Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1881-12-01

[From the indianapolis Reyiew.l |
Because mankind have been unable to
comprehend death they have made it
terrible. All literature OH the SUBJECTS
CHASTITY and appalling. The portals OF
the tomb have been draped in the dark
est gloom, and the mystery which lies
beyond the grave made dreadful by every
device of language and exaggeration OF
the Imagination.
Every race has construed for itself a
death angel, and all are grim and fear I
inspiring The Hebrews named hum
SammmI, and armed him with sword
and placed him in the courts of heaven,
to fly hence over the earth at the behest 4
of God. To the Greeks he was the black
twin of sleep, slrmbering in the arms OF
night. The death angel of the Romans
was female figure, dark-robed, black
winged, with ravenous teeth, hove1ng
everywhere and darling here and there,
hungry for prey. The Morse conception
of death is a vast, cloudy presence,
sweeping on its victims and bearing
them away wrapped in its sable folds.
| Our own literature personifies him as a
skeleton brandishing a dart; as fowler
spreading his net, setting his snares for
men. -
The writers who combine calm phil
osophy with a steady reliance upon the
infinite wisdom which designed the great
scheme of the universe tell us that death
is not an entity, but an event !; not
force, but state. 1t is the irrevocable
negation which closes the positive ex
perience we call life; and it must be
right and wise and kind, else it could
not be. Literature has involved the
subject in intangible theories. Science
and metaphysics have drawn little
nearer to the heart of the great mystery.
A German writer says Only before
death, but not in death, is death death.
Death is so unreal q being that he only
is when he is not, and is not when he
is" A philosophic poet has said:
e'Deathi is not dynamic agency warning
against life, but simply an occurrence
the other side of life." In the language
of science "Iiife is the performance
of functions by an organism death is
the abandonment of an organism to the
forces of the universe"
Wherever we look in the realm of
physical man we discern death and if
we look beneath the pail of horror with
which our ignorance has enrobed it we
will see its benevolence and It's beauty.
Linked inseparably with the laws of life
it bears the impress of the divinity and
is the expression of His love.
Without death there would be neither
stimulus nor romance in life. It is the
magician whose wand dissipates all COM
plications and unravels all tangles. 1t
is always friendly in its results, however
terrible It's form. It is I" the echo of the
voice of love reyerberated from the
limit of life"
+" To the capable observer, death
bears the double aspect of necessity and
benignity necessity, because it is an
ultimate fact, rs the material world is
made, that, since organic action implies
expenditure of force, the modicum of
force Given, to any physical organization
must finally be spent; benignity, be-
cause q bodily immortality on earth
would prevent all the happiness OF per-
petually rising millions and be an I'M.
speakable curse upon its possessors.
Viewed from this standpoint, the
specters of the brain, which were wont
to rise at the slightest mention of death,
vanish; and, as we enter the ancient
mystery, we can say:
Though stoop
Into dark, tremendous sea of cloud,