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every creature he has made. The counterpart of this is an instinctive dread of death; and this feeling we share in common with the animal creation. Nature instinctively shudders and startles back at the approach of death. This is not a feeling peculiar to our fallen state. It pertains to our humanity. In its first announcement, while yet a simple, elementary, unrealized idea, death was placed as a terror before the minds of our first parents, while yet sin had not subjected them to its dominion; and from that time forth, through all ages, and among all people, death has been the symbol of terror and dread.

Its dread attendants make it terrible-the cold deathsweat, the quivering, failing pulse, the darkened vision, the dying agony, and the utter stillness, helplessness, and rapid decay of the body from which life has departed, never fail to inspire dread. Death is appalling when viewed only as the separation of the soul from the body. This mysterious blending of our physical and spiritual natures, this union of matter and mind, seems here to constitute our very being. All we have enjoyed of life, our intercourse with the world, all the social intimacies, relationships, and endearments of life have come to us through and by virtue of this mysterious union. The separation of these elements, the bursting asunder of this bond of our being, leaving the body a lifeless wreck, a despoiled and wasted ruin, while the spirit departs to regions and to scenes unknown, can not be realized without a pang. No darkness of superstition, no gloom of skepticism, can so cloud the very instincts of our being but that a tremulous anxiety will be awakened by an occasion so momentous; while we behold the one element of our nature a "blackened ruin," stricken down in the dust, the other, a trembling, flying fugitive, seems to be escaping away from us, we know not whither.

But death is appalling, also, when looked upon as sundering the ties of human life, and breaking us off from all the scenes and interests of the present world. To think of bidding an everlasting farewell to earthly friends; to think of mingling no more in the social scenes of life—of closing the eye forever upon the light of day, upon the glory of the earth, the grandeur of the heavens; of listening no more to the sweet accents of affection, or the sweet melodies of nature; nay, to look upon ourselves as the silent, lonely tenants of the grave-the gloom of our habitation cheered by no companionships save such as make the grave terrible; its darkness relieved by no ray of light, its solemn silence broken by no sound; to think of its gloomy solitude, its festering corruption, the rioting of worms in the dark caverns of the dead; to think of its chilling, freezing cold, from which no protection is given, the cold rain dripping down through the loosened earth above us, making damp the dismal bed where we slumber! Alas! these are the things that make death and the grave terrible. The scenes of life will go on in their accustomed course; childhood and youth, joyous and happy, shall sport along the streets and gambol over the fields, treading upon the very dust above us, unconscious of our doom. The festive board shall witness the gathering of friends, but we shall no more be numbered among them; the current of human affairs will roll onward, but we shall be unmoved by the contending emotions, the hopes and fears, joys and sorrows now felt by the living mass. What a gloomy, appalling spectacle does the grave present! It is truly "the land of darkness and the shadow of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."

But, to one that has no hope in the future, it is armed with tenfold terror; to him that knows only of this life, it

is an exile to all that he holds dear forever. It is the withering of all his hopes, it is the blighting and destroying of all his expectations. Darkness is above, and around, and before him, and there is no light! Alas! what can silence the remorse, what can alleviate the pangs of a dying hour! But the dread of impending ruin, the consciousness of being unprepared to stand before the final Judge, fills the soul with anguish and dismay. Do they look back upon the past, its long catalogue of unpardoned sins rises up to haunt their vision and terrify their imagination! Every sin is recorded, and now stands out with fearful distinctness, shaded with the dark hues of moral death. Do they look forward? Ah! the prospect is too appalling for them to contemplate. In the language of the wretched, dying Altamont, they "turn, and turn, and find no ray!" How awfully is realized in the death of the sinner that impressive truth, The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, and the wrath of God abideth on him! O, "my soul! come not thou into their secret; and unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united."

V. MORAL ENDS OR USES OF THESE TERRORS.

But we are led to inquire again, Why, for what purpose, has death been clothed with such terrors? In this allotment, is there not an unnecessary severity on the part of God? Death may have been a just and righteous sentence, but might not some of its terrors been spared? Nay, if we consider the nature of man and the condition of society, we shall soon discover that these terrors are absolutely necessary, in order to the proper government of the world.

The terrors of death are the great guardians of life. They excite the desire of self-preservation; they prompt us

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to undergo with alacrity the labors necessary to the support of life; they restrain from those sinful indulgences and pleasures to which we are prone, and which would break down our health and destroy our lives; they lead us to suffer the ills of life and bear its calamities with patience and fortitude, rather than dare the terrors that are attendant upon the approach of death. How many of the wretched sons of men have been led, like Hamlet, to ponder

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them?

But that the dread of something after death,
That undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveler returns, puzzles the will;
And makes rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of."

How often has the hand of the suicide been arrested by those appalling terrors that cluster so thickly around the sad hour of a mortal's departure! how many have been checked from giving up to despondency and gloom, and rushing where their fortunes would be irretrievable, when those fortunes have afterward changed and disclosed a brighter sky!

Again, as a safeguard to society, these terrors have their moral uses. Were death not dreaded as it is, no public order could be preserved in the world. The wicked and desperate would trample upon all law and all government; the sword of authority would be shorn of its power; the gibbet and the scaffold would cease to awaken dread. If society is so often now disturbed, and human and divine laws so often trampled in the dust, what would be the result if the awful penalties with which they are robed were taken away? We are, then, persuaded that death is not unnecessarily armed with terrors; that its dark valley has not been planted so thick with them for no wise or benefi

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cent end. Its first view, perhaps, seemed to arraign and bring into question the goodness of the Deity; but, on closer inspection, we find these terrors as indispensable to the economy of his goodness as to his justice. And, till man's moral character is changed, thoroughly, radically changed, there can be no safety in the removal of such a check to vice and the indulgence of unrestrained passion; such removal would be a curse and not a blessing. Nor does this dread, as we shall soon have occasion to show, exist any longer than is necessary to accomplish its benevolent designs.

VI. PHILOSOPHY UNABLE TO REMOVE THESE TERRORS.

But we must notice that philosophy has never been able to remove these terrors. This has been one of the great aims of its discipline, and yet rarely, in the whole range of human experience, has a death-bed scene been exhibited that even philosophy has claimed as being philosophical. Brutal insensibility-nay, even trifling levityhave sometimes marked the dying hour, but it was an unnatural effort, like that of the wretched maniac, whose wild, hollow laugh rings out from some mountain crag, just as the victim plunges down the abyss of ruin and death.

But listen to the voice of reason; hear the arguments of philosophy; tell their sum, consider their amount. She will urge that death is the condition on which you have received life, a debt you must pay; it is the law of your being, an inevitable fate; it is the ordering of that Divine Providence that controls our destinies, therefore we ought cheerfully to submit to our fate. Again, she would urge that every thing else and every individual is mortal and perishing-why should you repine when yours is only a common,

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