CHAPTER XII

THE MYSTERY OF THE END

I

Ir that which baffles all analysis and passes all understanding is a mystery, in the modern sense of the word, the end of human life is surely a mystery. Mystery as the knowledge of the initiated, the secret of the wise, the peculiar possession of those who live near the heart of things is a word not of pretence but of truth. Mystery as the publication of hidden wisdom, as the clear disclosure of the hitherto concealed purpose of the Eternal, is the meaning that the word often bears in the New Testament. It requires no argument to prove the propriety of this use. A new epoch in the life of humanity may reasonably be expected to bring many dark things to light, and among these the relation of the human soul and the entire world of time to the purpose of the Infinite. Underlying these senses of the term mystery, there is that which cleaves to it as its ultimate meaning, the reality that has not been, and at present cannot be, comprehended. It is this meaning that the word mystery bears in our current use, as illustrated in these strikingly beautiful words of Carlyle: "Eternity, which cannot be

far off, is my one strong city. I look into it fixedly now and then; all terrors about it seem to me superfluous; all knowledge about it, any the least glimmer of certain knowledge, impossible to living mortal." 1 In the idiom of Kant, one might say, knowledge of the future world is impossible, because that world lies beyond the bounds of all attainable experience. That there is a fallacy underlying this negative dogmatism we shall see later in this discussion. Here we confess, with the wise of all the ages, the mystery of the end of human life.

I suppose the origin of our being is in the invisible; such is the vital force from which we come. That in such a force there should be the potency of an Isaiah, a Plato, a Paul, a Dante, a Shakspere, is indeed amazing. Did it not constantly occur, that from such beginnings human beings develop into a great variety of powers and characters, no one would deem it credible. The mystery of birth is the great parallel to the mystery of death. In the light of our origin, it may well be that "the breath that men call death," bears in it the potency of a higher life; in that breath there may be carried the memory of a human world, the ideas through which that world was understood, the images of the souls to whom it was related in time, the character good

1 Reminiscences. Norton's Edition, part II, p. 310.

or bad which came out of the struggle under the sun, the permanent personality as the subject of the earthly experience, and the prophetic subject of a vastly more important experience in Eternity. As in the Psalmist's words, "Night unto night showeth forth knowledge," so the dialogue of faith continues between the mystery of birth and the mystery of death.

The value of the world of the dead to the world of the living is something truly significant here. We sometimes ask the question whether after all love is permanent, and to what extent the dead whom we have known and revered, continue to exert a substantial influence upon the living. The answer will, of course, depend upon the character of the living. The nearer the living human being sinks to the animal level, the less will be his interest in the dead. An animal will grieve for a while for its dead offspring. Piteously I have heard a cow moan over its dead calf, which it could not bring back to life, from which it could extort no response, but the grief was brief. The return of hunger and the dead removed from sight would utterly blot out, in a day or two, all memory of the loss. The dead, in the animal world, play no part in the life of the living. Much the same may be said of men and women who have sunk to the animal level. For them the dead are without influence; equally so the living

when they are absent: "Out of sight, out of mind."

When we rise to the intrinsic, human sphere we find that things are different. The child that lived but a few hours is to its mother a permanent memory, and in her noblest moments, a memory of profound influence. The wonder recurs about its future and mixed with that there is the silent, reverential sense of loss. The most potent religious influence in my home, in the early years of my life, was the memory of a little sister who died at the age of two years. I, a little over three years old, can recall looking at her sweet face in death and wondering why she did not awake and answer my call. I could not understand death; nor my mother's sorrow, nor the heart-break in the home. I thought the man who put the lid on the little coffin the cruelest savage that ever cursed a home, and I blamed those who carried it away as the cause of our woe. That scene, painted in fires of love upon the blackness of grief, is as vivid in outline and in detail as if it had taken place yesterday. That scene became the religious memory of the home. It was spoken of only in great moments, and then only briefly, but the world of exalting influence, exercised by the dear little dead child, then appeared as the holy splendor of our lives.

Here the personal strain is inevitable. My re

membrance of dead kinsmen and friends is one of the influential forces in my existence. I cannot forget a great grandmother whom I saw for the last time when I was five and she about ninety years old. She was a wonderful compound of intelligence, character, energy and boundless affection for her kin. I recall on that last visit the sunburst of love that met my mother and me; first the dear old soul grabbed my mother and kissed her; then she grabbed me doing likewise, which I did not appreciate as I should; then she grabbed the tea-pot. The Highland welcome of which Burns sings, the tempestuous tenderness, the hallowing humanity of this scene I have found a permanent memory. I cannot forget my athletic maternal grandfather, whose mind was "as clean as river sand," and his illimitable scorn, chastened by kindness, for weakness and inefficiency, like a thunder-cloud edged and glorified by the all-victorious sunlight. The image of this man of power and worth haunted me through all shiftless days; it still abides. Nor can I forget a conversation to which I listened as a boy of eleven between my father and his mother whom we had gone to visit. My grandfather stood at our parting, with the grandeur and the gloom of the hills that lay behind his farm, weather-beaten, furrowed by time, old and weary, the flint of the rock there when the bloom of the heather had