Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil (Ps. 23:4).
On the east side of the Hudson River some scaffolding was being erected beneath the George Washington Bridge. It had been necessary to double the capacity of the structure in order to support the heavy traffic passing from the North Jersey towns into Manhattan. They were going to swing under the present roadway a duplicate highway having eight more lines of traffic, flowing one way at one level and the opposite way at the other level. “The most crowded highway in all the world,” someone had remarked. I thought of that, and considered for a moment another highway which is infinitely more crowded than any other in all the world. That highway is death.
We are told that someone dies every eight seconds. That means that since you read the last sentence someone has closed out his account in this life to face God’s judgment in the next. Death is a part of life. And we fool ourselves if we think that we can escape the necessity of contemplating it. But this is a reality, unique and impossible to escape. Louis XV of France is said to have forbade mention of the word “death” in his presence. He was to have punished anyone who brought morose thoughts to his attention or marred the tranquility of his mind. But Thomas Carlyle, commenting upon his unusual trait, described the monarch as an ostrich, sticking its head into the sand, and forgetting that the rest of its body is still exposed to reality.
Two friends met in the shadow of a woods. One was heir to the throne of Israel. The other had to that time been the favored ward at court. David had sensed Saul’s rising hatred toward him and had fled the palace. His friend, Prince Jonathan, had come to woo him back into the company of the court. Minimizing the latter’s danger, Jonathan said to David, “You will be missed, for your seat will be empty. Besides, I think you exaggerate this danger. My father will forget his anger and jealousy. Surely, there should be nothing to this of which you are afraid.” But David replied, “Truly as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death” (1 Sam. 20:3).
From the lips of David we have another utterance concerning death which might well be included as a part of the Apostle’s Creed: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me” (Psa. 23:4). Here we have a right attitude toward death; not a minimization of its reality, and not quaking at the sign of its approach.
Death comes to every man, pulling kings from their thrones, snuffing out the candle of old age, plucking out the bloom from the soil of humanity, and separating the most intimate of companions. Death is no respecter of persons. “It is appointed unto men once to die” (Heb. 9:27), and few universal experiences are so unfathomable. Men have contemplated death from different viewpoints. Their concern about it, or their comfort, as the case may be, has depended upon their personal relationship to God. Two men may approach the problem from different angles. Robert Ingersoll, an agnostic for instance, having been grieved by what seemed to him the untimely death of a younger brother, wrote this:
Yet after all it may be best just in the happiest sunniest hour of all the voyage, when eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in midsea or among the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with joy, will, at its close become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death.
This is a view of death without hope. On the other side, there are those who have seen its horizon as a light of hope, and have seen that “enemy” as a liberator of the human spirit. This was the attitude of the poet Shelley when he wrote concerning the death of Keats:
He hath outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny and hate and pain
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to turn
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
These are two views of death. Scientists say that man is born to die. “From the moment of his conception he has within him the germs that will bring about his ultimate dissolution.” Any comfort? The fact that we must die is not a cheerful thought.
Life Without Terror
What then should be our view of death? I believe that we ought so to live that death will hold no terror for us. We ought to know that one day, how soon one cannot say, we shall be called to give account to God of the deeds done in the body. So it is that we live now in the light of eternity. But how are we to greet this herald of eternity which comes to take from us our loved ones?
We might thank God, first, for memories, the by-products of intimate association. Rather than murmur against God and growl in bitterness as though he were indebted to us, to giving us the life and love of our fellow mortals, we ought rather to consider that if we have enjoyed love and known companionship, we are debtors to God. We have received at his hand more than we deserve. Woe and grief that is overdone is simply the wailing of a human spirit which knows that opportunity for doing good to this soul is now gone forever. Remorse that seizes our spirits and torments them is remorse over what might have been and now can never be.
By way of another consideration, we might see in death a testimony of the brevity of life. Never can we pass before a bier but that we are reminded that life is but a vapor. Therefore to us is the command, “redeem the time, for the night cometh when no man can work.”
We ought to see, also, that in the death of a loved one, we have the opportunity to witness to the grace of God which he bestows upon us in times of trial.
The Halls Of Heaven
Finally, if death snatches from you your loved ones and challenges your Christian faith, you have the support of the “good news” concerning Jesus Christ that he hath led captivity captive and hath been made victor over the last enemy of the soul which is death. Those who know him not, face a sunless horizon. Those who have put their trust in him have strength for the time of need. “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go … I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2–3). This is the hope of the Christian. Not that he is to wait for death, but that he labors where he is until that time.
David had taken off his royal robes and wrapped himself in sackcloth. Out beyond the palace, he sat among ashes praying for his son of Bathsheba, weeping that perchance his own sins had brought sickness upon the boy. Reports would come to him frequently from the court physician. Then came the news: “Your son is dead.” With that he arose, returned into the palace, bathed himself, and put on perfumes and silken garments. As he ascended the throne, the people of court were astonished. “What sort of action is this?” they asked. David replied, “He cannot come to me, but I can go to him.” And he continued to pursue the work before him, ready all the while for the time when God should call him from his tasks.
The Christian need never be the victim of death. Death, to him, means a messenger from eternity, come to open the halls of heaven. And though the corridor through which God leads one may be dark, it opens into a broad, resplendent mansion where he who has conquered death awaits. In his presence there is joy, and at his right hand, pleasures forevermore.
C. Ralston Smith has served as minister of First Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma City, since 1948. He holds the B.A. degree from Asbury College, Th.B. from Princeton Seminary, and D.D. from College of the Ozarks. From 1937–40 he was assistant at First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, and from 1940–48, minister, Pine St. Presbyterian Church, Harrisburg.
