| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 1 |
Page 3 |
It is very inspiring to think of human life in this way, as reaching out beyond what we call death and into eternity. Dying is not the end – it is but an incident, a phase or process of living. It is not a wall, cutting off our path – it is a gate, through which we pass into larger fuller life. We say we have only three score and ten years to live, and must plan only for hopes or efforts which we can bring within this limit. But, really, we may make plans which will require ten thousand years, for we shall never die.
Life is short, even at the longest. It is but a little we can do in our brief broken years. We begin things and we are interrupted in the midst of them, before they are half finished. A thousand breaks occur in our plans. We purpose to build something very beautiful, and scarcely have we laid the foundation when we are called to something else, or laid aside by illness or our life ends and the work remains unfinished. It is pathetic, when a busy man has been called away suddenly, to go into his office or place of business or work, and see the unfinished tings he has left – a letter half written, a book half read, a picture begun but not completed. Life is full of mere fragments, mere beginnings of things.
If there is nothing beyond death, but little can come of all this poor fragmentary living and doing. The assurance, however, that life will go on without serious break, through endless years, puts a new meaning into every noble and worthy beginning. The smallest things that we start in this world will go on forever.
Page 3