Death duty

“ At the word of command he must march into the very jaws of death, as is right. He must die or madden for the want of rest, rather than fall asleep on his post, for if he does, his punishment is certain and shameful death. ”

“ I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke, winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling death—bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on the stricken lips. I see him by the weary bedside, ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy and in honor to still the soldier's agony and seal the soldier's life. ”

“ When, therefore, it is asked what death it was with which God threatened our first parents if they should transgress the commandment they had received from Him, and should fail to preserve their obedience,—whether it was the death of soul, or of body, or of the whole man, or that which is called second death,—we must answer, It is all. ”

“ I must brave Heaven, or die under its exaction of the last pang of an overstrained retribution; death will not come to my prayer, and I am stung to rebellion. Will you, sir, use your operating knife against the wrath of Heaven? I am resolved. Though conscience cannot be amputated, this hell-scorched nerve may be severed. ”

“ So far can this power be carried and exerted, that pain may be overcome, and even death itself be kept at bay. The will is. Lord of man's accidents and incidents, and if his reason guide it well, nothing can withstand its force. ”

“ I farther acknowledge and humbly adore the justice of God's holy providence, the sovereign disposer of all things, in permitting the execution of the sentence of death against me, confiding that He of his mercy and goodness, through the blood and mediation of his dear and only Son, will accept of this my suffering in the cause of truth and righteousness, and reward it with the joys of his eternal kingdom. ”

“ Thou shalt save thyself and them that hear thee: which all must necessarily be prevented, if all that comes within the sense of these soul-killers must, as guilty of blood, be corporally killed and put to death. ”

“ Thus shall you yourselves die, if your crimes accompany you to that last moment.
Every thing will change in your eyes, and you shall not change yourselves: you shall die, and you shall die in sin as you have lived; and your death will be similar to your life. Prevent this misery, O my brethren! live the fife of the righteous, and your death, similar to theirs, will be accompanied with joy, peace, and consolation. ”

“ God only knew how keen my anguish was, when I saw death stealing away the senses of those men who were dear to my soul, and I knew I could move Heaven and earth to grant the dying request of a soldier, and I promised that his body should not lie in an uncoffined grave. ”

“ Look on the motto, “We strive to save;” now look on the coffin that contains all that is mortal of one who under that banner has found a death as worthy of the laurel as any soldier who at once brings pride and sorrow to the nation in whose cause fighting inch by inch he yields up life. ”

“ Death, as if spurning the carcass, stands inexorably afar off. Baffler of man’s law, thou, too, hast escaped with life! Not for thee is the sentence, “Blood for blood!” Thou livest, thou mayst pass the extremest boundaries of age. ”

“ Many motives impel me to beg earnestly for life. I feel the natural horror of a violent death, the universal dread of untimely dissolution. I am desirous to recompense the injury I have done to the clergy, to the world, and to religion, and to efface the scandal of my crime, by the example of my repentance: but, above all, I wish to die with thoughts more composed, and calmer preparation. ”

“ I wish to die with thee, if fate brings thy turn to perish first, and not to prolong my span of life at all, when once dismal death has cast thee to the tomb.
"For if thou chance to close thy eyes for ever, a victim to the maddened attack of the men-at-arms;—by whatsoever doom thy breath be cut off, by sword or disease, by sea or soil, I forswear every wanton and corrupt flame, and vow myself to a death like thine; that they who were bound by one marriage-union may be embraced in one and the same punishment. ”

“ Death unseen beneath our feet.
Death above us in the sky,
Now before Thy judgment-seat
Grant us honourably to die.
Lustful, sinful, careless all.
In the martyr's road are we.
Lest from that high path we fall. ”

“ I hear my Saviour’s voice,
I feel His arm sustain me,
I triumph and rejoice!
105 The Lord will bless for ever
Those who His love have known,
Nor life, nor death shall sever
The Saviour from His own!
Victorious and free
His people shall be;
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, thy victory?”
106
XLVIL
DEATH IS NOT DREADFUL.
Death is not dreadful, no! ”

“ You shall go forth, as those that are healed go abroad and return to their business." The souls shall go forth out of their bodies at death, and the bodies out of their graves at the resurrection, as prisoners out of their dungeons, and both to see the light and be set at liberty. ”

“ Death is a commitment to the prison of the grave till the judgment of the great day; and then the grand 'Habeas corpus' will issue 'to the earth and to the sea', to give up their dead; to remove the bodies, with the cause of their commitment: and as these causes shall appear, they shall either be released, or else sentenced to the common goal of hell, there to remain until satisfaction. ”

“ Well, then, the Lord comes into souls that seek after Him, into the deep of the heart-hell, and there lays His command upon death, saying, “Bring out the imprisoned souls that are seeking after Me, which thou detainest by force.” So He breaks through the heavy stones that lie on the soul, opens the sepulchres, raises up the man that is dead indeed, brings out of the dark jail the imprisoned soul. ”

“ And I hereby declare I had rather suffer any death the law can inflict. I deem death infinitely preferable to a life of infamy. But the death I suffer for my King gives me vast consolation and honour that I am thought worthy of it. ”

“ But only let any particular kind of death be considered, in the eyes of the people, meritorious, and the sure and certain road to endless bliss, and there will not only be enough found willing to undergo this death, if they can find any to inflict it upon them, but they will absolutely court it! ”

“ The sentence of death under which they lie is a divine sentence—in perfect accordance with all the principles of equity:—the sword with which they are “ready to be slain” is the sword of Divine justice itself. ”

“ I owe it to the most scrupulous examination of my conscience, that of about fifteen thousand men killed or wounded under my orders in different grades and in the bloodiest actions, I have not to reproach myself with having caused the death of a single one to gratify my own ambition. ”

“ And when the dreadful sentence of death is pronounced upon him, everybody hears it with satisfaction, and acknowledges the justice of the divine denunciation that, "By whom man's blood is shed, by man shall his blood be shed." ”

“ That you must be killed in such a manner that you shall suffer the greatest possible amount of pain. 3—and not the least essential—That you must be killed in such a manner that under no circumstances can I be found guilty of having caused your death. ”

“ To many of them, death would be a grateful release, even with the fires of retributive justice before their eyes; for hell itself could scarcely be more awful punishment than that which they daily endure. ”

“ It is while living that death possesses its sting and anguish. Anyone that seeks tribute from the dying, or from the living for [Pg 71] services on behalf of the dead, is a damnable moral scoundrel and a cunning rascal. ”

“ And whether I die now, by this assassin's knife, or live a little longer to behold the safety I establish, I have lived long enough, and am content to die!—Whether this death be, as philosophers have told us, a dreamless, senseless, and interminable trance ”

“ Shall satisfy for man, be judged and die,
And dying, rise, and rising, with Him raise
His brethren, ransomed with His own dear life.
*****
Nor can this be,
But by fulfilling that which Thou didst want,
Obedience to the law of God, imposed
On penalty of death, and suffering death,
The penalty to Thy transgression due:
So only can high justice rest appaid.
Milton.
’Tis nothing thou hast given; then add thy tears
For a long race of unrepenting years;
’Tis nothing yet, yet all thou hast to give;
Then add those may-be years thou hast to live;
Yet nothing still; then poor and naked come ”

“ To an officer who expressed his sor [Pg 207] row for his sufferings he replied—"I thank you for your sympathy—I die the death I always prayed for—the death of a soldier fighting for the rights of man." ”

“ Whosoever sheds man's blood, his blood shall be shed," and in the following books we find the evolutions of this law and civil society keeping equal pace in recounting and specifying the numerous crimes worthy of death. ”

“ Frequently also, in our consideration of another’s death, the kind of death may be an alleviation. For what manglings, what cruelties have we seen, where death was the only remedy, and life was a torment! ”

“ The choice of death is given to the rest of the people, who enclose the lifeless remains in little bags and burn them by the application of fire, while exhorters are present for the purpose of advising concerning a good death. ”

“ At this, the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said, “How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?” [3]
IV.
Life is a state which follows upon Death. Death is a state which precedes Life. Which of us understands the laws that govern their succession?
The life of man is the resultant of forces. The aggregation of those forces is life: their dispersion, death. ”

“ That is a matter of duty alway to look after the living and after the dead, to look after the widow and fatherless, and to fulfill all the duties and responsibilities devolving upon us. God bless you and lead you in the paths of life ”

“ Sixty years of warfare always successful, had familiarized him to deeds of blood, without humbling him by the salutary lessons of misfortune. Death, the usual penalty of disobedience to his commands, gave his mandate a terrific importance. ”

“ Inevitable death must be placed before his eyes, if he refuses to confess and renounce his heresy. If he answers—"If I must die, then, I prefer to die in my own faith," his execution must be hurried on as much as possible, and mercy never shewn. ”

“ Death by sacrifice was considered the normal death of a fighting man, and ensured entrance to the paradise of the Sun. Instances occur where men have deliberately demanded death on the sacrificial stone. ”

“ Death was the penalty he inevitably would have to pay; and his mind and will were at one in that, so far as his soul’s welfare was concerned, it was best that death came to him through his instincts working in a natural and unfettered way. ”

“ But still there may be sacrifice without martyrdom, dedication without death, and such a surrender of the living powers as may correspond to the description, “That they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him that died p. ”

“ Is not the mighty mind, that son of heaven!
By tyrant life dethroned, imprison’d, pain’d?
By death enlarged, ennobled, deified? 457
Death but entombs the body; life the soul. ”

“ And so in this sense of the words, this exitus mortis, the issue of death, is liberatio in morte, A deliverance in death; Not that God will deliver us from dying, but that hee will have a care of us in the houre of death, of what kinde soever our passage be. ”

“ Death stares him in the face, and shakes at him his iron spear. He trembles, he turns pale, as a culprit at the bar, as a convict on the scaffold. He is condemned already. Conscience has pronounced the sentence. ”

“ Poietes.—I consider the death of the martyr or the saint as far more enviable; for, in this case, what may be considered as a Divine instinct of our nature is called into exertion, and pain is subdued, or destroyed, by a secure faith in the power and mercy of the Divinity. In such cases, man rises above mortality, and shows his true intellectual superiority. ”

“ Of fear it is unnecessary to speak, when, by the prompt activity of that distinguished man our consul, such numerous forces are under arms, and as to the punishment, we may say, what is indeed the truth, that in trouble and distress, death is a relief from suffering, and not a torment ”

“ Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what, DEATH is; that punishment which is applied as a measure of transgressions of indefinite shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have passed that degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed no, inferior infliction is commensurate.
And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward, or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself to assert. ”

“ Still pray we for a peaceable life against violent death, and for time of repentance against sudden death, and for sober and modest assurance against distempered and diffident death, but never make ill conclusions upon persons overtaken with such deaths ”