Some Private Views | Page 5

were not afraid of Death. But that arrow has lost its barb. The Fear of Death, even among professing Christians, is now comparatively rare; I do not mean merely among dying men--in whom those who have had acquaintance with deathbeds tell us they see it scarcely ever--but with the quick and hale. Even with very ignorant persons, the idea that things may be a great deal worse for us hereafter than even at present is not generally entertained as respects themselves. A clergyman who was attending a sick man in his parish expressed a hope to the wife that she took occasion to remind her husband of his spiritual condition. 'Oh yes, sir,' she replied, 'many and many a time have I woke him up o' nights, and cried, "John, John, you little know the torments as is preparing for you."' But the good woman, it seems, was not disturbed by any such dire imaginings upon her own account.
Higher in the social scale, the apprehension of a Gehenna, or at all events of such a one as our forefathers almost universally believed in, is rapidly dying out. The mathematician tells us that even as a question of numbers, 'about one in ten, my good sir, by the most favourable computations,' the thing is incredible; the philanthropist inquires indignantly, 'Is the city Arab then, who grows to be thief and felon as naturally as a tree puts forth its leaves, to be damned in both worlds?' and I notice that even the clergy who come my way, and take their weak glass of negus while the coach changes horses, no longer insist upon the point, but, at the worst, 'faintly trust the larger hope.'
Notwithstanding these comparatively cheerful views upon a subject so important to all passengers on life's highway, the general feeling is, as I have said, one of profound dissatisfaction; the good old notion that whatever is is right, is fast disappearing; and in its place there is a doubt--rarely expressed except among the philosophers, with whom, as I have said, I have nothing to do--a secret, harassing, and unwelcome doubt respecting the divine government of the world. It is a question which the very philosophers are not likely to settle even among themselves, but it has become very obtrusive and important. Men raise their eyebrows and shrug their shoulders when it is alluded to, instead, as of old, of pulverising the audacious questioner on the spot, or even (as would have happened at a later date) putting him into Coventry; they have no opinion to offer upon the subject, or at all events do not wish to talk about it. But it is no longer, be it observed, 'bad form' in a general way to do so; it is only that the topic is personally distasteful.
The once famous advocate of analogy threw a bitter seed among mankind when he suggested, in all innocence, and merely for the sake of his own argument, that as the innocent suffered for the guilty in this world, so it might be in the world to come; and it is bearing bitter fruit. To feel aweary at the Midway Inn is bad enough; but to be journeying to no home, and perhaps even to some harsher school than we yet wot of, is indeed a depressing reflection.
Hence it comes, I think, or partly hence, that there is now no fun in the world. Wit we have, and an abundance of grim humour, which evokes anything but mirth. Nothing would astonish us in the Midway Inn so much as a peal of laughter. A great writer (though it must be confessed scarcely an amusing one), who has recently reached his journey's end, used to describe his animal spirits depreciatingly, as being at the best but vegetable spirits. And that is now the way with us all. When Charles Dickens died, it was confidently stated in a great literary journal that his loss, so far from affecting 'the gaiety of nations,' would scarcely be felt at all; the power of rousing tears and laughter being (I suppose the writer thought) so very common. That prophecy has been by no means fulfilled. But, what is far worse than there being no humorous writers amongst us, the faculty of appreciating even the old ones is dying out. There is no such thing as high spirits anywhere. It is observable, too, how very much public entertainments have increased of late--a tacit acknowledgment of dulness at home--while, instead of the lively, if somewhat boisterous, talk of our fathers, we have drawing-room dissertations on art, and dandy drivel about blue china.
There is one pleasure only that takes more and more root amongst us, and never seems to fail, and that is making money. To hear the passengers at the Midway Inn