第84章 BOOK III.(24)

"Thank Heaven,"he cried,"we cannot ordinarily foresee our end;for but few would attain their predestined ending could they see it in advance.May the veil not again be raised,lest I faint before it!I looked in vain for my soul,"he continued,"but could see it nowhere.""The souls of those dying young,"replied the spirit,"sometimes wish to hover near their ashes as if regretting an unfinished life,or the opportunities that have departed;but those dying after middle age are usually glad to be free from their bodies,and seldom think of them again.""I shall append the lines now in my head to my history,"said Cortlandt,"that where it goes they may go also.They can scarcely fail to be instructive as the conclusions of a man who has seen beyond his grave."Whereupon be wrote a stanza in his note-book,and closed it without showing his companions what he had written.

"May they do all the good you hope,and much more!"replied the spirit,"for the reward in the resurrection morning will vastly exceed all your labours now.

"O,my friends,"the spirit continued most earnestly,addressing the three,"are you prepared for your death-beds?When your eyes glaze in their last sleep,and you lose that temporal world and what you perhaps considered all,as in a haze,your dim vision will then be displaced by the true creation that will be eternal.

Your unattained ambitions,your hopes,and your ideals will be swallowed in the grave.Your works will secure you a place in history,and many will remember your names until,in time,oblivion covers your memory as the grass conceals your tombs.

Are you prepared for the time when your eyes become blind,and your trusted senses fail?Your sorrowing friends will mourn,and the flags of your clubs will fly at half-mast,but no earthly thing can help you then.In what condition will the resurrection morning find you,when your sins of neglect and commission plead for vengeance,as Abel's blood from the ground?After that there can be no change.The classification,as I have already told you,is now going on;it will then be finished.""We are the most utterly wretched sinners!"cried Ayrault."Show us how we can be saved.""As an inhabitant of spirit-land,I will give you worldly counsel,"replied the bishop."During my earthly administration,as I told you,people came from far to hear me preach.This was because I had eloquence and earnestness,both gifts of God.But I was a miserably weak sinner myself.That which I would,I did not,and that which I would not that I did;and I often prayed my congregation to follow my sermons rather than my ways.I seemed to do my followers good,and Daniel thus commends my way in his last chapter:'They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever,'and the explanation is clear.

There is no surer way of learning than trying to teach.In teaching my several flocks I was also improved myself.I was sown in weakness,but was raised in power,strength being made perfect in weakness.Therefore improve your fellows,though yourself you cannot raise.The knowledge that you have sent many souls to heaven,though you are yourself a castaway,will give you unspeakable joy,and place you in heaven wherever you may be.

Yet remember this:none of us can win heaven;salvation is the gift of God.I have said as much now as you can remember.

Farewell.Improve time while you can.Fear God and keep His commandments.This is the whole duty of man."So saying,the spirit vanished in a cloud that for a time emitted light.

"I am not surprised,"said Bearwarden,"that people took long journeys to hear him.I would do so myself.""I have never had much fear of death,"said Cortlandt,"but the mere thought of it now makes my knees shake,and fills my heart with dread.I thought I saw the most hateful forms about my coffin,and imagined that they might be the personification of doubt,coldness,and my other shortcomings,which had come perhaps from sympathy,in invisible form.I was almost afraid to ask the spirit for the explanation.""I saw them also,"replied Bearwarden,"but took them to be swarms of microbes waiting to destroy your body,or perhaps trying in vain to penetrate your hermetically sealed coffin."Cortlandt seemed much upset,and spent the rest of the day in writing out the facts and trying to assign a cause.Towards evening Bearwarden,who had recovered his spirits,prepared supper,after which they sat in the entrance to the cave.

CHAPTER X.

AYRAULT.

As the,night became darker they caught sight of the earth again,shining very faintly,and in his mind's eye Ayrault saw his sweetheart,and the old,old repining that,since reason and love began,has been in men's minds,came upon him and almost crushed him.Without saying anything to his companions,Ayrault left the cave,and,passing through the grove in which the spirit had paid them his second visit,went slowly to the top of the hill about half a mile off,that he might the more easily gaze at the faint star on which he could picture Sylvia.

"Ah!"he said to himself,on reaching the summit,"I will stay here till the earth rises higher,and when it is far above me Iwill gaze at it as at heaven."

Accordingly,he lay down with his head on a mound of sod,and watched the familiar planet.