Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/32

Rh Had he understood the gravity of his danger he would doubtless have accepted the duty, however dissonant to his habits, of greater care for himself. But it was hard for the strong heart lodged in the powerful frame to believe that its beatings were already numbered, or that it was needful yet to check labours whose full harvest daily filled his bosom. How often this same mistake is made by the choicest spirits of the world, and how inexorable is the law which stops the hand too ready for its holy work, we need not pause to repeat. The Life Beyond must explain it all. At best a man only finds his place and fits himself to fill it, either in the company of the Prophets or the humbler ranks of philanthropy, when he has gained almost the summit of mortal life, and all beyond must be declivity and decay. It is little marvel then if those whose hearts are truest to their labours “work while it is called the day,” even with self-wasteful energy, dreading the inevitable approach of Age—if not yet of Death, of the day when our “windows shall be darkened and the grasshopper a burden,” even before the final closing of that night “when no man can work.”

Theodore Parker's fourteen years of apostleship were over. On Sunday morning, January 9th, 1859, he wrote to his congregation,—“I shall not speak to you to-day, for this morning a little after four o'clock I had a slight attack of bleeding in the lungs or throat. I hope you will not forget the contribution to the poor. I don't know when I shall again look upon your welcome faces, which have so often cheered my spirit when my flesh was weak.” He never saw them (at least from his pulpit) again. Compelled to seek a warmer climate, he sailed with his wife and friends for Santa Cruz, where he spent the winter, and then passed through England on his way to Switzerland, where he sojourned awhile with his friend Professor Desor of Neufchâtel, and then passed on to Rome as the cold weather drew near. Friends gathered round him, dear and congenial friends whom he had known and loved at home, and for a while he seemed to do well. But as the spring drew near it became evident that the sands of life were running out; he sank rapidly and hopelessly. His horror of the oppression and turpitude of the Papal government was so great that he could not endure to die in Rome, and made his friends (among whom was a physician, Dr Appleton, devoted altogether to his care) carry him away to pass his last hours in a free country.