Unaddressed Letters — “TO MARY, IN HEAVEN”
“TO MARY, IN HEAVEN” This is my last letter to you, _Carina_, and I am writing in the belief that you are in heaven.
But are you really there, and, if you are, is all well with you?
Have you everything you desire and no regrets?
It seems such a very long way off, you have such small control over the means of transport, and so much depends on hearsay, that one may, I trust, be pardoned for entertaining doubt where all is so indefinite.
Then the accounts of that blessed place that have come to different parts of the world, though always inspired, differ so materially.
To mortals, immortality is a difficult conception.
To finite minds, conscious of the grasp of a limited intelligence, but still very much alive to the evidence of the senses we possess, the idea of a heaven, somewhere beyond the reach of earthly imagination, is perhaps more difficult still.
So many millions come into the world, and we realise fairly well how and why they come; they all, without exception, go, and none ever return, and some, we are told, are in heaven, and some elsewhere.
The time here is so absurdly short, and the eternity there is so impossibly long, that, if our chances of spending the latter in joy, or sorrow, depend on what we do in the former, it is only natural that this one idea should occupy our thoughts to the exclusion of all others.
Yet there, again, we are such frail things, that in this way lies what we call madness.
If you have solved the great problem, can you not enlighten my darkness, my craving for exact knowledge?
Write to me, _Carina_, write and tell me what it is all like.
If I have wearied you with my feeble, little tales, my stupid questions, my pictures that must seem to you so flat and colourless in the glory of that better world, my vain imaginings and poor human longings, will you not take pity on me and gladden my weary eyes with a word-painted vision of the Heavenly City, the fields of Elysium, or at least the houris who are to be the portion of the Faithful?
I do not know which paradise you are in.
See, I wait with the pencil on the paper: will you not make it write?
You do not heed.
Perhaps, after all, you are not there; or is it possible that you have forgotten this small planet and those you left here, and that you find more congenial friends in the company of the angels?
I dare say it is natural, and I do not upbraid you; but some day I may reach that desired haven, and I want you to remember that I have earned your consideration by my discretion, if you can spare me no more tender feeling.
If, for instance, I had sent you these letters while you were still on earth, and you had incautiously left them about (as you would have been certain to do), quite a number of them would have compromised you in the opinion of the servant girl, and she is the origin of a vast deal of earthly gossip.
I suppose you have no servant girls and no gossip where you are: the absence of effect depending on the want of cause.
Happy heaven!
and yet I believe that there are people on this earth who really enjoy being the subject of gossip.
To them the suggestions of scandal are as the savour of salt, as danger is to the sportsman; the wilder the suggestion, the more amusing the game; and there are even those who, when tattle wanes and desire fails, say or insinuate, to their own detriment, the thing that is not, rather than disappear into obscurity.
It is the same desire for notoriety and attention which prompted Martin to set fire to York Minster, and led the woman to complain to the vicar that her husband had ceased to beat her.
Up in the serene atmosphere of those heavenly heights you have no cathedrals, no husbands, no wives, no work, no play, no food, no frocks--pardon me, that is a slip of the pen; of course you have frocks, but what else have you?
Is it not sometimes just a little monotonous?
If life is so short that it amounts to little more than the constant fear of coming death, are you not sometimes overawed by the contemplation of eternity?
But, after all, the dwellers in heaven may never think.
Never to remember, and so never to regret; never to think, and so never to desire--that is a possible scheme of existence where a thousand years might be as one day, and to the weary it would mean rest.
But so would oblivion, and we are not altogether satisfied with the thought of oblivion.
“Oh, Threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing is certain--_This_ Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
” That is well enough, but it is not an inspired writing; it is a cry rather of despair than conviction, and oft repeated to make up for want of certainty.
Of things mundane we have acquired a tolerable knowledge, however much there is yet to be learnt; but that in us which we call the Soul will never be satisfied till it learns something of the hereafter.
Who will teach it?
Do we know more now than they did when men fought with bows and arrows, or flint weapons, instead of hundred-ton guns fired by electricity?
Standing alone in some vast solitude where man and his doings have no part, have made no mark and left no trace--where face to face with Nature, with mountain and plain, forest and sea and a limitless firmament, man’s somewhat puny efforts are forgotten, there comes an intense longing for something higher and nobler than the life we live.
The soul of man cries out for light, for some goal towards which he may by effort and sacrifice attain; for he is not lacking in the qualities that have made heroes and martyrs throughout all the ages.
If he cannot rend the veil and scale the heights of heaven, he can grasp the things within his reach; and, realising that there are problems beyond his intelligence, he can yet give his life to make easier the lot of his fellow-creatures, seeking humbly, but courageously, to follow, no matter how far behind, in the footsteps of his Great Exemplar.
Nor need his efforts be less strenuous, his object less worthy, because this passionate cry of a voice, stilled centuries ago, strikes a sympathetic chord in his heart.
“Yet ah!
that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale, that in the branches sang, Ah whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield One glimpse--if dimly, yet indeed reveal’d, To which the fainting Traveller might spring, As springs the trampled herbage of the field!
Would but some wingèd Angel, ere too late, Arrest the yet-unfolded Roll of Fate, And make the stern Recorder otherwise Enregister, or quite obliterate!
Ah Love, could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of things entire, Would not we shatter it to bits--and then Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!
” THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London _SECOND EDITION_
Malay Sketches BY
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