But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in men at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day. It comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded.
Other generations of men may have sometimes lived under an 'eclipse of faith,' to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the 'sun falling from heaven.' And we may sometimes have to begin again and acquire the belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is lost.
It is really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind mother or nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians, who are the witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary circumstances there is no fear of the future.
Often, as Plato tells us, death is accompanied 'with pleasure.' (Tim.)
When the end is still uncertain, the cry of many a one has been, 'Pray, that I may be taken.'
The last thoughts even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents of their bodily state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age, like the child, is laid to sleep almost in a moment.
The long experience of life will often destroy the interest which mankind have in it.
So various are the feelings with which different persons draw near to death; and still more various the forms in which imagination clothes it. For this alternation of feeling compare the Old Testament,—Psalm vi.; Isaiah; Eccles.