaries,--the gift, the greatness, the lyric power,
which was disguised and unknown so long. Who, that has communed with
the work of such a spirit, has not felt in every line that thrilled his
soul, in every wondrous lineament that stamped itself upon his memory
forever, that the dead can speak, yes, that they have voices which
speak most truly, most emphatically when they are dead? So does Industry
speak, in its noble monuments, its precious fruits! So does Maternal
Affection speak, in a chord that vibrates in the hardest heart, in the
pure and better sentiment of after-years. So does Patriotism speak, in
the soil liberated and enriched by its sufferings. So does the martyr
speak, in the truth which triumphs by his sacrifice. So does the great
man speak, in his life and deeds, glowing on the storied page, so does
the good man speak, in the character and influence which he leaves
behind him. The voices of the dead come to us from their works, from
their results and these are all around us.
But I remark, in the second place, that the dead speak to us in memory
and association. If their voices may be constantly heard in their works,
we do not always heed them; neither have we that care and attachment for
the great congregation of the departed which will at any time call them
up vividly before us. But in that congregation there are those whom we
have known intimately and fondly, whom we cherished with our best love,
who lay close to our bosoms. And these speak to us in a more private and
peculiar manner,--in mementos that flash upon us the whole person of the
departed, every physical and spiritual lineament--in consecrated hours
of recollection that upon up all the train of the past, and re-twine its
broken ties around our hearts, and make its endearments present still.
Then, then, though dead, they speak to us. It needs not the vocal
utterance, nor the living presence, but the mood that transforms the
scene and the hour supplies these. That face that has slept so long
in the grave, now bending upon us, pale and silent, but affectionate
still,--that more vivid recollection of every feature, tone, and
movement, that brings before us the departed just as we knew them in the
full flush of life and health,--that soft and consecrating spell which
falls upon us, drawing in all our thoughts from the present, arresting,
as it were, the current of our being, and turning it back and holding it
still as the flood of actual life rushes by us,--while in that trance
of soul the beings of the past are shadowed--old friends, old days, old
scenes recur, familiar looks beam close upon us, familiar words reecho
in our ears, and we are closed up and absorbed with the by-gone, until
tears dissolve the film from our eyes, and some shock of the actual
wakes us from our reverie;--all these, I say make the dead to commune
with us as really as though in bodily form they should come out from
the chambers of their mysterious silence, and speak to us. And if life
consists in experiences, and not mere physical relations,--and if love
and communion belong to that experience, though they take place in
meditation, or in dreams, or by actual contact,--then, in that hour of
remembrance, have we really lived with the departed, and the departed
have come back and lived with us. Though dead, they have spoken to us.
And though memory sometimes induces the spirit of heaviness,--though it
is often the agent of conscience, and wakens u to chastise,--yet, it is
wonderful how, from events that were deeply mingled with pain, it
will extract an element of sweetness. A writer, in relating one of
the experiences of her sick-room, has illustrated this. In an hour of
suffering, when no one was near here, she went out from her bed and her
room to another apartment, and looked out upon a glorious landscape of
sunrise and spring-time. "I was suffering too much to enjoy this picture
at the moment," she says, "but how was it at the end of the year? The
pains of all those hours were annihilated,--as completely vanished as if
they had never been; while the momentary peep behind the window-curtain
made me possessor of this radiant picture for evermore." "Whence came
this wide difference," she asks, "between the good and the evil? Because
good is indissolubly connected with ideas,--with the unseen realities
which are indestructible." And though the illustration which she thus
gives may bear the impression of an individual personality, instead of
a universal truth, still, in the instance to which I apply it, I believe
it will very generally hold true, that memory leaves a pleasant rather
than a painful impression. At least, there is so much that is pleasant
mingled with it that we would not willingly lose the faculty of
memory,--the consciousness that we can thus call back the dead, and hear
their voices,--that we have the power of softening the rugged realities
which only suggest our loss and disappointment, by transferring the
scene and the hour to the past and the departed. And, as our conceptions
become more and more spiritual, we shall find the real to be less
dependent upon the outward and the visible,--we shall learn how much
life there is in a thought,--how veritable are the communions of spirit;
and the hour in which memory gives us the vision of the dead will be
prized by us as an hour of actual experience and such opportunities will
grow more precious to us. No, we would not willingly lose this power
of memory. One would not say, "Let the dead never come back to me in a
thought, or a dream; let them never glide before me in the still
watch of meditation; let me see, let me hear them no more, even in
fancy;"--not one of us would say this; and, therefore, it is
evident, that whatever painful circumstance memory or association may
recall,--even though it cause us to go out and weep bitterly,--there
is a sacred pleasure, a tender melancholy, that speaks to us in these
voices of the dead, which we are willing to cherish and repeat. It makes
our tears soft and sanctifying as they fall; it makes our hearts purer
and better,--makes them stronger for the conflict of life.
I remark, finally, that the dead speak to us in those religious
suggestions--those consolations, invitations, and hopes--which the
bereaved spirit indulges. Our meditations, concerning them naturally
draw us more closely to these spiritual realities which lie beyond the
grave, and beget in us those holier sentiments which we need. That such
is the tendency of these recollections experience assures us. They
open for us a new order of thought; they bring us in contact with the
loftiest but most neglected truths. Even the hardest heart feels this
influence. It is softened by the stroke of bereavement and, for the time
being, a chastening influence falls upon it, and it always thinks of
the dead with tenderness and awe. They speak to our affections with an
irresistible influence; they soothe our turbulent passions with their
mild and holy calmness; they rebuke us in their spiritual majesty for
our sensuality and our sin. They have departed, but they are not silent.
Though dead, they speak to us. Sweet and sanctifying is their communion
with us. They utter words of warning, too, and speak to us by the silent
eloquence of example. By this they bid us imitate all that was good in
their lives, all that is dear to remember. By this, too, they tell us
that we are passing swiftly from the earth, and hastening to join their
number. A little while ago, and they were as we are;--a little while
hence, and we shall be as they. Our work, like theirs, will be left
behind to speak for us. How important, then, that we consider what work
we do! They assure us that nothing is perpetual here. They bid us not
fasten our affections upon earth. In long procession they pass us by,
with solemn voices telling of their love and hatred, their interests
and cares, their work and device;--all abandoned now and passed away, as
little worth as the dust that blows across their graves. Upon all that
was theirs, upon every memorial of them, broods a melancholy dimness and
silence. They recede more and more from the associations of the living.
New tides of life roll through the cities of their habitation, and upon
the foot-worn pavements of their traffic other feet are busy. Their
lovely labor, or their stately pomp, is forgotten. No one weeps or cares
for them. Their solicitous monuments are unheeded. The companions of
their youth have rejoined them. The young, who scarcely remembered them,
are giving way to another generation. The places that knew them know
them no longer. "This, this," their solemn voices preach to us, "is the
changeableness of earth, and the emptiness of its pursuits!" They urge
us to seek the noblest end, the unfailing treasure. They bid us to find
our hope and our rest, our only constant joy in Him, who alone, amid
this mutability and decay, is permanent,--in God!
Well, then, is it for us to listen to the voices of the dead. By so
doing, we are better fitted for life, and for death. From that audience
we go purified and strengthened into the varied discipline of our mortal
state. We are willing to stay, knowing that the dead are so near us, and
that our communion with them may be so intimate. We are willing to go,
seeing that we shall not be widely separated from those we leave behind.
We will toil in our lot while God pleases, and when he summons us we
will calmly depart. When the silver cord becomes untwined, and the
golden bond broken,--when the wheel of action stands still in the
exhausted cistern of our life,--may we lie down in the light of that
faith which makes so beautiful the face of the dying Christian, and has
converted death's ghastly silence to a peaceful sleep; may we rise to a
holier and more visible communion, in the land without a sin and without
a tear; where the dead shall be closer to us than in this life; where
not the partition of a shadow, or a doubt, shall come between.