_M. Guizot’s Confession of Faith_
In the _Christianisme du XIX. Siècle_ the following extract from M.
Guizot’s will is printed:
“I die in the bosom of the Reformed Christian Church of France, in which
I was born, and in which I congratulate myself on having been born. In
remaining attached to her, I have always exercised that liberty of
conscience which she allows to her adherents in their relations with
God, and which she invoked for her own basis. I have inquired, I have
doubted; I have believed in the sufficiency of the human mind to resolve
the problems presented to it by the universe and by man, and in the
power of the human will to govern man’s life in accordance with its law
and its moral purpose. After having lived, acted, and reflected long, I
have remained, and still remain, convinced that neither the universe nor
man suffice either to explain or to govern themselves naturally by the
mere force of fixed laws to which they are subject, and of human wills
that are brought into play. It is my profound faith that God, who
created the universe and man, governs, upholds, or modifies them either
by general, and, as we may say, natural laws, or by special and, as we
call them, supernatural acts, emanating, as do also the general laws,
from His perfect and free wisdom and His infinite power, which it is
given to us to acknowledge in their effects, but forbidden to understand
in their essence and design. Thus I have returned to the convictions in
which I was cradled. Still firmly attached to reason and liberty, which
I have received from God, and which are my honor and my right in this
world, though I have returned to feel myself a child under the hand of
God, sincerely resigned to my large share of weakness and ignorance, I
believe in God, and adore Him without seeking to comprehend Him. I
recognize Him present and at work not only in the fixed system of the
universe and in the inner life of the soul, but also in the history of
human society, specially in the Old and New Testaments,—monuments of
revelation and Divine action, by the mediation and sacrifice of our
Saviour Jesus Christ for the salvation of the human race. I bow myself
before the mysteries of the Bible and the Gospel, and I stand aloof from
the discussion and the scientific solution by which men have tried to
explain them. I trust that God will allow me to call myself a Christian;
and I am convinced that in the light on which I am about to enter, we
shall see clearly the purely human origin and the vanity of the greater
part of our discussions here below on Divine things.”
_Thiers’s Faith_
The political testament of Thiers commences thus: “Faith in an immense
and incomprehensible God has not left me for a moment of my life, and I
wish it to be my first thought now while I turn my mind towards my end.
I have always denied a personal God, a revenger endowed with all the
vain splendors, and subject to the miserable passions of humanity. But I
prostrate myself, confused by my littleness, before the immense
uncreated cause of the Cosmos, and I confide in that provident and
immutable justice which I see diffused and dominant through the whole
creation.”
_Patrick Henry’s Legacy_
Patrick Henry left in his will the following important message:
“I have now disposed of all my property to my family; there is one thing
more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion. If
they had that, and I had not given them one shilling, they would be
rich, and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they
would be poor.”
_Goethe’s Last Words_
These are said to have been “Mehr Licht!” (more light), and they are
often quoted as if they were regarded as worthy of a philosopher and
great writer. They are commonly looked upon as having reference to
increased enlightenment of the mind and soul only, which we must, or
should, all of us desire and long for. Probably Goethe had nothing more
in his mind than plain ordinary physical light. On the near approach of
death, light, which in the case of old people has been for years
gradually producing less and less impression on the sensorium, ceases,
in many cases, to produce more than the faintest impression, and so the
dying person imagines himself to be in the dark, and calls out for more
light. And this, most likely, was the case with Goethe.
_A Rational View_
Here is a passage from the last letter traced by the hands of George
Sand, which is singularly like to a saying of Goethe on his death-bed:
“I am not one of those who shrink from submission to a great law and
rebel against the end of universal life.” Is it not told of the great
German that he broke a long silence by this wise and consolatory
utterance: “After all, this death is so general a thing, it cannot be an
evil thing.”
_Avoidance_
Dr. Charles F. Deems, the genial pastor of the Church of the Strangers,
New York City, on reaching his seventieth birthday, thus briefly gave
out the secret of his successful and happy life:
The world is wide
In time and tide,
And God is guide,
Then—do not hurry.
That man is blest
Who does his best
And leaves the rest,
Then—do not worry.
_A Scene at Old Hickory’s Death-bed_
Mrs. Wilcox was present at General Jackson’s death, one bright and
beautiful Sabbath morning in the June of 1845, and she described it as a
scene never to be forgotten. He bade them all adieu in the tenderest
terms, and enjoined them, old and young, white and black, to meet him in
heaven. All were in tears, and when he had breathed his last the
outburst of grief was irrepressible. The congregation at the little
Presbyterian Church on the plantation, which the general had built to
gratify his deceased wife, the morning service over, came flocking to
the mansion as his eyes were closing, and added their bewailment to the
general sorrow.
Shortly after this mournful event Mrs. Wilcox encountered an old servant
in the kitchen, who was sobbing as though her heart would break. “Ole
missus is gone,” she brokenly said to the child, “and now ole massa’s
gone; dey’s all gone, and dey was our best frens. An ole massa, not
satisfied teachin’ us how to live, has now teached us how to die!”
The poor, unlettered creature did not know that she was paraphrasing one
of the most beautiful passages in Tickell’s elegy upon the “Death of
Addison”:
“He taught us how to live, and (oh, too high
The price for knowledge!) taught us how to die.”
_Imperator Augustus_
Is this the man by whose decree abide
The lives of countless nations, with the trace
Of fresh tears wet upon the hard, cold face?
He wept because a little child had died.
They set a marble image by his side,
A sculptured Eros, ready for the chase;
It wore the dead boy’s features, and the grace
Of pretty ways that were the old man’s pride.
And so he smiled, grown softer now, and tired
Of too much empire, and it seemed a joy
Fondly to stroke and pet the curly head,
The smooth, round curls so strongly like the dead,
To kiss the white lips of his marble boy,
And call by name his little heart’s-desired.
_Mary Stuart’s Prayer_
Of the English versions of the prayer of Mary, Queen of Scots, two of
the best are as follows. The first is from Swinburne’s tragedy, “Mary
Stuart”:
O Lord, my God,
I have trusted in Thee;
O Jesu, my dearest One,
Now set me free.
In prison’s oppression,
In sorrow’s obsession,
I weary for Thee.
With sighing and crying,
Bowed down in dying.
I adore Thee, I implore Thee, set me free.
The next has been attributed to Denis Florence McCarthy, an Irish poet:
Lord God, all my hope is
In Thee, only Thee!
O Jesu, my Saviour,
Now liberate me!
In chains that have bound me,
In pains that surround me,
Still longing for Thee;
Here kneeling, appealing,
My misery feeling,
Adoring, imploring,
Oh, liberate me!
_Into the World and Out_
Into the world he looked with sweet surprise.
The children laughed so when they saw his eyes.
Into the world a rosy hand in doubt
He reached;—a pale hand took the rosebud out.
“And that was all,—quite all?” Ho, surely! But
The children cried so when his eyes were shut.
_Patientia_
Toil on, O troubled brain,
With anxious thoughts and busy scenes opprest,
Ere long release shall reach thee. A brief pain!
Then—rest!
Watch still, O heavy eyes,
A little longer must ye vigil keep;
And lo! your lids shall close at morning’s rise
In sleep.
Throb yet, O aching heart,
Still pulse the flagging current without cease;
When you a few hours more have played your part,
Comes Peace.
Bear up, then, weary soul!
Short is the path remaining to be trod—
Lay down the fleshy shroud and touch the goal—
Then—God!
TOM. HOOD.
A friend of John Adams, our second President, called upon him one day
towards the close of his life, to inquire after his health. “I am not
well,” he replied; “I inhabit a weak, frail, decayed tenement, open to
the winds, and broken in upon by the storms; and what is worse, _from
all I can learn, the landlord does not intend to repair_.”
Faith, Hope, and Love were questioned what they thought
Of future glory, which religion taught:
Now Faith believed it firmly to be true,
And Hope expected so to find it, too:
Love answered smiling with a conscious glow,
“Believe? Expect? I know it to be so.”
Mountford says in “Euthanasy”:
“Faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.
And in that there is all comfort for them that hope to meet again. Love!
Why should we doubt it will have its objects? for that faith will have
its, we are sure; and love is greater than faith. If there is a heaven
for our faith, there are friends in it for our love. I have known those
who have grown holy through thoughts of the dead. We are saved by hope,
and some of us by the special hope of being with our friends again. So
that if there is salvation by hope, our friends whom we so hope for we
shall certainly have again. We are not to sorrow for the dead as those
that have no hope; now this implies our knowing our friends hereafter;
because our grief is for their having been taken from us, and not for
their having been taken into happiness.”
_Death_
Death is the one consoler, true and tried;
The goal of life, the hope we last retain,
Which, like some rare elixir, charms our pain
And heartens us to march till eventide;
The streaks of morning which the clouds divide
Athwart the tempest, snow, and driving rain;
The inn toward which the wayworn travellers strain,
Certain to find rest there, whate’er betide:
An angel holding in his sovereign hand
Sleep, and the guerdon of ecstatic dreams,
That smooths the couch and shuts the weary eyes:
The prisoner’s key; the leper’s healing streams;
The beggar’s purse; the exile’s fatherland;
The open portico to unknown skies.
BAUDELAIRE, _Fleurs du Mal_.
* * * * *
The man hath reached the goal and won the prize,
Who lives with honor, and who calmly dies
With name unstained, in fond remembrance kept,
By friends, by kindred, and by country wept;
Blending, when life is but a faded spell,
An angel’s welcome with the world’s farewell!
* * * * *
Bronson Alcott rested his argument for immortality on the ground of the
family affections. “Such strong ties,” he reasoned, “could not have been
made merely to be broken.” Let us share his faith, and believe that they
are not broken.