Life annuity

“ May the present instance of mortality remind us of our approaching fate. May it draw our attention toward thee, the only refuge in time of need, that when the awful moment shall arrive in which we are about to leave this transitory scene, the enlivening prospect of thy mercy may dispel the gloom and fear of death; that after our departure hence in peace, and in thy favor, we may be received into thine everlasting kingdom, and there enjoy, in union with the souls of our departed friends, the just reward of a pious and virtuous life. ”

“ We would ask you to carry with you into private life the best wishes of each one of us for your future happiness, and that of your family, expressing the hope that the days of retirement may not be few, and assuring you that your name will long live in our remembrance. ”

“ O God, Holy Spirit! create within me the new man, that I may not bring into the new year old sins and impurities, but to-day begin a new life and partake anew of Thy grace. Withhold from me, O Triune God! all long and well deserved punishment, and continue to bless me and mine with all manner of bodily and spiritual, temporal and eternal gifts. Let Thy grace rest upon us anew every morning, and renew Thy good will to all who in this new year seek their refuge with Thee and wait upon Thy goodness. Grant unto us still further Thy precious Word, which is a joy and comfort to our hearts. ”

“ I have one year the less to travel through the world, and to fulfil the various services of a travelling state: may my diligence in duty be doubled, since the number of my appointed years is diminished! [238] Do I find a new birth-day in my survey of the calendar, the day wherein I entered upon the stage of mortality, and was born into this world of sins, frailties, and sorrows, in order to my probation for a better state? Blessed Lord, how much have I spent already of this mortal life, this season of my probation, and how little am I prepared for that happier world! ”

“ Nay, if some god should grant me to renew my childhood from my present age and once more to be crying in my cradle, I would firmly refuse; nor should I in truth be willing, after having, as it were, run the full course, to be recalled from the winning—crease to the barriers. For what blessing has life to offer? Should we not rather say what labour? ”

“ Oh, if I may be there too in the form of passive clay, and receive all His tutoring and refining, this will be enough: and should my future way be full of sorrows, heaven will bring me sweeter rest at last; when the whole work is done, when the robes are quite washed, when the fight is quite fought, and the death died; when the eternal life, which shall blossom above, is brought into actual health here, and real fellowship is made with my last hour. ”

“ For ages untold, our race have waited in patient expectation for the morning’s dawn when they could salute yours face to face, and impart to you a source of happiness that in life realizes communion with immortality. ”

“ Ask if they would find no solace in the unwavering conviction that their loved ones are still near and watching over them for good—inspiring holy thoughts and sweet affections and good resolutions and high endeavor—fuller of life and joy and action than ever before. Or, ask the thousands who have felt and therefore know the sustaining power of this new revelation in times of sore bereavement;—thousands who once looked on death with dread dismay, but now contemplate it with a cheerful serenity, sometimes even with a holy joy. ”

“ In that solemn hour after death, believe it, your boy, your wife, your husband, who is experiencing the startling revelations of the new life is feeling that life as an unbroken continuance of the life begun on earth. Only the environment is changed. ”

“ To those who by patient continuance in well-doing [22] seek immortality, He will give life everlasting, joy, peace, rest, and abundance of good things, which neither hath eye seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. ”

“ In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and opened the door of this mortal state, and a great soul, that had served a long apprenticeship to little things, went forth into the joy of its Lord; a life of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless rest. ”

“ One venerable respondent wrote in substance that no words could describe the rest and peace that slowly supervened after he had ridded his mind of every vestige of the old belief in which he was trained of a future personal life and realized that he would live on only in the contribution he had made to the sum of human knowledge and welfare, in the grateful memory of his friends, in his posterity, and that his individuality, with all its limitations, would be resolved into or rendered back to the cosmos with his mouldering corpse. ”

“ It comes over me to put down here and now the fact that this year for the first time others perceived, as well as myself, that I have passed the freshness and lustre of youth—but I do not feel the change as I once thought I must—life is even sweeter than ever and richer though I can still remember the time when thirty years seemed the desirable limit of life—now it opens before me full of uncompleted labor, full of riches and plans—the wealth of love, the plans of eternity. ”

“ Why would you fondly imagine yourselves secure from the stroke of death, when you cannot so much as promise yourselves one single day of life? How many will die before the end of this month, that are as young, as strong, and as healthy as you are? ”

“ Yet I feel sure that it occurs to your mind what a life ours was, how delightful, how dignified. To recover this, in the name of fortune, bestow all your energies, as I know you do, and take care that I keep the birthday of my return in your delightful house with you and my family. ”

“ The thought comes to you that, after all, it is a very bright and beautiful world you are leaving behind. You turn your head to give it a long, lingering farewell, and you try to put your mind on something cheerful—such as your life insurance. ”

“ In perilous times we live; for perilous times we are training our families. Oh! the blessedness of those precious promises which assure us that he will keep his own children to the end! Oh! the peace of being able to fall back upon those gracious words, “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand!” ”

“ Death awakens wonder but there is little time for answers to puzzled questionings. The few days of relief from noise, the expressions of sympathy and friendship, the unusual words of tenderness all make a deep impression—then life goes on as before only harder because of the added expense. ”

“ And thus, dear Miss, have I wrote to you, with a sincere view to your everlasting happiness. If during this dismal twilight, this interval between life and death, I can serve you, command me. The world generally flies the unfortunate, rejoices in evil, triumphs over distress ”

“ I can only say that it has been expiated—such as it was, by twenty miserable years, and that the last expiation is even yet not come. Your father once said, and his words dashed from me the first hope which ever entered my mind concerning you, that he never would clasp the hand of a man who had taken the life of another. What would he say to a man who had taken a life, and concealed the fact for twenty years? I am that man. ”

“ If misfortune {220} and loss should oblige you to retire into a walk of life in which you can not appear with the same liberality as formerly, will he still think himself happy in your society, and instead of withdrawing himself from an unprofitable connection, take pleasure in professing himself your friend, and cheerfully assist you to support the burden of your afflictions? When sickness shall call you to retire from the busy world, will he follow you to your gloomy retreat, listen with attention to your tale of suffering, and administer the balm of consolation to your fainting spirit? ”

“ To you, for some inscrutable purpose, He sees fit to dole out life moment by moment, with no assurance that each is not to be the last. To us He gives a lifetime at once, fifty, sixty, seventy years,—a divine gift indeed. ”

“ Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes! ”

“ Now, my dear, let me remind thee of thy increasing bodily infirmities, and the necessity it lays thee under to spare thyself of the burthen and care of much bodily and mental labour and exercise, by which thou will experience more quiet rest, both to body and mind, and that it may be, my dear, our united care to endeavor that our last days may be our best days, that so we may witness a state and qualification to pass gently and quietly out of time, into the mansions of eternal blessedness, where all sighing and sorrow, will be at an end. ”

“ I no longer live but for eternity; I no longer labour in vain; my days are real, my life is no longer a dream. O, my brethren, what a blessed gain is piety; and how great are the consolations which a soul recalled to Jesus Christ receives, in compensation for the trifling losses which he sacrifices to him! ”

“ And if it do, then the present value of an eternity is not infinitely great. Who is ignorant that a perpetual annuity at five per cent is worth only twenty years' purchase? This point ought to be discussed by a person who treats heaven as a deferred perpetual annuity. ”

“ At least this is what some thought, who believed that for every one a special hour would come, when they would be called, and then left to decide, as it were, between life and death-in-life; if they accepted life, the next message would be fraught with strength and help and blessing ”

“ Do you believe in individual immortality, dear? I do. I believe that in the other life I shall meet and know my dear ones who are in heaven. More than that, I believe that the instant I pass from this life I shall live with my dear ones who are still on earth. ”

“ The coming on of old age or sickness may necessarily debar us from the privilege and joy of early Communion, but, while we can, let us make the most of the blessed morning hours, when in all the freshness of our newly awakened life we draw near to Him Who ceaselessly watches over us. ”

“ This life was mean and it mattered little how squalid it was, for it was only a provisional, probationary moment compared to the eternal joy and happiness where all real worths and values were confidently awaited and compared to which those of earth were only dross. “There is no death. ”

“ With hearts full of gratitude for your past service, with the earnest and intense interest for your future welfare and prosperity, we all unite in wishing that the evening of your days may be spent in that calm tranquility and repose of which you were deprived in your earlier life. ”

“ As we see that life is uncertain, and that all earthly pursuits are vain, let us no longer postpone the important concern of preparing for eternity. Let us embrace the happy moment, while time and opportunity offer, to provide against the great change which we know must come, when all the pleasures of this world shall cease to delight, and the reflections of a religious and virtuous life will yield the only comfort and consolation. ”

“ Studying her love of retirement, they will pray for grace to resist worldly influences, and following her to the miserable homes of the destitute, they will aspire to become, like her, angels of comfort to the desolate and sorrowing. Thus will their childhood and youth be saintly, as, were those of the model now presented to them. ”

“ The retired life I now lead is much more congenial to my feelings, and much more favorable to religious enjoyment, than when I was kept in a continual bustle of company. Yes, it is in retirement that our affections are raised to God, and our souls refreshed and quickened by the influences of the Holy Spirit. ”

“ Then we have (not to dwell on a matter already spoken of) a peculiar privilege in the peculiar{205} loveliness which the image of Death assumes to us. In our long leisure, all sweet and soothing associations of rest,—of relief from anxiety and wearing thought,—of re-entrance upon society,— (a society how sanctified!) —of the realisation of our best conceptions of what is holy, noble, and perfect,—all affections, all aspirations gather round the idea of Death, till it recurs at all our best moments, and becomes an abiding thought of peace and joy. ”

“ Retirement from the cares and pleasures of the world has been often recommended as useful to repentance. This at least is evident, that every one retires, whenever ratiocination and recollection are required on other occasions; and surely the retrospect of life, the disentanglement of actions complicated with innumerable circumstances, and diffused in various relations, the discovery of the primary movements of the heart, and the extirpation of lusts and appetites deeply rooted and widely spread, may be allowed to demand some secession from sport and noise, business and folly. ”

“ The Redeemer, while clothed in humanity, earnestly and fervently addressed the Deity; forget not, therefore, to offer your private addresses to the Father of your spirit, at retiring to rest, and with the early dawn. Your age is the age of inadvertence; you enjoy health, and you are a stranger to the cares of the world. Cheerfulness does indeed become you, but let me pray you to consider the value of time, and the importance of appropriating it to wisdom. ”