it was sunday morning; and the church bells were all ringing together. from all the neighbouring villages, came the solemn, joyful sounds, floating through the sunny air, mellow and faint and low,--all mingling into one harmonious chime, like the sound of some distant organ in heaven. anon they ceased; and the woods, and the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air itself seemed to pray, so silent was it everywhere.
two venerable old men,--high priests and patriarchs were they in the land,--went up the pulpit stairs, as moses and aaron went up mount hor, in the sight of all the congregation,--for the pulpit stairs were in front, and very high.
paul flemming will never forget the sermon he heard that day,--no, not even if he should live to be as old as he who preached it. the text was, "i know that my redeemer liveth." it was meant to console the pious, poor widow, who sat right below him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all in black, and her heart breaking. he said nothing of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as mere circumstances to which the imagination mainly gives importance, he told his hearers of the innocence of childhood upon earth, and the holiness of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful lord jesus was once a little child, and now in heaven the spirits of little children walked with him, and gathered flowers in the fields of paradise. good old man! in behalf of humanity, i thank thee for these benignant words! and, still more than i, the bereaved mother thanked thee, and from that hour, though she wept in secret for her child, yet
"she knew he was with jesus,
and she asked him not again."
after the sermon, paul flemming walked forth alone into the churchyard. there was no one there, save a little boy, who was fishing with a pin hook in a grave half full of water. but a few moments afterward, through the arched gateway under the belfry, came a funeral procession. at its head walked a priest in white surplice, chanting. peasants, old and young, followed him, with burning tapers in their hands. a young girl carried in her arms a dead child, wrapped in its little winding sheet. the grave was close under the wall, by the church door. a vase of holy water stood beside it. the sexton took the child from the girl's arms, and put it into a coffin; and, as he placed it in the grave, the girl held over it a cross, wreathed with roses, and the priest and peasants sang a funeral hymn. when this was over, the priest sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy water; and then they all went into the church, each one stopping as he passed the grave to throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it with holy water.
a few moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard saying mass in the church, and flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child, with his clouted shoes. he approached him, and asked the age of the deceased. the sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and shrugging his shoulders replied;
"only an hour or two. it was born in the night, and died this morning early?"
"a brief existence," said flemming. "the child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone."
the sexton went on with his work, and made no reply. flemming still lingered among the graves, gazing with wonder at the strange devices, by which man has rendered death horrible and the grave loathsome.
in the temple of juno at elis, sleep and his twin-brother death were represented as children reposing in the arms of night. on various funeral monuments of the ancients the genius of death issculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an inverted torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings folded and his feet crossed. in such peaceful and attractive forms, did the imagination of ancient poets and sculptors represent death. and these were men in whose souls the religion of nature was like the light of stars, beautiful, but faint and cold! strange, that in later days, this angel of god, which leads us with a gentle hand, into the "land of the great departed, into the silent land," should have been transformed into a monstrous and terrific thing! such is the spectral rider on the white horse;--such the ghastly skeleton with scythe and hour-glass;--the reaper, whose name is death!
one of the most popular themes of poetry and painting in the middle ages, and continuing down even into modern times, was the dance of death. in almost all languages is it written,--the apparition of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all business, and leading men away into the "remarkable retirement" of the grave. itis written in an ancient spanish poem, and painted on a wooden bridge in switzerland. the designs of holbein are well known. the most striking among them is that, where, from a group of children sitting round a cottage hearth, death has taken one by the hand, and is leading it out of the door. quietly and unresisting goes the little child, and in its countenance no grief, but wonder only; while the other children are weeping and stretching forth their hands in vain towards their departing brother. a beautiful design it is, in all save the skeleton. an angel had been better, with folded wings, and torch inverted!
and now the sun was growing high and warm. a little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness. he went in. there was no one there. the walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets. there was nothing there to move the heart to devotion; but in that hour the heart of flemming was weak,--weak as a child's. he bowed hisstubborn knees, and wept. and oh! how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love, were in those tears, through which he read on a marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription;
"look not mournfully into the past. it comes not back again. wisely improve the present. it is thine. go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear, and with a manly heart."
it seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consolation, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. in a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. the stone was rolled away from the door of his heart; death was no longer there, but an angel clothed in white. he stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears; and, looking into the bright, morning heaven, he said;
"i will be strong!"
men sometimes go down into tombs, with painfullongings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance, that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. so did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished as he gazed. they, too, were dust. and thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the past shut behind him as the divine poet did the gate of paradise, when the angel pointed him the way up the holy mountain; and to him likewise was it forbidden to look back.
in the life of every man, there are sudden transitions of feeling, which seem almost miraculous. at once, as if some magician had touched the heavens and the earth, the dark clouds melt into the air, the wind falls, and serenity succeedsthe storm. the causes which produce these sudden changes may have been long at work within us, but the changes themselves are instantaneous, and apparently without sufficient cause. it was so with flemming; and from that hour forth he resolved, that he would no longer veer with every shifting wind of circumstance; no longer be a child's plaything in the hands of fate, which we ourselves do make or mar. he resolved henceforward not to lean on others; but to walk self-confident and self-possessed; no longer to waste his years in vain regrets, nor wait the fulfilment of boundless hopes and indiscreet desires; but to live in the present wisely, alike forgetful of the past, and careless of what the mysterious future might bring. and from that moment he was calm, and strong; he was reconciled with himself! his thoughts turned to his distant home beyond the sea. an indescribable, sweet feeling rose within him.
"thither will i turn my wandering footsteps," said he; "and be a man among men, and no longer a dreamer among shadows. henceforth bemine a life of action and reality! i will work in my own sphere, nor wish it other than it is. this alone is health and happiness. this alone is life;
'life that shall send
a challenge to its end,
and when it comes, say, welcome, friend!'
why have i not made these sage reflections, this wise resolve, sooner? can such a simple result spring only from the long and intricate process of experience? alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the book of human life, to light the fires of passion with, from day to day, that man begins to see, that the leaves which remain are few in number, and to remember, faintly at first, and then more clearly, that, upon the earlier pages of that book, was written a story of happy innocence, which he would fain read over again. then come listless irresolution, and the inevitable inaction of despair; or else the firm resolve to record upon the leaves that still remain, a more noble history, than the child's story, with which the book began."
