WHY IS DEATH TERRIBLE?

ONE year has just past, and another is commencing its revolution; and this fair sun will only rise and set a few times, and again a year will have elapsed. And what is this strange and awful consummation, to which the lapse of another year has brought us nearer? What is it, which is included in that little word, death, which thrills the nerves and curdles the blood of thousands and tens of thousands?

In the first place, there is an air of awful uncertainty always surrounding the event. We look forward, and cannot assign it to any particular period. Every instance of mortality, which occurs, tends to enhance the uncertainty. "One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet ;" another cometh to the grave mature in years and virtues, or with infirmities and vice drops rotten into the tomb. Yet, though the exact moment, when we shall be summoned hence, can never be ascertained, the certainty of the event itself amounts to a degree of assurance, which no other subject can possibly acquire. But can death be sudden to him who knows that there is nothing more certain than the event, and nothing more uncertain than the time?

Another cause of our dread is to be found in the idea, which is entertained, of the exquisite pangs of dissolution. But who has issued from the chambers of the tomb, who has uttered an audible voice from the coffin, to tell us the

pangs through which he has just been passing? Do we gather this from supposing that what terminates a series of pains and calamities, of sickness and sorrows, must be more painful, more agonizing than any, because it is the last? Those, who have recovered from severe disorders, have passed through, perhaps, worse than the pangs of death without dissolution; and the crisis of any acute complaint is as painful, when it leaves us alive, as when it extinguishes forever our sensibility. It is not, then, pain, which we fear, for martyrdom has seen its thousands encircled in flames, and slowly consumed; but it is death, that comprehensive word, in which so many terrors combine and coalesce.

Another source of our fear of death is to be found, perhaps, in the idea, that it is not only the last event in the series of those acts and feelings which constitute life, but that it is also something peculiarly new and extraordinary. But there is no reason why an event should be encircled with terror merely from its relative position in the order of time, or of number, or of place; and the novelty alone is no more a reason of alarm than it would be to a blind man to dread the sudden recovery of his sight, because it would open to him an utterly new and unimagined train of sensations and ideas.

But we proceed to another and fruitful source of apprehension, the circumstances and appearances which belong to this dreadful figure of our mortality. Death is mentioned, and instantly there occurs to our imagination a long train of melancholy images, the lifeless and bloodless corpse, the altered features, the dead and sunken eye, Our fancy then flies instantly to the tomb, and finds it cold, and comfortless, and silent, and dark; she sees 'there the

shroud which wraps the dead, the close imprisoning coffin, and innumerable images offensive and horrible to living curiosity. But these are all terrors of the imagination, to which education and habit have given an ascendancy, but which the understanding may easily surmount, and of which the mind ought to be divested.

I have thus hastily mentioned the principal sources of that inexplicable dread of death, which is almost a universal sentiment. The whole world bows tremblingly at the footstool of this monarch of corporeal existence. We paint his course with darkness; his guards are spectres of despair; his sceptre touches us with cruel dismay; his sway extends not only through the cold realms of forgetfulness, which are his hereditary dominions, but his future subjects close their eyes, alarmed at the imaginary aspect of the monarch, whom they have arrayed in all the appendages of oppressive and melancholy horror.

But whence this paralyzing fear? Indeed, I cannot believe that the circumstances, which I have enumerated, are sufficient, either separately or combined, to produce a feeling which appears to be so instinctive and universal. These explications, the more we examine, appear more unsatisfactory and inadequate. Hence I look around me for some other source of these painful apprehensions, —and I have found it. Ye incredulous idolaters of nature, who would banish a God from creation, as you have banished him from your reasonings, your fears have betrayed you. It is not dying which you dread; you tremble lest you should not die. Something whispers that you may live again. Here, here is the spring of anxiety, in the righteous and moral government of a Being who can bring us before his bar, and to whom it as easy to resuscitate as to destroy.

Omnipotence may act; man may live again; and, if alive, he is accountable. Yes, "it is conscience, that makes cowards of us all." It is conscience, that outruns our cool and sophistical reasoning, and, in spite of our instinct, leaps beyond the moment of our dissolution, stops not at the imposing solemnities of funerals and mourning, lingers not about the coffin, the shroud, and the tomb. No, these are not the objects which can detain her. It is conscience, which rushes through those feeble barriers of virtue and sense, and finds herself in an immeasurable eternity, in the midst of which is established forever the throne of Omnipotence, and through which the eye of Omniscience darts like the particles of light. At the bar of this great God conscience unwillingly finds herself. There, drawn up in fearful array, are the deeds done in the body; and the being, that is to answer for them, lives, while the body is mouldering and senseless in the tomb. Let any analyze the sentiment of fear, which death excites, and he will detect little dread of falling into nought. We cannot so shut up the tomb that a gleam of light from the world beyond it will not dart into the darkness. We cannot so oppress the suggestions of conscience under the weight of sophistry, or leaden insensibility, that they will not sometimes burst their confinement, and expatiate in the awful uncertainties of a world to come. Yes, it is this, which has made cowards, on the bed of death, of those acute reasoners, those sublime theorists, those polished geniuses, those monarchs in the realms of art and fancy, who have unhappily chosen the forlorn and obscure system of atheism for their consolation. It was this, which drew from Gibbon, on the death of a dear friend, these memorable worlds: "All is now lost, finally, irrecoverably lost. Ah, the immortality of 37

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the soul is, at some times, a very comfortable doctrine!" It was this, which dictated the following confessions to the skeptical historian of England: "I am affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in which I am placed by my philosophy. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. Where am I, and what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? I am confounded with these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness.” It was this, which peopled with terrors the imagination of the dying Voltaire, when he disburdened his conscience to an attending priest, and which made him confess to his physician the agonies of his mind, and entreat him to procure for his perusal, in his dying hour, a treatise written against the eternity of future punishment.

But for this last and omnipotent cause of terror are there no alleviations provided? Yes! but not from any of the sources which I have hitherto explored. I must lead to that spring which flows fast by the oracle of God. It is my duty and my joy, to open to the anxious and thirsty spirit the wells of consolation, everlasting and ever full. I would lead you to the tomb of Jesus, that you may see the light which breaks from it, and the angels of comfort and mercy, that watch around that consecrated spot. In the light of his gospel the darkness beyond the grave vanishes, fearful uncertainty changes into hope, eternity becomes less indistinct, and, consequently, less oppressive and alarming. Time unites itself indivisibly with the duration beyond it; and the present life, we are sure, is but a stage in the eternal career of uninterrupted existence. The alarms of conscience, which, in the barren region of in