Isaiah 55:8-9

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Death- From Jane Eyre

The following is a quote from the classic Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. The scene is 2 small children in a dreary orphanage. Jane has never had a loving family and lived with a wicked Aunt, until sent here. The headmaster calls her a liar and puts her on a stool (with a sign LIAR) to stand all day without food and water. Another small child, Helen, comforts her afterwards, bringing her some food and these words.....
The irony of course, is later her one and true friend, Helen, dies in Jane's arms.


"Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar?"
   "Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions."
"But what have I to do with millions? The eighty I know despise me."
   "Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much."
"How can they pity me after what Mr.Brocklehurst said?"
   "Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man; he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides Jane," - she paused.
"Well Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on-
   "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends."
"No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me, I would rather die than live - I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest,"-

   "Hush, Jane! You think too much of the love of human beings: you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr.Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second hand from Mrs.Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness - to glory?"

I was silent: Helen had calmed me...

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Spirit Doesn't Change After Death

"When a person who has always been good and faithful to his God lays down his body in the dust, his spirit will remain the same in the spirit world. It is not the body that has control over the spirit, but it is the spirit that controls the body. When the spirit leaves the body, the body because lifeless. The spirit has not changed one single particle of itself by leaving the body." - Heber C. Kimball

Death is Only a Horizon


Rossiter W. Raymond has said, "Life is eternal and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."