The bell rings out, the pulse thereof is changed. The tolling was a faint and intermitting pulse, this is stronger and argues more and better life.
His soul is gone out and,like a man who had a lease of 1000 years after the expiration of a short one, or an inheritance, he is now entered into the possession of his better estate.
His soul is gone - where?
Who saw it come in? Who saw it go out? Nobody.
Yet everybody is sure he had one and has none.
If I ask mere philosophers what the soul is I shall find some who will tell me it is nothing but the harmony, the just and equal composition of the elements in the body which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the soul.
And so in itself the soul is nothing, no separable substance that overlives the body.
Philosophers see that other creatures have no soul and they affect an impious humility to think as low of Man.
But even if my soul were no more than the soul of a beast I could not agree.
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That soul that can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than nothing.
If I ask not mere philosophers but mixed men, philosophical divines, how a separate soul enters into Man I shall find some that tell me that it is by generation and procreation from parents. They think it hard to say the soul is guilty of original sin if the soul is put into a body in which it must necessarily grow foul and contract original sin whether it will or no.
Some will tell me that the soul is directly inserted by God, because they think it hard to maintain an immortality in such a soul if it is begotten and derived with the body from mortal parents.
If I ask whole Churches what becomes of the souls of the righteous when they depart from the body I shall be told by some that they attend an expiation, a purification in the place of torment. By some that they attend a fruition of the sight of God in a place of rest and expectation. And some say that they pass to an immediate possession of the presence of God.
St Augustine studied the nature of the soul. he sent an express messenger to St Hierome to consult of some things concerning the soul. But he satisfies himself with this: Let the departure of my soul to salvation be evident to my faith, and I care the less how dark the entrance of my soul into my body be to my reason.
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It is the going out more than the coming in that concerns us .
This death knell tells me that a soul is gone out. Where? Who shall tell me that?
I know not who it is much less what he was. The status of the man and the course of his life which should tell me wither he is gone I know not. I was not there in his sickness nor at his death, I saw not his way nor his end, nor can ask them who did to conclude or argue whither he is gone.
But I have charity. I ask that, and that tells me He is gone to everlasting rest and joy and glory.
I owe him a good opinion, it is but thankful charity in me because I received benefit and instruction from him when his bell tolled.
I, being made fitter to pray by that did pray for him. And I pray not without faith so I do charitably. So I do faithfully believe that that soul is gone to everlasting rest and joy and glory.
But for the body, how poor a wretched thing is that? That body which scarce three minutes since was such a wretched house that the soul which made but one step to heaven was thoroughly content to leave it.
That body has lost the name of a dwelling house because none dwells in it.
It is making haste to lose the name of a body and dissolve to putrefaction.
Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning grow a ditch of muddy land water by noon and condemned to the saltness of the sea by night? (And how lame a picture is that of the precipitation of mans body to dissolution?)
Now all the parts built up and knit by a lovely soul, now but a statue of clay, now these limbs melted off as if that clay were but snow.
And now the whole house is but a handful of sand, so much dust and but a peck of rubbish, so much bone
If the dead man was an excellent artificer, who comes to him for a cloak or for a garment now? Or for advice if he were a lawyer? If a magistrate, for justice?
Before he has his immortal soul Man has the soul of sense, and a soul of vegetation before that.
This immortal soul did not forbid other souls to be in us before, but when this soul departs it carries all with it.
No more vegetation, no more sense.
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In our mother’s womb we grew and when she was delivered of us we were planted in some place, in some calling in the world.
In the womb of the earth we diminish and when she is delivered of us our grave opened for another.
We are not transplanted but transported, our dust blown away with profane dust with every wind
