EASE OF MIND.

In order to enjoy Ease of Mind in our intercourse with the world, we should introduce into our habits of business punctuality, decision, the practice of being beforehand, despatch, and exactness; in our pleasures, harmlessness and moderation; and in all our dealings, perfect integrity and love of truth. Without these observances we are never secure of ease, nor indeed taste it in its highest state. As in most other things, so here, people in general do not aim at more than mediocrity of attainment, and of course usually fall below their standard; whilst many are so busy in running after what should procure them ease, that they totally overlook the thing itself.

Ease of mind has the most beneficial effect upon the body, and it is only during its existence that the complicated physical functions are performed with the accuracy and facility which nature designed. It is, consequently, a great preventive of disease, and one of the secret means of effecting a cure when disease has occurred; without it, in many cases, no cure can take place. By ease of mind many people have survived serious accidents, from which nothing else could have saved them, and in every instance is much retarded by the absence of it. Its effect upon the appearance is no less remarkable. It prevents and repairs the ravages of time in a singular degree, and is the best preservative of strength and beauty. It often depends greatly upon health, but health always depends greatly upon it. The torments of a mind ill at ease seem to be less endurable than those of the body; for it scarcely ever happens that suicide is committed from bodily suffering. As far as the countenance is an index, “the vultures of the mind” appear to turn it more mercilessly than any physical pain; and no doubt there have been many who would willingly have exchanged their mental agony for the most wretched existence that penury could produce. From remorse there is no escape. In aggravated cases probably there is no instant, sleeping or waking, in which its influence is totally unfelt. Remorse is the extreme one way; the opposite is that cleanliness of mind which has never been recommended any where to the same extent that it is by the precepts of the Christian religion, and which alone constitutes “perfect freedom.” It would be curious if we could see what effect such purity would have upon the appearance and actions of a human being—a being who lived, as Pope expresses it, in the “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.” Goldsmith has beautifully said:

Shakspeare observes: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”^[131]

Charles James Fox, who was, from infancy, a spoiled child, would spend night after night in gambling, and wasting his sweet nature in the orgies of Bacchus. Then he would flee away to the delightful scenery and refreshing air of St. Anne’s Hill, and there betake himself to gardening, in a blue apron; or to the learned leisure of his study, in the bosom of conjugal felicity and friendship.

THE LIFE OF MAN.

It is impossible to say what analogy exists between the race and the individual, and attempts to explain the history of the one by the stages which mark the life of the other are at best more ingenious than satisfactory; but almost every fact with which we are acquainted seems to suggest that some such analogy exists, though its particulars are altogether unknown, and though we cannot even say whether mankind ought to be compared to one individual or to several. It may, however, be allowable, in dealing with a subject which, after all, appeals rather to the feelings and to the imagination than to the reason, to point out the fact that the cessation of human society would present a striking analogy to the death of individuals; and that there would be the same contradictory mixture of completeness and incompleteness about a society eternally renewed, as there would be about a human being who never died. That the life of a man forms a moral whole, is a conviction which is so thoroughly worked into our minds and our very language, that no one doubts it. That it is a mysterious and utterly contradictory thing at its best estate, is the experience of every person who has even ordinary powers of reflection. It is hard to imagine the degree in which these mysteries and contradictions would be heightened if man were immortal. If, after arriving at that average degree of prudence and self-restraint which almost every one attains comparatively early in life, people lived on and on for centuries and millenniums, carrying on the same sort of transactions, settling the same difficulties, enjoying the same pleasures, and suffering from the same vexations, the question why they ever were sent into the world at all (which is even now sufficiently perplexing) would become altogether overwhelming; and the faith which people at present maintain in the Divine government of the world would have to be based on entirely different grounds, if it survived at all. It is perhaps not merely fanciful to suggest that a somewhat similar difficulty would exist if human society, after a long and laborious education, were to attain to a stationary state, and were then to go on indefinitely enjoying itself. Such a heaven on earth would be at best a sort of high life below stairs.

The celebration of the triumphs of civilisation, which is at present in full bloom, produces on many minds an effect not unlike that which Robespierre’s feasts to the Supreme Being produced on his colleagues. “You and your nineteenth century are beginning to be a bore,” is the salutation which many a philosopher would receive in these days from a sincere audience. Weigh and measure and classify as we will, we are but poor creatures, when all is said and done. It would be a relief to think that a day was coming when the world, whether more comfortable or not, would at least see and know itself as it is, and when the real gist and bearing of all the work, good and evil, that is done under the sun, should at last be made plain. Till then, knowledge, science, and power are, after all, little more than shadows in a troubled dream—a dream which will soon pass away from each of us, if it does not pass away at once from all.^[132]

Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but all men late enough, for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little the eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is man’s reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself to see or taste, making little reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty; but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cockboat to a whale, only to play withal: but before a man comes to be wise, he is half-dead with gouts and consumption, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body. So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the amounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being: but by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death.

But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath that life which distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which gives him a capacity next to angels, we shall find that even a good man lives not long; because it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a man’s growth. “He that can look upon death, and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story; he that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he hath them, and when he hath them not; that is not sadder if they lie in his neighbour’s trunks, nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls; he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon another man’s lands evenly and pleasantly as if they were his own, and yet look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another man’s; that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances of him that gives them; that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver; he that does nothing for opinion sake, but every thing for conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly; he that knows God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as if in the presence of God and his holy angels; that eats and drinks because he needs it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly; he that is bountiful and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies; that loves his country, and obeys his prince, and desires and endeavours nothing more than that they may do honour to God:”^[133] this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man, and compute his months not by the course of the sun, but the zodiac and circle of his virtues; because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have; these are therefore the actions of life, because they are the seeds of immortality. That day in which we have done some excellent thing, we may as truly reckon to be added to our life, as were the fifteen years to the days of Hezekiah.^[134]

To what excellent account have our thoughtful old writers turned these prophetic indications of changeful flowers! Bishop Hall, in his Occasional Meditations, has the following “On the Light of Tulips, and Marigolds, &c. in his Garden:” “These flowers are the true clients of the sun; how observant they are of his motion and influence! At even, they shut up, as mourning for his departure, without whom they neither can see nor flourish; in the morning, they welcome his rising with a cheerful openness; and at noon, are fully displayed in a free acknowledgment of his bounty.

“Thus doth the good heart turn unto God. ‘When thou turnedst away thy face, I was troubled,’ saith the man after God’s own heart. ‘In thy presence is life; yea, the fulness of joy.’ Thus doth the carnal heart to the world: when that withdraws its favours, he is dejected; and revives with a smile. All is in our choice. Whatsoever is our sun will thus carry us.

“O God, be Thou to me such as Thou art in Thyself: Thou shalt be merciful in drawing me; I shall be happy in following thee.”

The use of Perfumes in the last century exceeded that in the present day. Possibly the old notion that they were employed to mask the exhalations from diseased persons may have driven perfumes out of fashion in our day; we recollect musk to have been specially so considered. Bishop Hall, in his Occasional Meditations, adverts to this use of perfumes in a meditation illustrative of a custom which is associated with the symbolic character of “flowers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in Holy Scriptures to those fading beauties, whose roots, being buried in dishonour, rise again in glory.”^[135] The Bishop’s meditation is “On the Sight of a Coffin stuck with Flowers:”

“Too fair in appearance is never free from just suspicion. While there was nothing but wood, no flower was to be seen here; now that this wood is lined with an unsavoury corpse, it is adorned with this sweet variety. The fir, whereof that coffin is made, yields a natural redolence alone; now that it is stuffed thus noisomely, all helps are too little to countervail that scent of corruption.^[136]

THE WORLD’S CYCLES.

There is a Revolution of History as of Knowledge: who does not remember how often the same succession of events has happened in his memory! Dr. Newman has well expressed this truth in a poem in the Lyra Apostolica, entitled “Faith against Sight,” with the motto, “As it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man:”

DEATH ALL-ELOQUENT.

What solemnity is there in the following passage, with which Sir Walter Raleigh concludes his Marrow of Historie! “O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none have dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, HIC JACET.”