God alone knows what
life is enough for us to live--what life is worth his and our while;
we may be sure he is labouring to make it ours. He would have it as
full, as lovely, as grand, as the sparing of nothing, not even his
own son, can render it. If we would only let him have his own way
with us! If we do not trust him, will not work with him, are always
thwarting his endeavours to make us alive, then we must be
miserable; there is no help for it. As to death, we know next to
nothing about it. "Do we not!" say the faithless. "Do we not know
the darkness, the emptiness, the tears, the sinkings of heart, the
desolation!" Yes, you know those; but those are your things, not
death's. About death you know nothing. God has told us only that the
dead are alive to him, and that one day they will be alive again to
us. The world beyond the gates of death is, I suspect, a far more
homelike place to those that enter it, than this world is to us.
"I don't like death," said Davie, after a silence.
"I don't want you to like, what you call death, for that is not the
thing itself--it is only your fancy about it. You need not think
about it at all. The way to get ready for it is to live, that is, to
do what you have to do."
"But I do not want to get ready for it. I don't want to go to it;
and to prepare for it is like going straight into it!"
"You have to go to it whether you prepare for it or not.
Pages:
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507