A MONTHLY MAGAZINE Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and THE HE chlorine-green god, Nausea, set himself against me. had his way. dishes on the way to contents before sight. He No food was tolerable. Hearing the clink of my room put me in antagonism to their Water brought from the dining room icepitcher was like belated slops from a coffee urn. There is one barricade that the aforesaid god does respect, and that is ice. The commercial ice of North America one will avoid. Its microbes may be malign. A friend procured for me a demijohn of water from a favorite spring. This, exposed to the outer air, in proper receptacles, in zero weather, gave me zero ice. Nausea quailed before that. The bite and sting of that ice at low temperature, is a delight to this moment. It had a meaning and expressed it. But ice is only a palliative. On it man cannot long support life, and goes rapidly down to exhaustion and a flickering pulse. On the way down I remember one incident with interest, for it gave "Respite and Nepenthe" for a moment to pain. I was sitting beside the Doctor on the edge of the bed and fainted. He threw me back on the bed and that revived me. I was thoroughly angry with him and when I got voice upbraided him for bringing me back to consciousness. The joy of that brief moment of oblivion, with the consciousness, on each of its edges, of freedom from pain, abides still as brightly as that of a summer vacation. Possibly we need have no more trouble in taking chloroform than in going to sleep and in wakening. The process downward to the wandering of delirium was rapid. Of this period I have no distinct memory. But in it the children were summoned from the east and from the west. They were pres ent in the house the night of the favorable (medical point of view) turning. Fortunately I did not know this fact. I remember that the Doctor sat by my side with one hand on my pulse and in the other a hypodermatic syringe. The nurses were standing in attendance. I knew the meaning of what I saw-and-was satisfied. I expected to make the change from this condition of existence to what is beyond. Now what happened next I attribute to sleep and dream. But I distinctly thought I had made the transition. The one mental exercise that held me was curiosity. I wanted to see what was coming next. I got no distinct view but there seemed to be much lying before just ready to be revealed. Now that I am to look forward to a real transition at some not distant day, I am much encouraged by the psychology of this dream, considering the background in consciousness from which it was projected, to-wit: the expectation of departure. The universe is still the universe, whether one is on this side or that of any equator separating its latitudes. If one can find adjustment here from science, philosophy and religion, he may trust that he can find it there. I opened my eyes-the Doctor was gone, the nurses were seated in quietness, hypodermatics had won and I was here and not there. The first thought that came to me was I wonder if the windmill was turned on to the pump yesterday afternoon, if it was not we shall be short of water. Eternity and a windmill-what a juxtaposition! Yet both are worthy objects of thought-"Each in its 'customed place." Eternity will split into particulars as does time. The reflection soon came-Ah me! Why did I not go forward? Now I shall have all that is preliminary to go over again. The psychology of a "rapt and parting soul"-what is it? The human race has had testimony and observation from which to draw conclusions and yet no generalizations of value have been reached. The whole matter is in chaos. Let us posit one principle, try it, and see if it will hold good. Those who depart this life, at the time of departure are willing to go. If there are exceptions to this rule it may be of interest to search for their causes. But let us deal with the rule. We owe the universal desire to leave this life to the ministry of pain. Let us go back one step. Benjamin Franklin said: "Anything as universal as death must be regarded as intended." Biology lends its whole force to Franklin's conclusion. Integration and disintegration have been the history of all organism since the primal cell. With the deterioration of tissue comes in pain or dis-ease. Now again we can make use of Franklin's philosophy: any thing as universal as suffering after an organism has passed the zenith of its vitality must be regarded as intended. This conclusion may not exhaust the philosophy of suffering, but no philosophy can be sound that neglects it. If the end in view be the cessation of life, then pain may be regarded as an adaptation physically and psychically to that end. It produces in man normally just contentment with that which is to be. Tennyson sings: "Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Hath ever truly longed for death." Like a great many other things, that is true up to a certain point and then it ceases to be true. Water contracts to 32° and then it expands. Burns is equally true, "O death, the poor man's dearest friend, The kindest and the best, Welcome the hour my aged limbs Are laid with thee at rest." Whether one longs for death or not depends upon the vital condition of his physical organism. When vitality is high, and its storm and stress for action on, a man does not want to die. But the case is entirely altered with feebleness and suffering. Then men do "long for death," ever have, and ever will. Even those who are in the flush of life, if they are maimed in some sad accident, often ask to be put out of their misery. Men usually do not cross bridges. till they come to them. But again the rule is that when men come to the bridge we have in view, they are willing, often desirous, to cross it. There is a foregleam of this adjustment in the action of animals. When they find in themselves an intimation that a great change portends, they yield to its promptings, give up the struggle for existence, forsake their fellows and their customary beats and haunts, retire to some secluded nook and await what comes. Some one says it is harder to catch a dead bird than a live one; we can see why. Edward Young (he ought to have credit for many felicitous expressions of truth, if he was not a poet) says: "Man makes a death which nature never made." We do not die our own death but that which the superstitions and terrors of centuries of our kind have loaded upon us. We die such death as the imagination of the dark ages permits us to die. When it comes to that it admits of debate who had the worst outlook in that era, saint or sinner. Take a forecast of the future of which St. Simon Stylites is representative-vigils, fasts, penances, pilgrimages, yes, the Crusades-and realize that when, after all tortures the body could endure, one lay down to die, he had the mental torture that all he had suffered might be in vain and through some self-deceit or some unnoticed neglect he might trip on the threshold of heaven and fall back into hell. We have changed all that? Oh no! Much from out that gloom still remains to cast its shadow over souls as they contemplate the journey forward. Of course one extreme begets another. In the later centuries ecstasies came in to supersede the gloom of the saint. Suspicion arising from various sources attaches to these exercises of the saint. Nature is not in the habit of doing serious things in ecstasy. We are not born in ecstasy; we ought not to expect.to die in ecstasy. An inflamed imagination working by preconceived notion will account for most of these ecstatic departures from life. Plainly the sinner's horror is a psychological addition to the pains of death, arising from belief in hell. Belief in a "city of gold" and in a "lake that burneth with fire and brimstone" is not now widely held, and so perturbations either of joy or fear cease to appear in parting hours, and we can discern more clearly in them the rational and kindly intent of nature. I have had nothing but the common experience of men. I have seen many persons pass out of this life. I have never seen one depart in ecstasy or in fear. The only person I ever saw in terror of death did not die. The case shows clearly how psychological considerations come in to interfere with a sound philosophy respecting the order for removal from this sphere of action, and respecting the general kindliness of its execution. A young man drifted away from the East to the far West. Not gifted with the power of initiative he failed to find employment, his money gave out, he fell sick and was taken to the county-house. When I called on him there the perspiration stood in big drops on his forehead. I hurriedly asked him: "What is the matter?" He said: "I am dying, and I am afraid to die." I took my cue from the last expression. I found his pulse strong and voice natural. I gave him one grain of cinchonidia and said: "Now tell me all about it. What are you afraid of?" He took the Bible from under his pillow and putting his finger on the 16th verse of the XVIth chapter of Mark— "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved," said: "I have never been baptized." I replied: "My good friend, I can get any one of half a dozen ministers of as many denominations here in an hour and we will have that matter attended to. You will live that time any way." But I had reckoned without my host, for he an swered: "I must be immersed to be baptized and sick as I am that cannot be." At some time, in his life before, a little information as to the historic standing of the text that troubled him might have helped him now-he could have given himself the benefit of a doubt. But plainly effort in that direction was not now in point. I cannot recall all the steps of the detour I took to relieve his mental suffering. It is enough to say that in an hour the perspiration had gone from his forehead and he was comfortable in body and mind. In a few days arrangements were made by which he departed for the East. Shortly after his arrival he executed what he thought was his duty-was immersed and joined a church. He found work and had a happy outlook for this world and the world to come. Now the name of cases of this kind, as well as of some others, is legion. But we should not confuse ourselves in settling upon a philosophy of pain and death, with varying particulars of this sort that have no necessary connection with it. The young man's distress was necessary neither to him nor to any one else. Testimony as to the psychology of the dying is to be received with caution. Two persons present, because of difference in preconceived ideas, might give very different reports. When the matter has passed to second and third mouths it is hopeless to expect to reach the truth. Witness the testimony in regard to the mental condition of Thomas Paine in his last hours. Before I came to my teens I had a case that was for long years a puzzle to me. An old neighbor lay dying. He had been a "sturdy" sinner. He loved rum "for its own sake" and always kept it in the house for daily use. He was profusely profane. He would lie. The neighbors said that sometimes between the days, if he wanted corn or apples, he paid no attention to division fences. They said he was "hot" and let it go at that. The day he died an aunt of mine came to visit at our home. Passing the house of the dying man she called to inquire about him. She did not go in. At my home she took me for a walk, and being a good woman, improved the occasion to make an impression on me. She told me what remorse the old neighbor was suffering, that he said he had "done wrong and it stared him in the face," that he was in the agony of the death of all the wicked. Now this did make an impression on me and I thank my aunt to this day for her intent. But a few days afterward I heard one who was there all the time the old man was sick, say that from the beginning he dropped into unconsciousness, which was only rarely and briefly broken; that once the old man said he had made a wrong disposition of his property |