for preferring to die in the summer time; you remember the quaint
old Scotch lady, dying on a night of rain and hurricane, who said
(in entire simplicity and with nothing of irreverence) to the
circle of relations round her bed, 'Eh, what a fearfu' nicht for
me to be fleein' through the air!' And perhaps it is natural to
think it would be pleasant for the parted spirit, passing away from
human ken and comfort, to mount upwards, angel-guided, through the
soft sunset air of June, towards the country where suns never set,
and where all the days are summer days. But all this is no better
than a wayward fancy; it founds on forgetfulness of the nature of
the immaterial soul, to think that there need be any lengthened
journey, or any flight through skies either stormy or calm. You have
not had the advantage, I dare say, of being taught in your childhood
the catechism which is drilled into all children in Scotland;
and which sketches out with admirable clearness and precision
the elements of Christian belief. If you had, you would have been
taught to repeat words which put away all uncertainty as to the
intermediate state of departed spirits. 'The souls of believers are
at their death made perfect in holiness, and do IMMEDIATELY pass
into glory.' Yes; IMMEDIATELY; there is to the departed spirit no
middle space at all between earth and heaven. The old lady need
not have looked with any apprehension to going out from the warm
chamber into the stormy winter night, and flying far away. Not but
that millions of miles may intervene; not but that the two worlds
may be parted by a still, breathless ocean, a fathomless abyss of
cold dead space; yet, swift as never light went, swift as never
thought went, flies the just man's spirit across the profound.
One moment the sick-room, the scaffold, the stake; the next, the
paradisal glory. One moment the sob of parting anguish; the next
the great deep swell of the angel's song. Never think, reader,