'THE DYING OF DEATH'

Evening Star, Issue 21138, 25 June 1932, Page 2

'THE DYING OF DEATH'

We were turning over the pages of an old volume of the 1 Spectator ’ when an article on ‘The Dying of Death ’ attracted ns. Death is a subject that is the concern of everybody. It is the one fact that never goes out of fashion, let tho-world-change as it will. It is the ono single fact that we can be sure will meet us some time in our lives. It is unique in its certainty for everybody. Other things we may have doubts about ever seeing or experiencing. But not death. Other days wo may not see again—birthdays, holidays, days of health and sickness, of joys and sorrows. There is no inevitability about these. But there is about the day of death. It is unescapable. We are marching to meet it. It is waiting for us round sonic turn of the road of life. It is unique in its certainty. It is unique also in its uncertainty. It does not show its hand till the very last. We can’t, tell when it will come or whore we shall encounter it. We can calculate to a minute the return of planets and stars and suns. We can calculate the date of births and eclipses and seasons. But what arithmetic will enable us to determine the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble and the blinds shall be drawn on the windows, and Death, with his lean professional smile, will grip us by the throat or flick the clot into the labouring brain, and wo will go after him to a mean suburban lodging? That is a day and a date that nobody can bo sure about. It is unique in its uncertainty.

‘ The Dying of Death,’ tho article in the ‘ Spectator,’ is a criticism of an article in tho ‘ Fortnightly Review ’ witli this heading. The wwiter of the latter argues that the thought of death is ceasing to act as a motive of life, to,which his critic replies that if that were true he would imagine that men were growing stupid, for “death must always remain the most striking and therefore the most keenly noted fact in life.” But he says it is not true, for almost the whole of life is organised and engineered upon the fact of tho sortainty of death. But-what is true is this: the terror of death has markedly declined. That seems a pretty evident proposition. In years gone by tho shadow feared of man cast its projection alongside his most jocund days. But nobody now sits, as did many of our forefathers, with the skull and hourglass to keep him constantly in mind of his latter end. Life has become secure, at least in civilised countries. Death is not even dogging one’s footsteps as it did in the Middle Ages, when one took one’s life in one’s hand if ono travelled far from home, or as it did before the laws of health and sanitary progress had developed. The emphasis now is not upon death, but life. Existence has become so comparatively secure that death is bowed out of our thought and life.

It is also true that the dying have not the dread of death that used to haunt them in earlier times. It needs no labored evidence in proof of that. The change is partly due to increased knowledge, especially knowledge of physiological laws. “You’re a strange physician,” says “Will o’ the Wisp” in one of Stevenson’s books, looking l earnestly at the gaunt figure. “I'm Natural Law,” ho replied, “ and people call mo Death.” “Why did you not tell me that before? I have been waiting for you this many years. Give me your hand, and welcome.” Stevenson is perhaps thus expressing his own feeling, for in his well-known verses engraved upon his tomb there occur the lines:

Glad did I live and gladly dje, And I laid me down with a will.

The press and passion of life wear individuals out more quickly in spite of the increase of the average length. And so the end is not unwelcome to many. And when it is realised that death is a- very simple matter, not accompanied by much, if any, pain, then the fear of it largely vanishes. Thus an eminent doctor says that the fear of death is absent from the last hours, because the vital functions are slowly'asphyxiated. The consciousness of pain is a mental process, and mental processes lose their sharpness and definiteness as the poisonous gases invade the system. The recent experience, however, of a German professor, who tried to get as near being drowned as possible to discover wbat it was like, throws doubt on tins. He said in the early stages of the experiment his sensations wore most pleasurable. All his past life spread out before him, and he saw everything at a single glance. But as he began to lose consciousness pain supervened, and his suffering was acute and terrible. So the common conception that drowning is the easiest of all deaths is not borne out by this professor’s experience. Nevertheless, it may bo true that while fear and pain seem to subserve the same functions in life—viz., its preservation, when this function has fulfilled its end—theil the withdrawal of them is, as a doctor says, “ as good an argument in favour of design in the attains of life and death as I know.”

But wo think that tbo real, or at least the most effective, reason for tho decay or disappearance of tho fear of death is not physiological, but religious, In tbo first place there is a large and, wo think, an increasing number of people who may be called non-religious. Their concern is with this life only. They have ceased to believe in any existence after tho present. With .some this conclusion has been reached by what scorns to them sufficient evidence. There is a larger number that live their lives in a way that religion condemns, and rather than incur the trouble involved in changing over they prefer to go on as they are doing. So the faculties that relate them to a spiirtual or unseen world become atrophied from disuse, as Darwin confessed his {esthetic sense did. Hence tho thought of death does not trouble them. Tho exits made from life by these two classes of the non-religious arc somewhat puzzling to many people. Long ago it puzzled the writer of tho book of Ecclesiastes, it puzzled tho writers of the Psalms. Tho wicked, says one of them, “ have no bonds in their death;

their strength is firm. They are not in trouble like other men; neither arc they plagued like other men.” Anyone who has much experience in watching death do its business must wonder sometimes at the calmness with which tho average person meets the last Enemy. And this in particular when tho persons who are dying wore cither non-religious or flagrantly wicked. Banyan gives his explanation of it in the ‘Life and Death of Mr Badmau.’ Badmaii, who had lived as his name indicates, “ died like a lamb, or, as men call it, like a chrisom child, quietly and without fear. But this,” Buuyan says bluntly, “ so far from being a sign of liis being saved, is an incontestable proof of his damnation.” Bunyau did not mince his words nor hide his opinions behind a camouflage of politeness that concealed the truth from those who ought to know. Whether he was correct or not, wo need out hero inquire. We are concerned just now with the facts.

Tho mention of Buuyan enables us to make transitions to tho contrast which is illustrated in the case of Christian. Bunyau represents Christian going down into the river of Death with fear and trembling. Apart altogether from the moral and religious aspect of tho question, tho event of death must come with a certain disquieting feeling to every thoughtful person. It is something so unique. Wo have never had anything of tho sort before. We have been sick and got well, but wo never die twice. We can form no habit of it. It can bo done once only, and once done all is over. Discussion, deliberation, retrospect, alteration of plans—all are out of tho question. It is an absolute and final act. It has had no predecessor for the person involved, and will have no successor. One must wonder with a sort of dismay and bewilderment what it will be like as the life disentangles itself from the house in which it lived so long and had grown so familiar. How aro we to get along without our old and faithful servant tho body ? How aro we to see without eyes, hear without, ears, feel without the senses? And what is to become of us as we step out into the myriads of other worlds and unplumbod deops and breadths of space. No wonder tho faces of the dying‘often have expression of dismay, or surprise, as the spirit says farewell to the body.

But when wc pass from those material aspects to the moral and spiritual, this, if wo are religious, must give us pause. The great Christian philosopher said the sting of death was sin. And for those who hold his faith that is known to be true. But it is not all tho truth. There is the curious paradox of a deepening sense of sin, with its shame and sorrow, and yet a strange calm, even an elation born from the assurance ..that Another who is yet not another has become responsible for the debt and guilt. Account for it how wo may, impossible or incredible as it may seem to tho reason, yet tho fact is incontestable. It is the very genius and essence of tho Christian and creed, and nineteen centuries of its believers witness to its truth. There have been occasional exceptions, such as Cowper, the poet, who, when asked near the end how he felt, replied: “I feel unutterable despair.” And as long as one thinks about one’s self, not the vision and refuge of Him who is said to have abolished death, brought God and man together on tho Cross, Cowper’s experience is a quite conceivable one. But it is exceptional. The multitude of those who have advanced to moot death not merely without fear, but in a triumph, is countless. We must believe they were either dupes of their own fancies, and this in tl;o most searching moments of their lives, or else that they aro telling the simple truth as one of them sings it:

No, it is. not dying. Sure, unwearied arms Are beneath me, saving from the last alarms. I am sinking thither very full of rest, As a bird with broken wings sinks into its nest.