of artificial
discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne,
and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to
natural human grief.

In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding
Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted
as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening
figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking
an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round
this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with
his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern
Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent
diction to surround with horror the figure of Death.

The other shape,
If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode....
... So spoke the grisly terror: and in shape
So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform....
... but he, my inbred enemy,
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out _Death!_
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded _Death_.[1]

That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers
of a Teacher said to have "brought life and immortality to light" is
passing strange. The claim, that as late in the history of the world
as a mere eighteen centuries ago the immortality of the Spirit in man
was brought to light, is of course transparently absurd, in the face
of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary available on all hands.
The stately Egyptian Ritual with its _Book of the Dead_, in which are
traced the post-mortem journeys of the Soul, should be enough, if it
stood alone, to put out of court for ever so preposterous a claim.
Hear the cry of the Soul of the righteous:

O ye, who make the escort of the God, stretch out to me your
arms, for I become one of you. (xvii. 22.)