We employ with regard to death a great deal of pagan imagery, which can hardly fail to let low and unworthy ideas into our minds. We talk of the blighting of early promise, of the premature death of the young and the beautiful. We too often speak of the pure and the good that have gone from us, as if they were objects of pity. We regret for them the brief pleasures, the withering joys of the passing day. And then our thoughts revert, oftener than a high Christian culture should permit, to the sad accompaniments of dissolution and the last lonely home of the frail tenement of clay, even as the caterpillar might look upon the torn covering of the chrysalis as all that remained of his fellow-worm, ignorant that the rent and forsaken tabernacle marked the higher birth of its tenant. But our faith tells us that to those to whom it was Christ to live, it is gain to die. Let our thoughts, then, linger not about the grave, but seek our kindred in the nearer presence of their Father and their Savior, in the home where every holy wish is met and every pure desire fulfilled, where suffering and sorrow are no more, and life clothes itself in eternal youth and unfading beauty. What would our brief joys be to those to whom all the avenues of divine wisdom are free, the riches of infinite love unfolded, and a boundless sphere of duty and of happiness laid open? In the language of Moore: Prof. A. P. Peabody, D. D.
How happy The holy spirits who wander there, 'Mid flowers that shall never fade or fall ! Though mine were the gardens of earth and sea, Though the stars themselves had flowers for me, One blossom of heaven out-blooms them all. Go, wing thy flight from star to star, From world to luminous world, as far As the universe spreads its flaming wall ; Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, And multiply each through endless years, One minute of heaven is worth them all.
Oh, tell me not that they are dead - that generous host, that airy army of invisible heroes! They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism? Every mountain and hill shall have its treasured name, every river shall keep some solemn title, every valley and every lake shall cherish its honored register; and, till the mountains are worn out, and the rivers forget to flow, till the clouds are weary of replenishing springs, and the springs forget to gush, and the rills to sing, shall their names be kept fresh with reverent honors which are inscribed upon the book of national remembrance. Henry Ward Beecher
"The Most Famous Man in America" Henry Ward Beecher
For centuries the world has admired the calmness and fortitude of Socrates in the presence of death, but if Socrates died like a philosopher, Patrick Henry died like a Christian. In his last illness, all other remedies having failed, his physician, Doctor Cobell, proceeded to administer to him a dose of liquid mercury. Taking the vial in his hand, and looking at it for a moment, the dying man said:
"I suppose doctor, this is your last resort?''
" I am sorry to say, governor, that it is."
"What will be the effect of this medicine?"
"It will give you immediate relief, or--"
The doctor could not finish the sentence.
His patient too up the word: "You mean, doctor, that it will give relief or will prove fatal immediately?"
"You can live only a very short time without it," the doctor answered, "and it may possibly relieve you."
Then the old statesman said:
"Excuse me, doctor, for a few minutes," and drawing over his eyes a silken cap which he usually wore, and still holding the vial in his hand, he prayed in clear words a simple, childlike prayer for his family, for his country, and for his own soul, then in the presence of death. Afterward, in perfect calmness, he swallowed the medicine.
Meanwhile Doctor Cobell, who greatly loved him, went out to the lawn, and in his grief threw himself down upon the earth under one of the trees, and wept bitterly. Soon, when he had sufficiently mastered himself, the doctor returned to his patient, whom he found calmly watching the congealing blood under his finger-nails, and speaking words of love and peace to his family, who were weeping round his chair.
Among other things, he told them that he was thankful for that goodness of God which, having blest him through all his life, was then permitting him to die without any pain. Finally fixing his eyes with much tenderness upon his dear friend, Doctor Cobell, with whom he had formerly held many arguments respecting the Christian religion, he asked the doctor to observe how great a reality and benefit that religion was to a man about to die.
And after Patrick Henry had spoken these few words in praise of something which, having never failed him in his life before, did not then fail him in his very last need of it, he continued to breath very softly for some moments, after which they who were looking upon him saw that his life had departed. -- The Youth's Companion
