There are, no doubt, pains and sufferings which make many almost wish
for the time being for death as a release; but these pass away. Time
assuages all grief, as Nature relieves suffering beyond endurance by
fainting and insensibility. Man may nerve himself to death or become
resigned to it and meet it even with cheerfulness; and he may, in all
sincerity of heart, offer up his life to his Maker to save that of a
beloved one; but there is a latent--an unacknowledged--yet an
irrepressible reserve in such frames of mind.
Few men can prepare for death, or offer themselves up for a sacrifice,
without feelings of a mixed nature playing a part in the act; whether
forced or springing from self-abnegation. As to suicide, it is
inevitably accompanied by certain--albeit various and different--degrees
of mental alienation or disease. No one who is in a really healthy state
of mind, whose faculties are perfectly balanced, or who is at peace with
God and man, commits suicide. The temporary exaltation of grief,
despondency or disappointment produces as utter a state of insanity as
disease itself.
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