| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: life; it lowers men to the level of the material. As Goethe also says, 'He
is dead even in this world who has no belief in another.'
13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of thought
under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented to us. It
is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be described, as in
a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird, half-human, nor in any
other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as in Milton, singing the
Almighty 's praises, are a noble image, and may furnish a theme for the
poet or the painter, but they are no longer an adequate expression of the
kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is there any mansion, in this
world or another, in which the departed can be imagined to dwell and carry
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: he went up to a cliff, and prayed for them, that they might
come home safe and well; while the heroes rowed away, and
watched him standing on his cliff above the sea, with his
great hands raised toward heaven, and his white locks waving
in the wind; and they strained their eyes to watch him to the
last, for they felt that they should look on him no more.
So they rowed on over the long swell of the sea, past
Olympus, the seat of the Immortals, and past the wooded bays
of Athos, and Samothrace the sacred isle; and they came past
Lemnos to the Hellespont, and through the narrow strait of
Abydos, and so on into the Propontis, which we call Marmora
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: At home, the death of an old famous senator will happen on the
15th at his country-house, worn with age and diseases.
But that which will make this month memorable to all posterity,
is the death of the French King, Lewis the fourteenth, after a
week's sickness at Marli, which will happen on the 29th, about
six o'clock in the evening. It seems to be an effect of the gout
in his stomach, followed by a flux. And in three days after
Monsieur Chamillard will follow his master, dying suddenly of an
appoplexy.
In this month likewise an ambassador will die in London; but I
cannot assign the day.
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