THE pause which naturally followed the observation of the Elder was
broken abruptly by the Skipper.
"Hillo!" he cried, pointing with the glazed hat with which he had been
fanning himself. "Here away in the northeast. Going down the coast for
better fishing, I guess."
"An eagle, as I live!" exclaimed the Doctor, following with his cane the
direction of the Skipper's hat. "Just see how royally he wheels upward
and onward, his sail-broad wings stretched motionless, save an
occasional flap to keep up his impetus! Look! the circle in which he
moves grows narrower; he is a gray cloud in the sky, a point, a mere
speck or dust-mote. And now he is clean swallowed up in the distance.
The wise man of old did well to confess his ignorance of 'the way of an
eagle in the air.'"
"The eagle," said Elder Staples, "seems to have been a favorite
illustration of the sacred penman. 'They that wait upon the Lord shall
renew their strength; they shall mount upward as on the wings of an
eagle.'"
"What think you of this passage?" said the Doctor. "'As when a bird
hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found;
but the light air, beaten with the stroke of her wings and parted by the
violent noise and motion thereof, is passed through, and therein
afterward no sign of her path can be found.'
"I don't remember the passage," said the Elder.
"I dare say not," quoth the Doctor. "You clergymen take it for granted
that no good thing can come home from the Nazareth of the Apocrypha.
But where will you find anything more beautiful and cheering than these
verses in connection with that which I just cited?--'The hope of the
ungodly is like dust that is blown away by the wind; like the thin foam
which is driven by the storm; like the smoke which is scattered here and
there by the whirlwind; it passeth away like the remembrance of a guest
that tarrieth but a day. But the righteous live forevermore; their
reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them with the Most High.
Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown
from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall He cover them, and
with his arm shall He protect them.'"
"That, if I mistake not, is from the Wisdom of Solomon," said the Elder.
"It is a striking passage; and there are many such in the uncanonical
books."
"Canonical or not," answered the Doctor, "it is God's truth, and stands
in no need of the endorsement of a set of well-meaning but purblind
bigots and pedants, who presumed to set metes and bounds to Divine
inspiration, and decide by vote what is God's truth and what is the
Devil's falsehood. But, speaking of eagles, I never see one of these
spiteful old sea-robbers without fancying that he may be the soul of a
mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian
philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations
upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and
certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and
similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance."
"Swedenborg tells us," said I, "that lost human souls in the spiritual
world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the
lower animals,--for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and
the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and
vultures,--and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis,
imagining themselves marvellous proper men,' and are quite well
satisfied with their company and condition."
"Swedenborg," said the Elder, "was an insane man, or worse."
"Perhaps so," said the Doctor; "but there is a great deal of 'method in
his madness,' and plain common sense too. There is one grand and
beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the
future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and
naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,--following in
the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and
desires,--and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or
evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation
governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying
it, the spirit retains in the new life whatever freedom of will it
possessed in its first stage of being. But I see the Elder shakes his
head, as much as to say, I am 'wise above what is written,' or, at any
rate, meddling with matters beyond my comprehension. Our young friend
here," he continued, turning to me, "has the appearance of a listener;
but I suspect he is busy with his own reveries, or enjoying the fresh
sights and sounds of this fine morning. I doubt whether our discourse
has edified him."
"Pardon me," said I; "I was, indeed, listening to another and older
oracle."
"Well, tell us what you hear," said the Doctor.
"A faint, low murmur, rising and falling on the wind. Now it comes
rolling in upon me, wave after wave of sweet, solemn music. There was a
grand organ swell; and now it dies away as into the infinite distance;
but I still hear it,--whether with ear or spirit I know not,--the very
ghost of sound."
"Ah, yes," said the Doctor; "I understand it is the voice of the pines
yonder,--a sort of morning song of praise to the Giver of life and Maker
of beauty. My ear is dull now, and I cannot hear it; but I know it is
sounding on as it did when I first climbed up here in the bright June
mornings of boyhood, and it will sound on just the same when the
deafness of the grave shall settle upon my failing senses. Did it never
occur to you that this deafness and blindness to accustomed beauty and
harmony is one of the saddest thoughts connected with the great change
which awaits us? Have you not felt at times that our ordinary
conceptions of heaven itself, derived from the vague hints and Oriental
imagery of the Scriptures, are sadly inadequate to our human wants and
hopes? How gladly would we forego the golden streets and gates of
pearl, the thrones, temples, and harps, for the sunset lights of our
native valleys; the woodpaths, whose moss carpets are woven with violets
and wild flowers; the songs of birds, the low of cattle, the hum of bees
in the apple-blossom,--the sweet, familiar voices of human life and
nature! In the place of strange splendors and unknown music, should we
not welcome rather whatever reminded us of the common sights and sounds
of our old home?"
"You touch a sad chord, Doctor," said I. "Would that we could feel
assured of the eternity of all we love!"
"And have I not an assurance of it at this very moment?" returned the
Doctor. "My outward ear fails me; yet I seem to hear as formerly the
sound of the wind in the pines. I close my eyes; and the picture of my
home is still before me. I see the green hill slope and meadows; the
white shaft of the village steeple springing up from the midst of maples
and elms; the river all afire with sunshine; the broad, dark belt of
woodland; and, away beyond, all the blue level of the ocean. And now,
by a single effort of will, I can call before me a winter picture of the
same scene. It is morning as now; but how different! All night has the
white meteor fallen, in broad flake or minutest crystal, the sport and
plaything of winds that have wrought it into a thousand shapes of wild
beauty. Hill and valley, tree and fence, woodshed and well-sweep, barn
and pigsty, fishing-smacks frozen tip at the wharf, ribbed monsters of
dismantled hulks scattered along the river-side,--all lie transfigured
in the white glory and sunshine. The eye, wherever it turns, aches with
the cold brilliance, unrelieved save where. The blue smoke of morning
fires curls lazily up from the Parian roofs, or where the main channel
of the river, as yet unfrozen, shows its long winding line of dark water
glistening like a snake in the sun. Thus you perceive that the spirit
sees and hears without the aid of bodily organs; and why may it not be
so hereafter? Grant but memory to us, and we can lose nothing by death.
The scenes now passing before us will live in eternal reproduction,
created anew at will. We assuredly shall not love heaven the less that
it is separated by no impassable gulf from this fair and goodly earth,
and that the pleasant pictures of time linger like sunset clouds along
the horizon of eternity. When I was younger, I used to be greatly
troubled by the insecure tenure by which my senses held the beauty and
harmony of the outward world. When I looked at the moonlight on the
water, or the cloud-shadows on the hills, or the sunset sky, with the
tall, black tree-boles and waving foliage relieved against it, or when I
heard a mellow gush of music from the brown-breasted fife-bird in the
summer woods, or the merry quaver of the bobolink in the corn land, the
thought of an eternal loss of these familiar sights and sounds would
sometimes thrill through me with a sharp and bitter pain. I have reason
to thank God that this fear no longer troubles me. Nothing that is
really valuable and necessary for us can ever be lost. The present will
live hereafter; memory will bridge over the gulf between the two worlds;
for only on the condition of their intimate union can we preserve our
identity and personal consciousness. Blot out the memory of this world,
and what would heaven or hell be to us? Nothing whatever. Death would
be simple annihilation of our actual selves, and the substitution
therefor of a new creation, in which we should have no more interest
than in an inhabitant of Jupiter or the fixed stars."
The Elder, who had listened silently thus far, not without an occasional
and apparently involuntary manifestation of dissent, here interposed.
"Pardon me, my dear friend," said he; "but I must needs say that I look
upon speculations of this kind, however ingenious or plausible, as
unprofitable, and well-nigh presumptuous. For myself, I only know that
I am a weak, sinful man, accountable to and cared for by a just and
merciful God. What He has in reserve for me hereafter I know not, nor
have I any warrant to pry into His secrets. I do not know what it is to
pass from one life to another; but I humbly hope that, when I am sinking
in the dark waters, I may hear His voice of compassion and
encouragement, 'It is I; be not afraid.'"
"Amen," said the Skipper, solemnly.
"I dare say the Parson is right, in the main," said the Doctor. "Poor
creatures at the best, it is safer for us to trust, like children, in
the goodness of our Heavenly Father than to speculate too curiously in
respect to the things of a future life; and, notwithstanding all I have
said, I quite agree with good old Bishop Hall: 'It is enough for me to
rest in the hope that I shall one day see them; in the mean time, let me
be learnedly ignorant and incuriously devout, silently blessing the
power and wisdom of my infinite Creator, who knows how to honor himself
by all those unrevealed and glorious subordinations.'"