King of Terrors

“ So stated it is inexplicable, so ruthless, so blundering — this death that we must die. It is the cruel ambush into which we are snared. It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters. ”

“ Dare we make the awful venture? Who can endure such a sight and not die? Who would not shrink from so fierce a test? So this unknown experience which awaits us on the far side is charged with the terror of the unknown. We flinch from it as we look merely at the isolated coffin awaiting its last burial, the symbol of disaster. ”

“ Nay to the jaws of Taenarus too he came,
Of Dis the infernal palace, and the grove
Grim with a horror of great darkness- came,
Entered, and faced the Manes and the King
Of terrors, the stone heart no prayer can tame. ”

“ Brethren, today these two moods which we have rehearsed are peculiarly ours— the mood of violent recoil, the mood of quiet continuity. Today the white light of Pentecost pours itself around us, and we know ourselves to be in the possession of the first fruits of the Spirit. Yet the white light breaks itself against the blackness of a closed coffin, flung up before the eyes of all, to embody the irreparable disaster of a death which has touched the very heart of our National life. ”

“ Loneliness—these are the three things by which I flee from haunting terrors towards numbness and indifference. Each one, of course, has his own weapons—these are mine. Years ago, when I was young and timid, I dreaded to leave the little rut down which I wandered. Now experience has given me the knowledge that Life is very little after all, and that it is for the most part worthless where there is no happiness, no forgetfulness of pain, no inner peace. The opinion of other people, beyond the few who love me, leaves me cold. ”

“ Even though it be ever so true that this after state will be an outgrowth from what we are, yet we can have no notion beforehand of what the outgrowth will actually mean. We can see nothing ahead. No hint reaches us to interpret it. How can we picture it? How can we give it concrete and actual expression? We gaze and gaze, and the abyss is blind and black. Death shuts fast the door. Beyond the darkness hides its impenetrable secret. Not a sound comes back! Not a cry reaches us! ”

“ I suppose all of us hover between two ways of regarding death, which appear to be in hopeless contradiction with each other. First, there is the familiar and instinctive recoil from it as embodying the supreme and irrevocable disaster. It is the impossible, the incredible thing. Nothing leads up to it, nothing prepares for it. ”

“ But man, through disobedience, opened the gates to the enemy; death enters the armed with horrible vengeance, and with a ghastly smile seats himself upon the throne of the new world, and clad with frightful majesty proclaims himself “The Kin of Terrors.” ”

“ So that black coffin harbours its black secret. But over it and round it and about it the light of Whitsuntide sweeps in to scatter all our fears. Why are we afraid? Have we not the gift of the Spirit? Has it not swept in upon us with a mighty wind? Is it not in our heart as a fire? Surely it has become our very own possession, one with our very life. And the Spirit which we now possess is itself the Life of all Life, the Life of the Life beyond death. It is the Eternal Life of God. ”

“ We go out stripped of all that has made us intelligible to ourselves, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. Death, then, must retain its terror, even though it is but a stage in our growth, the terror of the unknown, the terror of loss, the terror of finality to what have been hitherto the movements of our very life. ”

“ In this light, this Pentecost, you know your sin, your own personal sin, the sin that is under condemnation.
Well, let this sin go, then. Uproot it. Cut it away. Bury it. Burn it out. Die to it. Kill it. You can, for you are a son of God, and the spirit of sonship will do its good work in you. It will slay in you the thing that offends. It will kill in you that sin which is the only sting in death. It will expel the devil from you who alone has power in death. It gives you the weapon. Trust the sword of the Spirit. Yield to it. Let the dead things go, and lay hold on life. ”

“ Purify yourself as He bids you Who is pure. Then the old will drop away from you, and the new wonder will begin. You will find yourself already passed from death to life, and far ahead strange possibilities will open out beyond the power of your heart to conceive. ”

“ The long, horrible silence that follows when we become aware of what we have lost out of our daily intercourse by the withdrawal of the immediate presence will cut its way into our souls. We shall feel it impossible to keep at the high level without a word, without a sign to reassure us of its truth. The blank veil will hang on unlifted, unstirred. Not a glimpse to be had of the world inside and beyond! How black, how relentless, this total lack of tangible evidence for the certainty that we believe in! Once again the old terror will come down upon us. ”

“ We have shaken ourselves free. We are in the Spirit. We have passed over to the other side. Now, even now, brethren, we are the sons of God; we have the Spirit of Him Who says: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; He that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoso liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.”
Stand on the strong Word. In its strength you can even now use your remaining days to bury that which is already dead. You can strip off the clinging garments of decay, the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Has not the Spirit in you convicted you of sin? ”

“ Only we know that all which is already ours, by living experience, by intimate attachment, will be gone. The warmth of the present companionship, the comfort of familiar habits, the loving intimacy of deep and dear associations, the tender presence of this fond earth, the joy, the love, the hands that touch, the voices that charm, the hearts that beat. ”

“ We shall simply go on being what we already are, only without disguise, without qualification. We shall use the same forces, live according to the same methods, be governed by the same motives, realize the same intention. We are what we shall be. That is why, standing by the dead, we know nothing for them is changed. We are to use the same language as of old, to think of them under the same form, to follow them with our intimate and habitual familiarities. Yes, for they are what they were. Death does not count. ”

“ Its shadow falls across our natural sunlight, and we are swept off into some black abyss. There is no light or hope in the grave; there is no reason to be wrung out of it. Life is the only reality, the only truth. Death is mere blindness, mere negation. “Death cannot praise Thee, O God; the grave cannot celebrate Thee. The living, the living, they can only praise Thee, as I do this day.”
So the Scripture cried out long ago. So we cry in our angry protest, in our bitter anguish, as the ancient trouble reasserts its ancient tyranny over us today. It is man’s natural recoil. ”

“ Therefore it is our reasonable act of faith to stand by our highest experience, and to assert its validity even when its light has faded out of our lives and we have sunk back under the shadows. Though we have returned to the twilight of the valleys, yet we will ever recall the moment when we stood upon the sunlit heights and saw the far horizons. It was a true value that we then gave to life and death. That act of insight cannot be disproved or discredited; even though there be a counter judgement which will not be gainsaid, and which still presses its conclusion and penetrating insistence. ”

“ It is that which first comes down to us, perhaps, as we look down upon the quiet face, so cold and white, of one who has been very near and dear to us. There it lies in possession of its own secret. It knows it all. So we seem to feel. And what the face says to us in its sweet silence to us as a last message from the one whom we loved is: “Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was. I am I, and you are you, and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. ”

“ Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner. All is well. Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. ”

“ We can send our hearts over the silent frontier into the secret land. We hold converse with them that are gone from us. Not a tie is cut. They know it, we know it. The spirit bands hold. We can be content to bury this poor body, left behind, out of sight. ”

“ It simply traverses every line on which life runs, cutting across every hope on which life feeds, and every intention which gives life significance. It makes all we do here meaningless and empty. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Everything goes to one place, good and bad, just and unjust, happy and unhappy, rich and poor, all lie down together in one common ruin. All are cut off by the same blind inexorable fate. ”

“ Even during the Terror, when death seemed for so many a thing to face smiling, the man who daily sent to the guillotine in Paris or the provinces uncounted thousands, walked the streets unguarded, and no one, vengeful, struck. In fact, the Terror seemed to paralyze even the will of the most reckless. Not so felt the young noble. ”

“ It will be the work of the same Spirit who works in us today.
And in the power of the Spirit we are already passed from death to life. Death is behind us, not in front. “Ye were dead.” “Ye were baptized by the Spirit into Christ’s death.” The old sinful self, the man after the flesh, the old Adam in us, is already under the doom of death. It is stricken with a mortal blow. The grip of death has overtaken it. It is given over to death, with its greeds and lusts, with its envies and cruelties, with its meannesses and deceits. ”

“ We grope in vain. We strain our eyes in vain. “Oh, death is, after all, a fearful thing,” so we say with the old cringing fear that clings to the known, the familiar scene, and abhors the untravelled bourne. ”

“ We were better able to win an insight into the real heart of things as we stood there by the bedside of the dead in spiritual exaltation, with every capacity raised to its highest level, than now when we are drawn under the drag of days, submerged, unnerved, wearied, out of spirits, disheartened. ”

“ It fired the French army with a wonderful enthusiasm, and untrained as they were, they beat back the invaders at the hard-fought field of Valmy and saved the French Republic.
The Reign of Terror
The period known as “the reign of terror” now began in earnest. A faction of the extreme republican party got control of the government, and kept it by terrorizing the more peaceable citizens. The brutal wrongs which nobles had put upon the lower classes for so many hundred years were brutally avenged. The king was executed, as were most of the nobles who had not fled from the country. ”

“ It may be, no doubt, that it may come to the very old as the fitting close of an honourable life. But how often it smites, without discrimination, as if it had no law! It makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us. We get no consideration from it. Often and often it stumbles in like an evil mischance, like a feckless misfortune. ”

“ And, as we stand there, death seems a very little thing. What really matters is the life with its moral quality, its personal characteristics, its intense and vivid charm, its individual experiences, its personal story ”

“ Near him lay a living soldier with bloodshot eyes and aching wounds, terror written on his features—terror born, not from the fortunes of battle, not of the foe whom he has met face to face, but terror of the black night' the loneliness, the awful thought that the dead are all around him, a somber scene lit up by the fire that seizes some helpless one, never releasing him until he has lost the semblance of a man, and is only a charred fragment. ”

“ Yet, beloved, if we recall the idea of growth, then we can afford to be in ignorance of what lies ahead; we can afford to live solely in the present hour. We can afford to be stripped of our earthly investiture, and go out into the naked silence of the beyond, because still through being sons of God we have secured to us the very powers which will avail us in the untravelled land. ”

“ It is not death; nobody is dead. It would be too ludicrous to suppose it. What has death to do with us? How can we die? Everything that we cared for and loved exists. Physical death has no meaning, no relation to it. ”

“ We can never be found wanting if we are true to ourselves. We can never fail over these if we cling to what God has already given. The method by which we control life here and now is the very method which will hold good there. ”

“ And the Lord Gro made answer unto him, "O King, as a child weaveth a daisy-chain, thus easily did you conjure up these shapes of terror. Not in such wise fareth he that calleth out of the deep the deadly terror indeed; but with toil and sweat and with straining of thought, will, heart, and sinew fareth he." ”

“ Is it not through the idea of growth? We are in a condition of process, of growth, of which our state on earth is but the preliminary condition. And this must mean that in one sense we know all that lies before us ”