Editorial October 31, 1903 Issue

Choose Life and Live

In a current issue of a religious contemporary is an article entitled, "The Cheerfulness of Death," which is made prominent by the endorsement given it in the editorial columns. In reading it one cannot help being touched by the evident desire of the writer to offer comfort to the many who, to use his own words, "shrink from death." He says, "For the Christian at least, this is all wrong. Death should be in reality his best friend; welcomed rather than feared. ... See what it does for the Christian. It frees him from accident, sickness, and suffering, to which his body has been liable all his life. ... It frees him from all sorrow. ... It opens the gates of heaven to him. ... If death, then, is not a painful, unpleasant process, and if it does for us so much, it should be, not the last enemy, but our best friend."

On the editorial page the article is mentioned as "one to be cut out, kept, recurred to," and reference is made to a remarkable passage in Hebrews which speaks of those "who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage."

As we turn to the sacred page and read those words in their noble setting, it seems passing strange that any one should ever dream of giving them an interpretation which tends to strengthen the belief in the necessity for death. We are quite sure, however, that no amount of such reasoning, though ever so well meant, can change the world's thought on this subject; indeed, were this all that could be said to dispel the terrors of death, we should agree with the poet, that,—

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