Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/216

196 original dust, and is consigned to its mournful grave? Have you not often read too, and as often been told, that on this occasion all a man’s mere earthly interests, whether of science, of pleasure, of honour, or of property, are instantly annihilated; and that thus the cup of mere worldly felicity is suddenly dashed from his lips for ever? Have you not, lastly, often read, and as often been told, that bodily death is one of the most tremendous evils which man has to fear, and consequently to be dreaded as the scourge of all scourges, and the plague of all plagues, in the long catalogue of human miseries?

I take it for granted, you see, that the reports which you have received of bodily death are of the above description, and hence perhaps I am authorised in concluding, that you have formed your ideas of death accordingly, and therefore represent him to your affrighted imagination as that king of terrors and disgusting monster which he is so generally described to be. If I am not correct in this conclusion, I most sincerely beg your pardon, but if I am correct, may I then be permitted to suggest the following remarks, and to intreat you to take them into your most serious consideration?

I would observe then, first of all, that the term death has a twofold meaning, or reference, being applied in the volume of revelation to the soul of man,