NUMBER XVII. ON THE NOTHINGNESS AND UNCERTAINTY OF LIFE.
TEXT.—Oh how uncertain and how brief is life,
And yet how full of sweetness!
MY HEARERS—The more I reflect upon the matter the more fully am I convinced of the evanescence and the nothingness of life. What is it but a bubble floating down the stream of time? Now it glides over a placid surface—now it dashes to and fro amid the rough breakers—and now it bursts up and disappears in the dark wave of eternity! What is it but a vapor that creeps for a while along earth's checkered vale, and then rises to its native heaven? What is it but an empty dream—an imaginary entity—as void and as vacant as the deserted shell of hope? It is any thing that's fleeting, brittle or unsubstantial. And what is man? Nothing but a mass of dirt scraped up from the fallow, and destined to dance and skip for a short time, under the influence of life's exhilarating gas, then to be carried back upon death's sable cart, and emptied upon the soil from whence it was gathered.
Oh, my dear friends! when we look about us and behold what multitudes are daily entering the dark portal of the tomb—and how even the mourners themselves are hourly casting off the black habiliments of sorrow, and donning the white robes of the grave, we cannot but be impressed with the solemncholy idea that our turns must all soon come to partake of the same cold supper—which means, as my friend Shakspeare says, not to eat, but to be eaten. The worms of the clod will soon hold a festival in the skull that is now peopled with a thriving generation of ideas; and every heart, now beating with the fullness of hope, must, ere long, forever cease to throb. The thin casement that encloses the immortal spirit of man is as brittle as glass; and a gentle rap of disease, if it do not entirely demolish it, may so shatter it that all the medicated putty in the universe can't hold it together. The gossamer threads that are woven in the web of man's mortal existence are so fine in texture and so feeble in strength that the slightest breeze of physical affliction will sometimes snap them asunder, and leave them dangling in the dusky sepulchre, like so many superannuated cobwebs in the corners of a miser's hovel.
My friends—the uncertainty of life is as certain as quarter-day. I have seen new-born babes imbibe the poison of death with the very gasp that gave them existence. I have seen infancy creep into the grave, and give back its life into the hands of its Maker, unused and undamaged. I have seen childhood and youth kicked out of the world as though they were committing depredations in its flowery garden, and had no business to occupy even a niche in the broad empire of animated nature. I have seen manhood fall from the topmost cliff of ambition ker-swash into the depths of nonentity, and lie forever buried in the turbid wave of oblivion. I can now see old age knocking at the door of the tomb, and begging to rest his weary frame within its sacred walls, where no earthly jars can disturb its slumbers. Yes, my friends, old Time, in his mowing, takes a sweep from one side of creation to the other, and all that comes within the reach of his scythe must fall to fade and wither. Before it, life's fragrant posies yield up their sweetness like new-mown clover, and the incense is borne to the realms of that Almighty Power which gave it. How unwelcome the thought that life, so full of the highly concentrated compound extract of sweetness, should be so brief!—that the candle of existence should so frequently cease to burn before the tip end of the tallow is fairly consumed!—that it should so soon, at best, flicker in its socket, and the melted grease of mortality run down upon the cold clay of the grave!
My dear friends! on this occasion, all the lighter feelings that pertain to human nature have deserted the domain of my heart, and have left nothing instead but a vacuum of solemnity. A man is dead! he was nothing more than a man—but it is something to be a man in these degenerate days of hypocrisy, conceit and selfishness. Yes, the man whom we had but lately chosen from a body of seventeen millions to preside over, govern and direct the political affairs of this free and independent nation, is now no more! His immortal spirit has flown to join companionship with those of his five illustrious predecessors, whose souls, I have reason to believe, are in heaven—whose bodies have returned to dust—whose noble virtues are embalmed with the incense of memory—and whose names are written high upon the obelisk of fame, to be read and remembered by the children of posterity. Yes, my friends, he who but yesterday, as it were, was crowned with the costliest coronet of honor, has now gone to furnish no better food for the worm of the valley than the beggar who dies for the want of a crust. Those eyes that so lately surveyed the thronging multitude, and witnessed the sincere manifestations of a nation's respect, are now fastened together with the adhesive glue of death, to gaze no more upon the world's busy scene. Those hands, which formerly received the congratulations of thousands, are crumbling to ashes in the mouldering sepulchre; and that generous bosom, once warmed with the fires of patriotism that blazed upon the heart's living altar, is now as cold and inanimate as the marble that covers it. I hear a funeral dirge in every breeze: the sun, to me, is clothed in sackcloth: the eagle perches upon the cypress, and droops its wings in sorrow: the stars that spangled upon liberty's banner are darkened with the emblems of grief: mourners fill the streets: and a wail is heard throughout the land for the loss of one, who, through the all-wise dispensations of Providence, yielded up the trust confided to him by his fellow countrymen while the blossoms of hope were in their fullest bloom.
Such, my friends, is the frailty of life—such the insignificance of human greatness—and such the vanity of all earthly expectations. Death shows no preference for the humble tiller of the soil over the king on his throne. The high, the low, the rich, the poor, the beautiful, the ugly, the fat and the lean, are all slaughtered indiscriminately, and packed away in that turf-covered house appointed for all living. Man surely is but a shadow and life a dream!
Reflect, my friends, upon what feeble, dying insects you are, that crawl for a day along the sunny path of existence, and then are crushed into the dust to inhabit the earth no more. Oh, think of this, and live, while you live, in the daily expectation of dying, so that when you die, you may die in the expectation of living. So mote it be!
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