Heathen Notions of Death. Valley and Stream unknown. Sounds from Hindoo Shores. Scep tical Ideas. - Effect of Christ's Mission. - Luther and Melancthon. Christian Views. No Death in Heaven. "Boast not thy victory, Death! It is but as the cloud's o'er the sunbeam's power; It is but as the winter 's o'er leaf and flower, That slumber the snow beneath. "It is but as a tyrant's reign O'er the voice and the lip which he bids be still; Are not for him to chain!". Mrs. Hemans. FROM the time the guilty pair heard the painful and irrevocable sentence among the groves of Paradise, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," mystery and anxiety have been associated to invest the last hour of mortal being with solemnity and terror. Nothing more appalls men than the thought of this change, or so effectually frights them, as the sight of the dread messenger that is about to put an end to pro bation, and lead on into other, strange, and unknown scenes. They would fain prolong acquaintance with "things that are seen," and they desire to be ministered unto yet longer by the material senses, although these are often the occasion of acute and prolonged suffering, sending dismay and gloom over a large period of earthly existence. It matters not how sombre the cloud that encircles us; we prefer to become enveloped in darker folds than we have yet seen, rather than to experience 190 SENTENCE IN EDEN. the Cimmerian gloom that preludes we know not what. When the words echoed through the bowers of Eden, "Thou shalt surely die," they sent a pang through the souls of the favored two who dwelt there, and the question which, doubtless, agitated their minds at the annunciation has stirred all their posterity to the same eager inquiry, What is death? They had been accustomed to ease, or perfect and delightful rest; to the fullest and freest enjoyment in everything about them; to happiest intercourse with each other; to the most blissful content -the harmony of complete existence-without idea or thought of cessation. No precedent existed to remind them of decay, nothing to bring satiety; and as the fatal and eventful hour approached that made it necessary to pronounce the fearful sentence, what terrible significance was in it! A blight came upon all things; the gates were opened, and the joyful and fearless went forth to find fear, trouble, and wasting labor; to find thorns thickly studding the flowers that had hitherto been thornless; to find disappointments associated with pleasures that had before been without a sting; to find things alluring only to deceive, and beauty everywhere sadly marred and defaced. No wonder if the mournful change were thought death; if they dreamed they had issued into a dying world, although ignorant of the extent of that "death and all our woe," which had in reality started on its ceaseless round of devastation and grief since the fatal moment of yielding to the tempter. But the blight that fell upon the natural world was not like that which came with scathful power upon the moral, and the hearts of Eden's exiles were less concerned for fading nature than the sin-ruined waste within. A comparatively barren desert was before them, in which to wander the rest of their doubtful pilgrimage; but this thought was not so painful, or the sight so cheerless, as the consideration the glimpse of that other realm over which conscience presided so jealously. As they found themselves arraigned at this tribunal to answer to the charges of which they were verily guilty, NO DEATH IF NO SIN. 191 Death, like an "armed foe," stood at their sides to threaten and distress them. There was no appeal. The fiat had gone forth, and the Judge was inexorable. The trembling culprits must bow at the stroke, to ask on until the time came to know by personal experience, "And what may death be?" Promises and revelations were indeed given to quell the anguish and mitigate the sorrows of the unhappy pair; and far down the vista of time they discovered the march of a triumphant conqueror who should vanquish the foe, yet in the matter of deliverance there was no reprieve. Power had been given the Destroying Angel to send forth his arrows and his darts over all the plains of life, and wherever human hearts were found beating, there should he have right to do his desolating work. Before him they must inevitably bow. Whatever might be the circumstances in which they were placed, however strong the inducements for lengthened days, however urgent the claims of affection, the pleadings of necessity, the entreaties and promises of ambition and hope, it would avail nothing. If they be his chosen victims, willing or unwilling, they must fall to rise no more in the day of visitation. Whether death would have entered our world if things had remained according to original purity and perfectness, we cannot know. It seems unlikely to suppose that material frames would have been left to immortality upon carth; but the "how" of these things is among the unknown and the unwritten - the unrevealed; and therefore we may not attempt to pry into "the folded leaves," or, attempting, forever fail in our object. This much we do know, that Death is abroad. He is constantly crossing our paths, and as often intimating that a conflict is nearing between himself and us; and this much is evident also, that he takes to himself a frightful form, and is clothed with terror, because of man's fatal disobedience to God. Had it been the portion, or were it to have been, under the clear-sightedness and purity of the first creation, to meet a 192 WHAT IS DEATH? change, to feel the influence of decay, it would, in all probability, have been the gradual, painless wearing away of nature; the laying aside of a garment no longer of use; the lying down to peaceful sleep at the close of a happy day. The sun would not sink more calmly beneath the western horizon, amid fleecy clouds of gold and amber, on a tranquil day of summer, than the righteous spirit would sink into everlasting bliss after having pursued its luminous way to the end of its course on earth. But, alas! it is not so. We turn from the contemplation of what might have been to what is; to ask again, What is death? and to meet the reply, It is that which "mocks at wisdom, strength, and beauty; disarranges our plans, robs us of our treasures, desolates our bosoms, breaks our heart-strings, and blasts our hopes." It is that which "extinguishes the glow of kindness, abolishes the most tender relations of man, severs him from all that he knows and loves, subjects him to an ordeal which thousands of millions have passed, but none can explain; and which will be as new to the last who gives up the ghost as it was to Abel" when he breathed out his life in presence of an envious brother, and passed away. When Adam and Eve looked upon the lifeless body of their dear child, more dear from the narrow circle of earthly relatives, and mourned as those bereft of a valued source of comfort, they began to experience what death brings to realize the bitterness flowing from it; but this did not avail to acquaint them with the untried state upon which their beloved had opened his eyes, or to take from them entirely that shrinking to which they had been subject since the forbidden tree was visited and profanely handled. That was a mournful paragraph in their history. Death became the penalty, and was entailed on all mankind; so that the last wail consequent upon the act shall not die out until regeneration shall have accomplished its whole work, — until the "kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and his Christ," and "the new heavens" and a VALLEY AND STREAM UNKNOWN. 193 holy people reign until " corruption shall have put on incorruption, and mortality shall be swallowed up of life." What death really is, we cannot know until it takes us by the hand, until we feel the icy touch that freezes the fountain of life, that congeals the warm current which gives vigor and animation to the animal frame, and transforms the active body to a clay-cold, inanimate mass, helpless, unconscious-dead! We must, ourselves, go down through the dark valley, to know what is there; we must cross the narrow stream ourselves, if we would know the characteristics of the valley and the stream; for none ever threaded that vale and forded those waters, and came back to tell of the darkness and the coldness, or to say these are but appearances. Some have long stood on the borders of the river, and told us what they saw and how they felt, but we know not their actual experience while really contending with waves as they closed around them in midJordan. The same Word that bears record of immortality tells us of death; and in proportion to the knowledge and influence of this Word is the proper view of it prevalent. That which concerns man so truly and certainly, will, of course, awaken speculation and inquiry. The patriarchs and prophets "received the promise afar off,” and believed, so that when they had finished their course, and the time came for them to be "gathered to their fathers," they laid down as tired pilgrims to a refreshing sleep, expecting to awake to scenes of eternal gladness and interest in another state; but nations that have remained ignorant of divinely-communicated teachings have had strange speculations and absurd theories respecting the dread visitant, whose unrelenting nature cannot be so propitiated as to grant exemption from his embrace. Despite offerings and sacrifices he will invade the most charmed circle, and turn their merriest songs into loudest lamentations, their strongest anticipations into deepest regrets, and make their boasted security but as a trembling foundation. Some tribes of men have thought that the |