To be, or not to be : that is the question : Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them ? To die : to sleep ; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd.
But then he remembers that sleep is not always unconscious- ness ; it may be troubled with dreams.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life.
Who, he says, would bear all the troubles and vexations and wrongs and rebuffs of life, when he could at once put an end to them, if it were not for the fear of what may come after ?
Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life. But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will. And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of ? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
Now, clearly in this famous passage Shakespeare is setting Hamlet before us simply as a man of the world, thinking of death as an intelligent heathen might think of it — as a terrible mystery,
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which might or might not be the end of conscious existence. And I ask you to compare this with St. Paul's view. Hamlet, like St. Paul, would gladly have done with life in the flesh, but he wishes simply to escape from the ills of life, and is frightened back by the dread of what may come after death. St. Paul wishes to depart and to be with Christ, he has no shrinking fear of " the undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveller returns"; to him to die is not escape from trouble merely, but positive gain ; but he accepts life in order that he may do some more service in it. Hamlet regards both life and death as evils, and does not know which is the less ; St. Paul regards both as blessings and knows not which to prefer. To Hamlet, death is going out of the light into the dark ; to St. Paul, it is rather going out of the dark into the light of Christ.^
The Ideal Life.
In every possible phase of the word " life," Christ is the life of the Christian. To live is Christ, for He is the mystical source from whom all our life flows. With Him is the fountain of life, and all life, both of body and of spirit, is from Him, by Him, and in Him. " To live is Christ," for He is the aim and object as well as the Lord of all, and no other is worth calling life but that which is for Him by willing consecration, as well as frora Him by constant derivation. " To live is Christ," for He is the model of all our life, and the one all-sufficient law for us is to follow Him.
^ There were two outstanding characters residing in Eome at the time of St. Paul's imprisonment. These were Nero, the Emperor, and Seneca, the philosopher. What is Nero's conception of life ? To live, to him, is to be as unbridled as a wild beast in pleasure and passion and revelry. If that is to live, it is a pity that we cannot forget that we are not beasts. It is a pity that we have a conscience. It is a pity that we fear to die. It is a pity that we cannot forget that there is a hereafter. The answer of Nero does not satisfy the unceasing desire of my heart for a noble conception of life. What is Seneca's conception of life ? " Life," says he, " is to enjoy oneself in the realms of ideas — to think, to learn, to master the laws of Nature and make the mind the master of the man." The answer of Seneca is as far as the East is from
1 R. E. Bartlett.
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the West from Nero's conception of life, and as great in value and superiority. It is a good answer, for it is a blessed thing to live in the world of thoughts at the feet of poets and scientists, philosophers and theologians. We cannot think too much and too well, and spend too much time in the company of the best thinkers of the ages. But Seneca's answer is too vague and too negative and abstract. It is good to think, but it is not good enough to remain like a fairy among the hills and valleys of enchanted ideas. What is Paul's conception of life ? " Life," answers Paul, " is to reproduce Jesus Christ in character, by thought, word and deed. Life is to preach Christ; to cross mountains and seas, to magnify Christ in a prison. In a word, life to me is Christ — Christ equals life, and life equals Christ." ^