Left alone, he turned to his diary. 'The day after
tomorrow,' he wrote, 'is my birthday, if I am permitted to live
to see it-- my forty-seventh birthday since my birth. How large a
portion of my life on earth is already passed! And then-- what is
to follow this life? How visibly my outward work seems
contracting and softening away into the gentler employments of
old age. In one sense how nearly can I now say, "Vivi". And I
thank God that, as far as ambition is concerned, it is, I trust,
fully mortified; I have no desire other than to step back from my
present place in the world, and not to rise to a higher. Still
there are works which, with God's permission, I would do before
the night cometh.' Dr. Arnold was thinking of his great work on
Church and State.
Early next morning he awoke with a sharp pain in his chest. The
pain increasing, a physician was sent for; and in the meantime
Mrs. Arnold read aloud to her husband the Fifty-first Psalm. Upon
one of their boys coming into the room, 'My son, thank God for
me,' said Dr. Arnold; and as the boy did not at once catch his
meaning, he added, 'Thank God, Tom, for giving me this pain; I
have suffered so little pain in my life that I feel it is very
good for me. Now God has given it to me, and I do so thank Him
for it.' Then Mrs. Arnold read from the Prayer-book the
'Visitation of the Sick', her husband listening with deep
attention, and assenting with an emphatic 'Yes' at the end of
many of the sentences.
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