01.37. Some Thoughts About Death
Chapter 37 SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT DEATH. That is a strange conjunction which exists between a visible body and an invisible spirit. The result of this mysterious alliance is a living being, a personality affecting and influencing us in many ways, so that we are different, and life itself is not the same because of this living, thinking, loving creation of God. When the spirit leaves the body we see that the inhabitant of the tenement of clay is gone. The some one who not only gave physical force to the body, but invested it with a mental, moral and social charm, is departed.
Even while we hang broken-hearted over the form that is left, yet the one who loved us and whom we loved has vanished. What lies on the bier and in the coffin is but the casket from which the jewel has been taken, the mere semblance of a person who himself is in distant worlds, even while our tears drip on the cold, unconscious face.
Several facts impress us about this strange, sad thing called death.
One is its unspeakable pathos.
Perhaps the helplessness of the dead may be the great reason for the tender, pitiful feeling which it invariably inspires. Anyhow, the hardest of men are touched at the sight and even enemies are disarmed in its presence.
What was once a strong, resolute man is now seen unable to lift a hand or speak a single word in self-defense, no matter what the attack may be.
People were busy enough to criticize and condemn only a few days before. What has happened to so silence them? What strange force has the pale-faced, silent sleeper exercised that not only the bitterest adversaries cease their accusations, but even speak that which is kindly concerning the pathetically helpless form before them? A second fact is the eloquence of death.
Surely a man never pleads his sorrows, wrongs and unfortunate life so well as when he is silent in the coffin. The lips do not move, but they persuade and win the people all the same.
Something in us also begins to entreat for the one who cannot speak for himself. We recall the difficulties of his life, we remember his disadvantages, the injustices done him, the hard lot he had, and so the speechless, voiceless one in the casket is not only vindicated, but acquitted and honored. A third feature is the isolating power of death on those who are bereaved. A man who has lost a loved one is at once exiled into a world to himself. Friends grasp his hand and speak kindly words, but none seem able to come where he is now living. It would take not only a similar grief, but the identical sorrow to do that. So he has a language of his own, a suffering peculiarly his, and a world all to himself. He is removed in a sense from those who observe him, and just as sadly true, they, the observers, are far from him. No sailor shipwrecked on a rock, with waves breaking all around him and no sail or land in sight, is more truly insulated than the man upon whose heart has fallen the crushing affliction of the death of one near and dear to him. How far away seem all signals of sympathy and help; how remote all human vessels in the offing; how unable all seem to come near and land; and what a ceaseless stretch of billows of grief and pain keep rolling in on the mind and heart. Exiled and expatriated indeed. A fourth influence of death is realized in the heart shrinking from and suffering under sounds and scenes of merriment and joy.
Once in a great bereavement, a sudden laugh on the street would nearly break my heart. We would find ourselves wondering how any one could be glad in such a grief-stricken grave-riven world like this. The only sound we recall which we could endure in that sorrowful period was the ringing of distant church bells during the month of Lent. Somehow they spoke of heaven and had a soothing power. In a late sorrow, as we walked alone one night on the street we passed a dwelling ablaze with light where a wedding was taking place. At another just beyond a party was going on, the street was crowded with carriages, while voices, music and laughter from the house filled the night air.
We were not selfish enough to wish the pleasure of others marred because we walked a stricken man on their pavements, but we only mention the fact how a great trouble made the sounds of merriment and revelry pierce the grieving heart like daggers. A greater suffering came as we turned a corner, on which the Methodist church stands. It has been made an Institutional church, and just as we passed it the sounds of a bowling alley, the stroke of the ball and rattling fall of the ten pins came through the windows of the annex and broke upon our ears. God only knows the suffering we endured to hear such sounds from His House, and at such a time of personal bereavement and sorrow. How can they do it! we said, as we walked with dripping tears alone in the night. A fifth fact about death is seen in its strange power to give an appearance as well as experience of emptiness to everything in the world.
It is marvelous how the death of one person will make the earth look lonesome and desert-like, while life seems hardly worth the living. No matter how great the crowd, how busy the throng, the aching consciousness that one is gone from the walks of life, never to return, causes us to feel the solitariness and forsakenness we have mentioned, while Ichabod is written on every street and house, and on every employment and enjoyment of time.
We have never read a paragraph or poem that so perfectly describes this state of mind as is done in a few simple, natural, but powerful, lines written by George Eliot: "AND I AM LONELY"
"The world is great! the birds all fly from me; The stars are golden fruit upon a tree, All out of reach! My little sister went, And I am lonely.
"The world is great! I tried to mount the hill Above the pines, where the light lies so still, But it rose higher! Little Lisa went, And I am lonely.
"The world is great! the wind goes rushing by.
I wonder where it comes from? Sea birds cry And hurt my heart! My little sister went, And I am lonely.
"The world is great! the people laugh and talk And make loud holiday; how fast they walk!
I’m lame, they push me; little Lisa went, And I am lonely." A final thought is that such is the crushing power of the sorrow coming from bereavement that we do not see how any one can endure it without Christ. In fact we do not believe that the human heart can bear such grief apart from divine support and consolation.
Stoicism is not proper triumph over trouble, and is not victory at all. Hardness and bitterness is not conquest, but defeat. While resort to opiates, alcohol and rushing into worldliness is a confession that the bereaved person did not carry their load to Christ the Burden-Bearer, that they have themselves sunk under the unbearable weight of grief, and have ended in failure where others obtain victory. The soul was made for God, is dependent upon Him and can only be happy in Him. So if we need Him in the days of youth, health, strength and happiness, what can we do without Him in the period of profound sorrow, in the time when the room has been emptied, the chair made vacant and a new grave is seen in the cemetery? We pity from the depths of our soul the man or woman who has not God with them in such dark, sad, trying hours.
We were once summoned in haste when a pastor, to a home where an only child, a beautiful girl of three years of age, had suddenly died. As we entered the room and glanced at the bed on which the little form was resting, it seemed as if she had fallen asleep. The long lashes lay on her cheek, the ringlets were gently stirred on her forehead, by a soft breeze blowing through the open window. There was no wasting appearance of sickness, nor even death, and yet the soul was gone.
We next looked for the mother, and found her on the floor on the other side of the bed, writhing in speechless agony, with both hands, clutching her breast as if her heart was breaking.
We knelt down and tried to talk with and pray for her; but she seemed to hear nothing, and would not be comforted. She was without Christ and went down with her sorrow then and thereafter.
We saw a man who had buried his wife, and had returned to his home after the funeral, sit down on the front door step and refuse to go in. He said with a voice and look of utter despair: "I have no home now. I do not care to live."
Instead of coming to Christ, he took to drink, and added to his unconsoled sorrow a ruined character and life.
How thankful we are to see others even in the first anguish of their grief, and all the pain of the after loneliness; go at once to the Son of God; cling to Him; leave all with Him; and by His power and love and grace get comforted while the tears are dripping. They kiss the hand that seems to smite them; and looking up to Him from the most crushing of bereavements say like one of yore, Though you slay me, yet will I trust you.
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