dances and chants of fullest welcome"? It is vain to attempt to hide
the direst fact of all under plausible metaphors and rhetorical
artifice. It is in defiance of all history that man so write. It is in
contradiction of the universal instinct. It is mockery to the dying.
It is an outrage upon the mourners. The Elizabethan masters were far
truer to the fact; so is the modern skeptic who shrinks at "the black
and horrible grave." Men never speak of delicious blindness, of
delicious dumbness, of delicious deafness, of delicious paralysis; and
death is all these disasters in one, all these disasters without hope.
No, no, the morgue is the last place that lends itself to decoration.
Death is the crowning evil, the absolute bankruptcy, the final defeat,
the endless exile. Let us not shut our eyes to this. The skeptic
often tells us that he will have no "make-believe." Let us have no
"make-believe" about death. Let us candidly apprehend death for all
that it is of mystery and bitterness, and reconcile ourselves to it,
if reconciliation be possible. If we are foolish enough to shut the
gate on the thought of death, by no stratagem can we shut the gate
upon death itself.

Without evasion or euphony Christ recognizes the somber mystery. The
fact, the power, the terror of death are displayed by Him without
reserve or softening. And He goes to the root of the dire and dismal
matter. He shows us that death as we know it is an unnatural thing,
that it is the fruit of disobedience, and by giving us purity and
peace He gives us eternal life. The words of Luther, so full of power,
were called "half-battles"; but the words of Christ in their depth and
majesty are complete battles, in which sin, suffering, and death
are finally routed. He attempts no logical proof of immortality; He
supplies no chemical formula for the resurrection; He demonstrates
immortality by raising us from the death of sin to the life of