not by the epitaph written upon his tombstone by weeping affection, frequently the least true expression of his character. Nor is it by the newspaper paragraph, which has been put in as it has been penned by relatives, and is, therefore, not a severe and faithful rescript of what he was. It is what man was that lives and acts after him. What he said sounds along the years like voices amid the mountain gorges; and what he did is repeated after him in ever-multiplying and never-ceasing reverberations. It is true of every man that he "being dead yet speaketh;" assuredly he has left behind him influences for good or for evil that will never exhaust themselves. The sphere in which he acts may be small, or it may be great. That is not the real question. It may be his fireside, or it may be a kingdom; a village, or a great nation; it may be a parish, or broad Europe; a race, or all mankind: but act he does, ceaselessly and forever. Whether the sphere he fills with posthumous influence be narrow or large, it continues. His friends, his family, his successors in office, his relatives, are all receptive of an influence, a moral influence, which he has transmitted and bequeathed to mankind; either a blessing which will repeat itself in showers of benedictions, or a curse which will multiply itself in crashes of ever-accumulating evils. Let us feel most deeply this great fact, that we can neither live nor die neutral. There are two great defects in the practical conception of this truth among mankind. One thinks, I am so insignificant that it does not matter what I do; and another thinks, I am so important that the whole world is beholding me. Both of these make equally great mistakes; every man should feel that, however small, or however great, neutral, uninfluential upon mankind, it is impossible that he can be. Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends and designs it or not. He may be a blot radiating his dark influence outward to the very cir cumference of society, or he may be a blessing spreading benedictions over the length and the breadth of the world; but a blank he cannot be. There are no moral blanks, there are no neutral characters; we are either the leaven that sours and corrupts, or the light that splendidly illuminates, and the salt that silently operates; but being dead, as being alive, every man speaks. "Tongues of the dead not lost, But speaking still from death's frost, Like fiery tongues at Pentecost." If this be true, let the candidate and aspirant for posthumous influence ponder this very solemn fact. We know how fondly authors and poets long to be remembered after they are gone. Non omnis peream. Posthumous reputation is the thirst of thousands. Yet, after all, a passion perhaps in itself, and without reference to ulterior things, more worthless, it is scarcely possible to conceive. The utterance of our names, after we are dead, will not probably be heard by us; and to desire posthumous renown for its own sake is therefore just as if one should desire that loaves of bread should be laid upon his tombstone, while he sleeps quietly and insensibly below. But while posthumous fame in itself is thus worthless as an aspiration, yet let him who seeks it take care to remember that he is craving posthumous power, and that wherever there is posthumous renown that is, reputation after death there there is, for good or evil, a posthumous and an enduring influence. The seed sown in life will then spring up in harvests of blessing, or harvests of sorrow. A holy heart alone should desire to be remembered in the world after death. Not merely great men, but good men alone should pray that they may be recollected by the generations that succeed them. To wish to be remembered as great, but to be forgotten as good, is a desire unworthy of a Christian. To pant to be remembered only as evil, is a thirst peculiar to demons. To desire that we may be remembered as good after we are gone, is an aspiration worthy of saints and martyrs; a desire that holy hearts and enlightened minds will delight to cherish and seek after. Cain spoke after he was dead, as well as Abel. The words of wrath that he uttered, the stroke of fratricide he dealt, the character and the remorse that he exhibited, all still live in the sacred page, and are remembered and made use of, and exert an influence on successive generations of mankind. It may be that the saved in glory feel it an accession to their joy, that something that they were when alive upon earth is distributing beneficent influence behind them. And it may be that the lost in misery feel their agony aggravated a thousand-fold, because they learn that something they did is dealing destruction upon thousands of families they never saw, and yet ever corrupt. Thus, whether our influence be great or small, whether it be good or evil, it lasts, it lives somewhere, within some limits, and is operative wherever it is. Death, instead of annihilating that influence, only makes it more obvious. Death clears up the lineaments of the moral character of man. It takes the body, but it leaves behind the real likeness of the real because inner man. The grave buries the dead dust, but the character walks the world, and distributes itself, as a benediction or a curse, among the families of mankind. Now, to a Christian, this must be a most consolatory thing, that what he was below still endures and acts. It must be a very joyful thought to a saint in heaven, that whilst he is busy chanting God's praise in glory, he is not less busy doing God's work upon the earth; that neither in the earth he has left behind him, nor in the heaven he now occupies, is he one moment idle. In the former he is a missionary still; in the latter, he is a saint rejoicing ever. The sun sets beyond the western hills, but the trail of light he leaves behind him guides the pilgrim to his distant home. The tree falls in the forest; but in the lapse of ages it is turned into coal, and our fires burn now the brighter because it grew and fell. The coral insect dies, but the reef it raised breaks the surge on the shores of great continents, or has formed an isle in the bosom of the ocean, to wave now with harvests for the good of man, and to be a gem hereafter for the diadem of the great Redeemer. We live and we die; but the good or evil that we do lives after us, and is not "buried with our bones." This great fact of the speaking dead is a solemn, a grave responsibility, yet at the same time a very refreshing and joyous thought. It assures us that those who have preceded us to glory have left us visibly, but not really; that those who once mingled with us, being dead, yet speak to us. The babe which perished in the bosom of its mother, like a flower that bowed its head and drooped amid the deathfrosts of time, has left behind it the lesson, "The wages of sin is death" for, though it had not sinned after Adam, yet it was a participant in the effects of Adam's fall; and, being dead, that babe, not only in its image, but in its influence, still lives and speaks in the chambers of the mother's heart, and in the sanctuary of God's people. The friend with whom we took sweet counsel, and in whose company we walked to the house of God, is removed visibly from the outward eye; but the lessons that he taught, the grand sentiments that he uttered, the holy deeds of generosity by which he was characterized, the moral lineaments and likeness of the man, still survive, and appear in the silence of eventide, and on the tablets of memory, and in the light of morn, and noon, and dewy eve; and, being dead, he yet speaks eloquently, and in the midst of us. In the words of a beautiful poet, whom I have before quoted: "When the hours of day are numbered, Wake the better soul that slumbered, "Ere the evening lamps are lighted, And, like phantoms grim and tall, "Then the forms of the departed He, the young and strong, who cherished "They, the holy ones and weakly, Who the cross of suffering bore, “And with them the Being beauteous, "With a slow and noiseless footstep "And she sits and gazes at me With those deep and tender eyes, Like the stars so still and saint-like, Looking downward from the skies. "Uttered not, yet comprehended, Is the spirit's voiceless prayer ; Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from her lips of air. |