Iii — Immortality
If immortality inhere in objects known by us, these surely are persons; the ties of kindred being the liveliest, most abiding of any; our faith in the impossibility of being sundered forever, remaining unshaken to the last, and surviving all changes that our bodies may undergo.
“Deep love, the godlike in us, still believes
Its objects are immortal as itself.”
’Tis not our bodies that contain us but our souls. None beholds with bodily eyes the apparition of his person, sees and survives the ghost he provokes. The perturbed spirits alone linger about the tombs—dead before they die, dead burying their dead—comfortless because these are bereft of bodies, flesh being all of them they ever knew.O
Moreover, the insatiableness of our desires asserts our personal imperishableness. Yearning for full satisfactions while balked of these perpetually, we still prosecute our search for them, our faith in their attainment remaining unshaken under every disappointment. Our hope is eternal as ourselves—a never ending, still beginning quest of our divinity. Infinite in essence, we crave it in potence. The boundlessness and elasticity of the mind, its power of self-recovery, uprise from temporary obstructions self-imposed, or from temperament, are assurances made doubly sure of our soul’s infinitude and longevity. So the lives of empires, of men of genius and sanctity, are grand illustrations of its heroic strife for the largest freedom, the widest sway,—of instincts striving within, which these pent confines of time and space can neither subjugate nor appease.
“Take this, my child,” the father said,
“This globe I give thy mind for bread;”
Eager we seize the proffered store,
The bait devour—then ask for more.
“Everything aspires to its own perfection and is restless till it attain it, as the trembling needle till it find its beloved north. And the knowledge of this is innate as is the desire, else the last had been a torment and needless importunity. Nature shoots not at rovers. Even inanimate things, while ignorant of their perfection, are carried towards it by a blind impulse. But that which conducts them knows. The next order of beings have some sight of it, and man most perfectly till he touch the apple.” Our delights suckle us life long, our desires being memories of past satisfactions, and we here but sip pleasures once tasted to satiety. The more exquisite our enjoyments, the more transient; the more eagerly sought, the more elusive. We cannot come out of our paradise, nor stay in it contentedly, the gates of bliss closing on opening.
“E’en as the amorous needle joys to bend
To her magnetic friend,
Or as the greedy lover’s eyeballs fly
At his fair mistress’ eye,
Eager we kindle life’s illumined stuff,
Can tire, nor tease, nor kindle it enough.”
Still heaven is, our hearts affirm against every disappointment; and whether behind or before us, as memory or as hope, ’tis to be ours,—our port and resting place sometime in the stream of ages.
“All before us lies the way;
Give the past unto the wind;
All before us is the day,
Night and darkness are behind.
Eden with its angels bold,
Love and flowers and coolest sea,
Is less an ancient story told
Than a glowing prophecy.
In the spirit’s perfect air,
In the passions tame and kind,
Innocence from selfish care,
The real Eden we shall find.
When the soul to sin hath died,
True and beautiful and sound,
Then all earth is sanctified,
Upsprings paradise around.
From the spirit-land, afar
All disturbing force shall flee;
Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar
Its immortal unity.”
Messrs. Roberts Brothers’ Publications.
“The ‘Layman’s Breviary’ will adorn drawing-room centre-tables, boudoirs, library nooks; it will be a favorite travelling companion, and be carried on summer excursions to read under trees and on verandas. For every day of the year there are thoughts, counsels, aspirations—many of them Oriental in tone, or patriarchal in spirit; there are delineations of nature, pure utterances of faith; each page contains fresh and earnest expressions of a poetic, believing, humane soul—often clad in exquisite language. It is eminently a household book, and one to be taken up and enjoyed at intervals.”
—Boston Transcript.
“Each poem is in itself a sermon; not of dry, theological dogmas, but the love and care of the Infinite, the yearning and outreaching of the human to grasp the divine. It is a book not to be lightly read and carelessly tossed aside, but to be studied daily until the lessons it conveys are learned, and its comforting words written on every heart. Of the author’s religious opinions we know nothing; what creed he subscribes to we cannot tell; but we do know that he is a true worshipper of God, and lover of his fellow-men. This book should be on every table; all households should possess it; we cannot too highly recommend it to the notice of all. It has been truly said, that ‘these blooming pictures of Nature, praising the love, the goodness, the wisdom of the Creator and His work, form in truth a poetical book of devotion for the layman whom the dogma does not satisfy—a breviary for man.’”
—The Wide World.
“Some thirty-five years ago the publication of “My Prisons, Memoirs of Silvio Pellico,” first appealed to the sympathies of the Italian people. The history of a martyr to freedom is always entertaining, and the pathos and beauty which surround the narrative in question have always kept alive the interest of all intelligent nations. It ranks, therefore, deservedly high in biographical literature. The present edition is a very superior one, and is introduced by Epes Sargent, who vigorously reviews the despotism of Austria in the incarceration of Pellico, and the changes which have since occurred in European politics.”
—Chicago Evening Journal.
“The story is simply told, for adventures like those of the author need no graces of style or highly wrought figures. The book has a charm which few novels possess; indeed, one can hardly believe that it is true, and that so few years have passed since men of noble birth and fine culture were condemned to suffer for years in prison on account of their political opinions.”
—Boston Transcript.
☞ Mailed, post paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the Publishers.
Notes
N “’Tis well known that according to the sense of antiquity, these two considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul’s immortality—namely; its pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither were there ever any of the ancients before christianity, that held the soul’s future permanency after death, who did not likewise assert its pre-existence,—they clearly perceiving that if it was once granted that the soul was generated, it could never be proved but that it might be also corrupted. And therefore the asserters of its immortality commonly began here—first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding thence afterwards to establish its permanency after death.”—Cudworth.
O Let us remember that immortality signifies a negative, or not having of mortality, and that a positive term is required by which to express a change, since nature teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it is, unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it appears that man’s soul has these grounds in her which make all visible things to be perishable, it is obvious that his soul is immortal and the cause of mortality itself.—Sir Kenelm Digby.