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awful for even a whole life of preparation." The hour drew on; and these ardent, eloquent, intelligent men went to the scaffold, chanting their national hymn of republican patriotism. One by one, they lay down under the blade of death, and the song grew weaker and weaker, till the last, the brilliant Vergniaud, was heard alone. It was the utmost height to which, without a light from heaven, genius and ardour could mount above the common apprehension of death; and, yet, it was also the excitement of men dying together, dying in the face of the world, and dying, as they thought, for their country, and in the issue of a great enterprise.

Not, therefore, the actual terrors of death, but the gloomy uncertainty of the prospect, must most strike us in the concluding hours of ancient error or modern unbelief. The terrors of death belong chiefly to the state of the conscience, and may even be heightened by clearer knowledge and diminished by ignorance. Against death, as a natural event, the soul has proved itself capable of being fortified, by the incitements of the world on which it is looking back, by dreams of fancy or fanaticism, and by the courage of philosophy. "Not only the brave and the wretched," says Seneca, "but even the fastidious can wish to die." Lord Bacon makes the remark, that "there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death." "Revenge triumphs over death: love slights it honour aspires to it: grief flies to it: fear preoccupates it." But all these have still only enabled it with difficulty to bear up above the waves; and the common mind has only yielded to insensibility, or acquiesced in an irresistible destiny, wafting it on, it sees not whither.

XL.

Bondage under the Fear of Death.

"Oh, beat away the busy, meddling fiend

That lays strong siege unto this wretch's soul!"

SHAKSPEARE.

"IT is as natural," says the profound Bacon, "to die as to be born; and, to a little infant, perhaps the one is as painful as the other." The dread of death is chiefly from the conscience, which anticipates the great penalties of guilt beyond. Unquestionably, this dread has been silenced for the time, even in the guiltiest of men; borne down by the excitement of many passionate impulses; and even kept down by the force of a strong will, by soothing doctrines, and especially by such occupation of all the thoughts as might prevent earnest contemplation of the future. But, it is equally certain, that such a dread has been found in all ages; that it is not wholly unknown to the experience of any; that it has increased in power as men have been compelled to pause and think, before they dared to die; and that it has even become most intense where revelation had aroused the conscience, and had partially unveiled eternity.

A punishment, an everlasting punishment, beyond the grave, was feared, even by the heathen, when the thought was banished by no exciting or elevating influence. They painted the unhappy murderer, as possessed by the avenging Furies, and driven towards a

terrible abode.

Their Tartarus, though its minute

horrors were the texture woven by poetry, was yet itself a state that cast an actual and an alarming shadow over many a conscience. Lucretius, striving against all religion, acknowledges the prevalence of this

terror:

"Now naught of firmness, naught of rest remains,
Since death to fear unfolds eternal pains."

If less of such dread appears amongst the more barbarous Pagans than in the classic days and lands of Europe, it is because remnants of primeval truth then lingered, which have been almost obliterated where mankind have descended towards barbarism. The terror of the savage is more indistinct, more ignorant, and more easily suppressed. But, always and everywhere, there have been examples of an awful remorse, and "a fearful looking-for of judgment," sufficient to seem, even to the heathen, like the beginnings as well as the warnings of unspeakable wo to come. The revelation of "the wrath of God against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men" has but given to these apprehensions certainty and intensity.

It is no fiction, that very bad men are often haunted in their dreams by the spectral images of their crimes and their victims. It is no fiction, that their deathbeds are often the scene of horrors which none can see without impressions of unearthly dismay. The solemn awe with which even the good have beheld the grave from afar, and the trembling alarm with which it is approached by the thoughtless, are sometimes exchanged, in the hardened ruffian, for wild agony or infernal despair. Demons sometimes seem gathering around. Sometimes, the spirit of a demon is seen in the ghastly countenance. Dreadful cries of wretchedness, or hor

rid blasphemies, or broken supplications mingled with curses, or the steady, cold utterance of a hopeless prospect, as if the heavens were brass and the earth iron, or the fierce rejection of every call to prayer, fearfully

"Tell what lesson may be read

Beside a sinner's restless bed."

This is not the mere anguish of delirium. It is not to be placed with the fears of the young and light, who are overwhelmed by the sudden prospect of death and judgment. Even such, however, have sometimes seen the divine law written against them in such burning characters, that, like Belshazzar, they have shrunk and shaken, till perhaps they were persuaded to seek their only peace, late but not too late.

Always, where the offered mercy is rejected, men remain in bondage under the fear of death, even though unconscious at present of their chains; for, death remains, an unsubdued enemy; and the consciousness of this may awake with tremendous reality when that enemy is near. But if a vast weight of abominable and atrocious deeds be superadded, each of them may throw a blacker and still blacker feature into the horrid gloom. The soul may slumber through all, till it is aroused by the fiery waves of that ocean on which it is launched for ever. Then, all is hidden from our view; there is no joy in the departure, but there is little wo; the vessel falls with a dull, heavy dash into the bosom of its own dark element. But at other times, the moral sleepers start up with a terrific cry; and it is amidst agonizing shrieks, borne on the everlasting winds, that they are hurried onward to their destiny.

PART THE THIRD.

XLI.

Death under the Redemption.

"But the wide arms of mercy were spread to enfold thee,
And sinners may die, for the sinless hath died!"

HEBER.

DEATH was the consequence of the fall; but the fall was balanced and over-balanced by the redemption. None of its effects are unmitigated or quite triumphant. The earth, though it brings forth thorns and thistles, is yet beautiful even in its wildness, and yields to industry a copious harvest. That very labour which was a part of the curse, becomes largely a blessing. Though a woman has sorrow because her hour is come, yet there is joy that a man-child is born into the world. The very passage from this life, awful as it is to nature, yet is not, probably, what it must have been, had no redeeming mercy intervened. But, more than all, the life to come has been granted; and they who hope for such an inheritance can feel that the death which must first be passed is death no longer.

As soon as the sentence was pronounced that man should return to the dust from which he was created, so

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