tude of a mind superior to all temporal evils. But others with Seneca maintain that this act was heroic, praiseworthy, and the proof of a really invincible heart. Be that as it may, what I am most eager to know is what he found in that book that could give him such a wonderful contempt for his own life, which is after all the best thing we can enjoy in this world? The book treated of the immortality of the human soul, and Cato was convinced by its teaching that the soul cannot die with the body, but that after it has been separated from the body by death it is as it were released from the bonds and chains which fettered it, and gains true freedom and a place among the great heroes forever as the reward of a well-spent life. If that is the case, he thought, I can easily allow one part of me, the body, to go, provided the other, the soul, lives forever.
What would such people do if they were fully certain of rising again, body and soul? My dear brethren, I do not cite this example as one worthy of imitation; God forbid that we should think of such a horrible crime! That we shall rise again after death in another body elsewhere is a false and erroneous doctrine, with which the devil deludes poor people that he may bring them down to hell all the sooner; the immortality of the soul is a divine truth; but it is a horrible crime to take away one’s own life on account of it. What I conclude from the examples adduced is this: if the belief that after death the soul enters a new body gives such great courage as to take away all fear of wounds and of death itself, although they who believe this have no idea of where their souls will start the new life, whether it will be in a beautiful land or in a rugged desert among wild barbarians, nor what sort of bodies they will have, whether strong or weak, sickly or healthy, ugly or handsome, crippled or stately; and if the mere belief in immortality made Cato despise his own life, and all the comforts he might still have enjoyed, so that he gave them all up forever, although he did not know how or where his immortal soul was to live hereafter; what would both these classes of people do if they were quite certain that they would lose neither body nor soul, but that they would again receive their very own bodies, and live with them forever in a land full of all imaginable joys and pleasures without any fear of sorrow or loss? What would they do in such a case?
What should not we Christians do,
Christians! where is our faith, our hope? What should they effect in us? We must die, it is true; but what of that? If we were allowed to do so, would we not almost be inclined to imitate