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.

A Symposium

No generation in history has been so exposed to the continuing possibility of sudden, violent human destruction as ours. And few generations have been so ill-prepared to meet it.

People of the twentieth century have tended to look upon death as a universal animal experience, the inevitability of natural existence, a tragic and non-rational prank played upon creatures harassed by a sense of destiny.

Religious cults thrive by dismissing death as an illusion. One columnist suggests that few people, except 19-year-old poets and suicides, any longer behave as though death were inevitable. Even the medical profession prefers to speak softly of “the terminally ill” rather than of the dying. Modern man shuns any real thought of dying; he may make a will to dispose of his property but neglects funeral arrangements for the interment of his own body. Least of all does he think of God and divine judgment as the next stage in the drama of human appointment.

Multitudes whose Christian forefathers regarded death as the faithful soul’s transition to eternal bliss, or the body’s sleep before its resurrection, no longer know how to face death.

Except for the ministry to the newborn, ministry to the dying is perhaps the most delicate and demanding that the clergyman and physician must perform. Perhaps there are few more awesome moments in their lives than face-to-face meetings with one who is about to learn that the illness from which he or she suffers may lead to death in a matter of days or weeks. In such hours, the distressed will turn to the physician and minister for truth and for the assurance that the verdict of their human experience is still good news.

“When you face the dying,” asked CHRISTIANITY TODAY of a group of outstanding Christian physicians and ministers, “what is your word to them?”

Many manuals and texts that deal with the care of the sick and dying come from authors who are distrustful of traditional Christianity, and who have allowed their theological revolt to shape their counsel and ministry in the sickroom. “What word do you have in such a moment,” inquired CHRISTIANITY TODAY, “for the unbeliever and believer who ask you for the facts?” The answers of these men are given in this issue’s symposium, “When We Face the Dying.”

On Easter Sunday some years ago the writer had spoken at a sunrise service in Turlock, California, and was being transported by a Christian physician who stopped along the way to visit a patient seriously ill. “Suppose you knew that the patient is about to die,” I said, “and he asks you as his Christian doctor for the best light you have on his condition. What would you tell him?” The physician replied, “I’d tell him seriously that sometimes human life is cut short by unforeseen accident—without a moment’s notice. But God in his gracious providence has given to him abundant time to get ready—perhaps a week, perhaps longer or less—and that there is extra opportunity, mercifully provided, for the putting of all his affairs in order.”

Some months ago five Christian doctors participated in a symposium sponsored by San Francisco Graduate Chapter of Christian Medical Society on “The Care and Management of the Dying Patient.” They faced such queries as “Should the physician tell the non-Christian patient his diagnosis and prognosis?” (Answer: “Yes, in order that the dying person might settle … his spiritual affairs.” Neglecting to tell the facts would inevitably “be followed … by spoken lies and deceitful actions.”) “Won’t it frighten, upset or alarm the patient?” (“The thing that frightens a dying person is fear of the unknown.… We … alarm him to action … that he might … turn to Christ.… If he is reconciled to God … fear leaves him.”) “Won’t it precipitate a psychosis?” (“Would it not be better to risk psychiatric decompensation as well as physical cardiac decompensation and give … opportunity of choosing Christ …?”) ‘What approach should the doctor use?” (“Best to be as straightforward as possible.… Avoid ambiguous questions.… Make the way of salvation clear.… Rapport with the patient is a tremendous adjunct, but dependency of the patient on the Christian physician must be guarded against.… The Christian physician can do much by stopping for a moment and reading from the Bible along with the professional conduction of the ill patient.… Try to give the patient assurance and spiritual hope.”)

In the following symposium on “When We Face the Dying” (pp. 12–17), CHRISTIANITY TODAY draws back the curtains of the sickroom and discloses convictions of some prominent physicians about Christian administration in the hours of impending death.

ED.

“a tremendous responsibility as a Christian to warn …”

The Christian doctor faces a major problem in speaking on spiritual matters to the dying patient. He must not force his message on the patient nor take advantage of the trust which is his as a physician. However, he has a tremendous responsibility as a Christian to warn the wicked man. Truly he must embrace God’s wisdom if he is to combine these responsibilities.

In my own case I start the day with an hour in prayer and the Bible. I put great emphasis on memorizing the Word. I pray that God will help me to recognize opportunities and not pass them over.

Openings may come in several ways. A Bible or Testament on the night stand may be one natural opening to talk about spiritual things. Or, I may greet a patient with a well-known quotation and follow it with a scripture verse. This frequently leads into an opportunity to open the Scriptures.

In giving God’s Word to a patient, I make it “plain Scripture.” That is, I let the Word speak for itself. It is the prayer of my heart that I might make the Gospel so plain that they can never stand before the judgment seat and say, “I did not hear.” I present the truths of the Bible quietly, without emotionalism, but with sincerity. Frequently this leads to an opportunity for me to share my testimony with them.

I can perhaps illustrate how this works. I was making the rounds one morning and noted that one of my patients, a 27-year-old mother of two children—dying with cancer—appeared very frightened. I delayed my rounds, sat on the side of her bed, and quietly quoted verse after verse to her from the Bible without comment. I continued for about an hour. Nearly halfway through I noted that the strained, fearful look in her face disappeared. When I finished she turned her head, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Thanks; that’s just what I needed. I’ve just taken Christ as my Saviour. Now I’m ready to die.”

“truth tempered with love … can raise morale …”

Early in my medical career, I was faced with having to make a decision as to management of a patient with an incurable disease, facing death. I was led at that time to follow a principle expressed in a phrase from Psalms, “I have chosen the way of truth.” This has been my basic pattern for handling all types of seriously ill patients.

Truth can be cold, and if presented in that way, it can have a devastating effect on a person’s morale. However, truth tempered with love and understanding can actually raise morale, and produce a cooperative patient who is not worried about facing some intangible unknown. The confidence of the patient in the doctor is increased, and a kindly explanation of the expected course of the disease, and the things which will be done for him medically, help to allay the fears that he may have. Scriptures, such as 2 Corinthians 5, are a tremendous help to the Christian.

The unbeliever presents to me the greatest challenge. He must be led to the understanding that not only does he face physical death, but that he is already dead spiritually, and that he must be born again before physical death. This combined problem calls for the utmost care in broaching the subject to the patient, and usually it is best introduced in response to questions that he will ask. In some cases, it may be better to have the cooperation of a minister, or another Christian, in a spiritual presentation and bringing the person to the crucial decision. In our hospital we have had invaluable assistance from our nurses in this regard.

As the years have gone by, my only regrets are the instances in which I have deviated from the above course because of pressure from relatives, or lack of faithfulness on my part.

“God’s will does not always correspond with ours …”

In dealing with parents who give little evidence of any understanding of spiritual things, my approach is to portray for them the medical situation of their child and point out the all-embracing nature of God’s love for children. This gives me a general basis for pointing out that even mortal illness must fall within the confines of God’s love because God loved humanity enough to sacrifice his only Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, for its salvation. Since most of my patients who are seriously ill fall in the group under five years of age, I believe that I can hold out scriptural reasons why the child may go to spend eternity with the Lord because they have not reached the so-called age of accountability. This gives me the opportunity to challenge the parents themselves with the claims of Jesus Christ. because they have had the opportunity to make an individual choice in the matter.

Certainly, it is always much easier to talk to those who know the Saviour because they are reassured that God’s will is being worked out for their child. Often they need to understand that God’s will does not always correspond with our will and therefore does not mean that the child will necessarily get well. However, we can express the same confidence that the child will go to be with our Heavenly Father if it has not reached the age of personal decision. As comfort to the parents I often quote the Apostle Paul who said that he wished to be “with Christ, which is far better.” So we, as believers, cannot wish to withhold from our loved ones this same rich inheritance.

I do not always get the opportunity to speak with parents in such direct fashion before their child’s death, so I make it a rule to write a word of sympathy and compassion to them several weeks after the child’s passing. In this I again express the thought of God’s love as seen in Calvary.

“were I faced with this … my resource is God …”

For more than a decade, my practice has been confined to the surgical problems of infancy and childhood. This means that I usually have two parents and occasionally a grandparent or two as a captive audience when it becomes necessary to talk about the imminent death of a child.

If I know the parents to be unbelieving, or am uncertain of their position, I could not stand up emotionally under the repeated necessity of breaking such news to them if I doubted for one moment the sovereignty of God. From that position, unless the door for further talk is completely closed, I proceed to narrow the discussion to the Lord Jesus Christ and my own dependence upon him for salvation and daily guidance. Then I confess that were I faced with the problem of a dying child, my only resource would be to him for understanding and strength. If possible, I pray with such people, reiterating the Gospel, my own stand, and praying for strength for them.

It should be stated that in all my dealings with parents I attempt to be forthright, explaining the surgical problem at hand in the simplest of language and in the most authoritative fashion. When discussing the spiritual side of the situation, I maintain the same positive approach and speak with assurance.

When dealing with people I know to be Christian, trusting the Lord, and walking with him, I recall to them the promise, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” From there, I proceed to a reaffirmation of our hope in eternal life, reunion with believers, and the reality of 1 Peter 5:7.

If the question of “faith-healing” is brought up, I make it a point never to pray for medical miracles but rather ask, “Thy will be done.” I attempt to place absolutely no emphasis on “faith-healing” of the 1957 popular variety. I affirm my belief in the Lord’s complete ability to do anything, but it is apparent that it is his intent not to perform miracles in reference to certain medical problems in this age.

“only a few patients want to know the hard facts …”

The patient usually comes to the physician, whether he be Christian or non-Christian, for professional advice. To interject, unsolicited by the patient, one’s personal religious beliefs into this professional relationship is unethical. As a Christian, I must support this position or alternatively grant to physicians of every religious conviction freedom to exploit the professional situation for proselyting.

Prognosis by the physician of the outcome of an illness is not as accurate as either he or the patient would like it to be, nor is it as accurate as he might like the patient to believe it to be. Only those physicians who have had wide experience know how fallible a prognosis, given in good faith, can be. The physician assumes certain liabilities and then justifiably seeks to protect himself by providing some latitude.

It is my opinion that only a few patients want to know the hard facts if they are suspicious their illness may be fatal. The physician must try to understand what the patient is really saying by the words he uses. For example, the cancer patient may say, “This isn’t something serious from which I could die, is it, Doctor?” This patient probably is seeking reassurance rather than facts.

A physician has no more difficulty than any other person in conveying by his personal life the nature of his religious beliefs. He can, by his compassion, and by his efforts to lead a Christlike life, invite the confidence of his patient who may then seek spiritual advice from him as well as professional. When requested by word or any other valid form of human expression, he may speak to a believing or unbelieving patient of his own faith in God, confident in the rightness of his judgments and the wideness of his mercy.

I have not tried to evade the question, “What word do you have in such a moment?” But the situation is not simple—it is extremely complex. What one says (or does) depends on how much he understands of the situation—emotionally and intellectually as well as spiritually. There are no special words that physicians—or ministers—can use routinely. Each must be carefully selected to meet the needs of the individual patient faced with what to him is a completely unique situation. Ministers must, I believe, give careful study to the special problems of the sick and the dying if their ministry to them is to be spiritually effective.

“apart from the Christ, only narcotics and sympathy …”

The patient who is “sick unto death” becomes a person very important and extremely individual. Not many are called upon to face this time with absolute knowledge of the impending mortal finality. Fatigue, unconsciousness, or sudden physiological crisis carries one into eternity without warning.

This is a time that is real proof of therapy. Apart from the dynamic message of Christ, a physician can offer only narcotics and sympathy.

The words of our Master, “Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you”—these are to the seeking unbeliever a specific drug that will remove the turmoil of doubt and set the mind at ease. What peace! They are to the believer a soothing balm.

There will be those to whom we cannot speak. These must see Christ in us and feel his presence by our gentleness, understanding and sympathy.

“the sovereignty of God … is a great comfort …”

I have never been called on for spiritual facts by an unbeliever who knew he was dying, nor have I had to break the news of imminent death to any unbeliever. But I have been asked by relatives of a dying unbeliever to visit him and to bear witness. Let me use one particular illustration.

A devout Christian who listened to me on the radio but was not a member of Park Street Church called me and asked me if I would go visit her husband who had had a serious heart attack and was expected to die. He did subsequently die within ten days or two weeks. My approach to him was to appeal to his knowledge of the Christian testimony of his faithful wife. This he freely admitted and confessed. Next, I asked if he knew where he was going. With his indefinite response I then pressed the issue as to whether he did not want to know where he was going. A reluctant “yes” was given and I thereupon expounded the Gospel in its three main points: First, that all men are sinners according to the Scripture. I used Isaiah 53:6; Romans 3:10, 23, and other passages. He freely admitted that he was a sinner. Second, I proclaimed the biblical truth that Christ died for sinners, according to Romans 3:24–26; 5:8; 1 Peter 2:21–24; 3:18, and so forth. Last, I pointed out to him that whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, for God is no respector of persons. With this I joined appeal to the thief who at the last moment called upon the Lord and was saved. This man responded affirmatively, prayed his prayer of confession, repentance and faith, after the form of prayer which I gave to him and became a Christian. He died in the faith. The sequel to it was that almost immediately after this his widow united with Park Street Church and is a member there today.

When I am requested to bring comfort to a believer who is facing the fact of death, I open the conversation by drawing the person to a statement of his own awareness of the imminence of death, then I turn his attention to the plan and purpose of God for our lives with such Scripture as, “It is appointed to man to die,” and “There is a time to be born and a time to die,” and that all of our times are in God’s hands. The emphasis upon the sovereignty of God as displayed in so many Scripture references is a comfort to a believer. A reiteration of the fact that God has a plan for every life and that one life is not to be compared to another is very helpful.

Next, I attempt to ascertain whether the believer is ready to go, pointing out the magnificent teachings of Scripture about the joys, privileges, blessings and rewards of being “with Christ” (Phil. 1:21–23; 2 Cor. 5:6–9). Next, I make a point to talk about heaven, the biblical description of heaven and of the loved ones who have gone on before. Always, of course, I conclude with prayer, often quoting from the parable of the pounds, or the talents, and of the necessity to stand before the judgment seat of Christ with the possibility of hearing well done, good and faithful servant.

Of course, there is no form which I use and everything is extemporaneous and applied to the particular incident. Thus, I cannot be too definite about details.

“we trust the goodness and mercy of God …”

It seems to me that perhaps the most important thing for a minister to manifest in the presence of a dying person is his own quiet sympathy, his personal (as against merely official) concern for the family, his assumption of faith in God and in everlasting life, and a few simple words to express this faith rather than a disquisition upon it. People do not need expositions at such a time, but simple expressions of faith, quietly and modestly expressed. Here, if ever, what we are and really believe speaks so loudly that people cannot hear what we say.

As to ministering to the dying person, let us be in constant prayer before and as we come into the room. There is no approved course of action. Let us be sensitive to any moment of consciousness and say to the dying only short, simple things that express our concern, or our faith that he or she is in God’s good hands. I seldom refer to death itself. If the individual is conscious and asks, “Am I going?” let us say something like, “It looks so. Let us have no fear. God is here. Let me commend you again to him,” and then a very brief prayer and benediction. If the person is conscious, of course, a brief service of Holy Communion, or giving the consecrated elements if they have been reserved, will bring the greatest comfort, if it be part of his tradition; the familiarity of the words and acts requires little effort of attention, and the knowledge that God is reaching out through the sacrament is strength and comfort to that one. If the person be alone without family, he may want to feel the touch of our hand on his, so that we meet the occasion with him as fully as we can. If there be fear, pray it quietly and positively away, asking God’s presence and forgiving love. One has the sense that our own real feelings are what matter most: they will express themselves in touch, in words and in the radiation of quiet faith. Let us avoid officiousness, or too much talk. Now and then someone will ask a real question about the hereafter: let us not fear to say what we believe and why, but not so much long arguments as the reasoned steps in belief and the positive elements of our faith in Christ and in everlasting life. How often do I quote, “Because I live, ye shall live also.”

If the dying person has ignored God consistently, and shows fear, let us speak freely of God’s forgiveness offered to honest souls, even at the last minute (witness the thief on the cross); and in any situation where God’s justice and mercy seem in conflict, the verse in Genesis is a help, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Gen. 18:25). Do not be afraid to say no man understands all these things: we trust the goodness and mercy of God. If we really believe in him this way ourselves, it will get over by contagion much more than by argument.

“an enemy whose power has been overthrown …”

One’s ministry to the dying seems to me to depend in its approach on whether the patient knows his true condition or not.

In the case of unbelievers, I believe it would be right to desire their enlightenment, but probably one should only do so in cooperation with the doctor and the family. I would seek an opportunity to unfold the way of salvation in the Gospel. If the patient is very ill, I would be content to keep to the simplicities of a Scripture like John 3:16; 6:37, or Matthew 11:28, or 1 Timothy 1:15. In order to bring into the patient’s consciousness what his true position before God is, I have sometimes asked him to imagine that we were standing before God’s judgment throne, and that he were to ask us in what we are trusting for our belief that he will welcome us into his presence in heaven. The patient’s answer nearly always reveals clearly whether he is trusting in himself and his own works or in Christ and his finished work. If the patient accepts Christ, I would seek to bring him into a restful assurance of salvation. I would also seek to remember his family who are themselves in need of help at this time. If he or they ask “why?” concerning this trial, I would not try to argue about the problem of suffering, but point them to the cross as the proof and pledge of God’s love.

If the patient is a believer, I would probably enquire gently if he has made all necessary practical preparations for his death as a Christian should, whether he has made his will and adequately provided for his family, for instance.

If he knows that he is dying, and is not surrendered to this possibility, I would take him to some such verse as Psalm 18:30, “As for God, his way is perfect,” and seek to lead him into a position of repose in the will of God. I would also remind him of the death and resurrection of Jesus through whom death had been “abolished” (Heb. 2:14; 2 Tim. 1:10). I would remind him that in the New Testament death is likened to an insect whose sting has been drawn and to an enemy whose power has been overthrown (1 Cor. 15:55). Passages of Scripture which I might read to him include Psalm 23; John 14:1–6; Romans 5:1–11 and 8:31–39; 2 Corinthians 5:1–9; Philippians 1:22–23; 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 and 5:8–11; 2 Timothy 4:6–8; Hebrews 2:14–18; and Revelation 1:13–18.

“this is a current fad … to conceal the truth”

In a ministry of 20 years I have not had many opportunities to face a death sentence with people. Fads of the day pressurize people to conform. As there are fads in fashions, the arts, automobiles, politics, sports and amusements, so there are fads in religion and medicine. The current fad about incurable disease is to conceal the truth. Most of the time ministers are bound by the conspiracy of silence, evasion or downright falsehood. The old idea of helping to prepare the patient for death and destiny is hardly even entertained. The current slogan is: “Drug them into eternity.”

Fear of death is completely pagan. To brush aside fear and to look the probable outcome squarely in the eye is Christian.

I honor doctors, nurses, families, and patients who have chosen not to play the game of deceit and who have frankly accepted diagnosis though seemingly fatal. In these situations which I think have almost always concerned Christians I have been led to dwell on four themes:

1. God may yet give healing.

2. All suffering is controlled for God’s glory and our good.

3. The promises of Christ for life, death, and eternity hold true.

4. Heaven is a glorious place of rest and fellowship where those who have departed to be with Christ await the resurrection and its crowning events.

Two hymns have been especially comforting to quote, “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go,” and “Just As I Am.”

Where I have talked with patients whose experience of salvation seemed doubtful I have centered on the love of Jesus and his forgiveness. If I felt awkward about putting this into conversation I have put it into prayer. Sometimes I have prayed close to the ear of patients who were in coma, trusting God’s Spirit to apply truth at the gate of death.

“the sentences of hope took on new meaning”

We were on the Normandy beaches in June, 1944, during the invasion of Europe. A heavy shell had just landed, and the doctor and I were kneeling beside young soldiers wounded by the explosion. When we had lifted a young corporal onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, the doctor turned quietly to me and said, “Padre, that boy is severely wounded in the spine. He is conscious, and in no very great pain, but he cannot live more than a day or two. It could even be a matter of hours. I think it would be good if you went with him to the tent hospital.” I remember reading to Charlie, the young corporal, from John 14:1–6, and I have used this passage constantly.

1. It starts with the human problem of an anxious heart, and Jesus with all his human sympathy says, “Let not your heart be troubled.”

2. It draws upon the feeble general belief in God, which most men have, and it seeks to fan that belief into a true saving faith. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.” We lead the seeker, in the extremity of his illness, to repentance from his sin, and a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ. Here I taught Charlie to say after me: “It’s trusting Jesus, and trusting him all the way.” This he said slowly and haltingly after me, as we lurched along the bombed roads of Normandy to the little cluster of brown tents just established inland from the heavily shelled beach area near Caen, where I was working.

3. “My Father’s house” and the certainty of heaven for all who trust in Christ comes in verses 2 and 3, with the promise that Christ Jesus will receive us to be with him. Heaven is seen as the home of Jesus, prepared by him for us, and is able to be understood by a sick man whose mental grasp may be slowed down by his serious illness, and who needs truth given him simply and clearly.

4. The question “How can we know?” (v. 5) is answered by the total provision of Christ as way, truth and life, with his exclusive claim that we can only come to God through Christ.

Slowly I showed this to Charlie, and got him to repeat again, “It’s trusting Jesus, and trusting him allthe way.” I wrote John 14:6 on a card in capital letters for him to have by his hospital bed.

When people are dying I concentrate on the fact of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection, with this emphasis: 1. Jesus loves you, because he died for you (Rom. 5:8). 2. Jesus bore your sins (1 Pet. 3:18). 3. Jesus rose again, to be a living Saviour, and so can be your friend now, and the Lord of life who gives you eternal life now, and so a welcome to heaven when God calls you. I concentrate, secondly, on the steps to Christ, such as Mark 1:15–17 (“Repent … Believe … Come”) and leave them with my small booklet, “How Can I Accept Christ,” and help them to take the decisive step of committal to Christ.

Each day I visited Charlie and he would say with me, “It’s trusting Jesus, and trusting him all the way.” On Sunday he was very close to death, but still conscious; and I can remember him saying, “I’ve been saying my prayers today, Padre,” and we talked again about John 14:6 and “trusting Jesus all the way.” Later that day he died, as I believe, in the faith of Christ, and I and the peasant people near the hospital tents brought red roses for his simple funeral under the blue Normandy sky with the white vapour trails crossing and recrossing far above us. The great sentences of hope took on a new meaning as I remembered Charlie slowly finding his way to the Lord Jesus in the last days of his young life.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” saith the Lord. “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).

An amusing incident in Noel Coward’s play, This Happy Breed (Act III, Scene 1), finds Frank and his sister Sylvia sitting in the lounge room. Sylvia, a soured spinster, has become an ardent Christian Scientist. Frank and Sylvia have finished supper and are listening to the wireless. Frank’s wife Ethel is in the kitchen.

SYLVIA: There’s not so much to do since Mrs. Flint passed on.

FRANK: I do wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Sylvia, it sounds so soft.

SYLVIA: I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.

FRANK: (firmly) Mother died, see! First of all she got flu and that turned to pneumonia and the strain of that affected her heart, which was none too strong at the best of times, and she died. Nothing to do with passing on at all.

SYLVIA: How do you know?

FRANK: I admit its only your new way of talking, but it gets me down, see?

(Ethel comes in)

ETHEL: What are you shouting about?

FRANK: I’m not shouting about anything at all. I’m merely explaining to Sylvia that mother died. She didn’t pass on or pass over or pass out—she died.

This conversation is peculiarly modern. It reflects our self-consciousness, our embarrassment about the fact of death. Death is no longer regarded as a subject of polite conversation; it has become a convention to speak of death euphemistically, and to use tactful circumlocutions. Frank’s bluntness is not only callous but crude.

In this matter there has been a radical change in social behavior patterns. In the nineteenth century the processes of birth and reproduction were never mentioned in polite society, but the processes of death were an accepted subject of conversation. Today the processes of death are never mentioned in polite society, but the processes of birth and reproduction are almost a matter of daily discussion. Our grandparents, in their embarrassment and self-consciousness over the facts of birth, said that babies were found under gooseberry bushes; and we, in our embarrassment and self-consciousness over the facts of death, speak of “passing on” (Geoffrey Gorer, “The Pornography of Death,” The Encounter, October, 1955).

Death Bed A Traditional Theme

This can be illustrated from the field of literature. It is difficult to recall a play or a novel written during the past 25 years which has a “death-bed scene” in it, describing in detail the death of a major character from natural causes. Yet this topic was a set piece for most eminent Victorian and Edwardian writers, and it evoked their finest prose. To create the maximum pathos or edification, they employed the most elaborate technical devices and supplied a wealth of imaginative detail.

A single example will suffice. The climax to The Old Curiosity Shop is the death of little Nell. The book was published in serial form, and, when successive installments began to foreshadow the death of the child, Dickens was “inundated with imploring letters recommending poor little Nell to mercy.” Dickens was acutely aware of the artistic demands of the situation, and for days he was in a state of emotional tension. Dickens had to nerve himself to describe the death. He confided, “All night I have been pursued by the child, and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable.” He felt the suffering so intensely that he described it as “anguish unspeakable.” Writing to George Cattermole, he said, “I am breaking my heart over this story.”

Tremendous Impact

When the final installment was published, with the lithograph illustration showing the dead child lying on a bed, with pieces of holly on her breast, the resulting emotional excitement was almost unprecedented. Macready, the noted actor, returning from the theater, saw the print, and a cold chill ran through his blood. “I have never read printed words which gave me so much pain,” he noted in his diary. “I could not weep for some time. Sensations, sufferings, have returned to me, that are terrible to awaken.” Daniel O’Connor, the Irish Member of Parliament, reading the book in a railway carriage, was convulsed with sobs and groaned, “He should not have killed her,” and threw the book out the window. Thomas Carlyle was utterly overcome. Waiting crowds on the pier in New York harbor shouted to the passengers, “Is little Nell dead?” The news flashed across the United States and rough and hardy pioneers dissolved in tears. Lord Jeffrey, one of Her Majesty’s judges, was found by a friend in the library of his house, with his head bowed on the table. When his friend entered the room, she saw that his eyes were filled with tears. “I had no idea that you had bad news or cause of grief,” she said, “or I would not have come. Is anyone dead?” “Yes, indeed,” he replied, “I’m a great goose to give myself away, but I couldn’t help it. You’ll be sorry to hear that little Nelly, Boz’s little Nell, is dead.” (For a detailed reference, see Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens, His Tragedy and Triumph, London, 1953, Vol. I, p. 304.)

Modern Flight From Death

Today, the situation is very different. Without any certainty in the life to come, man finds that the facts of natural death and physical decomposition have become too horrible to contemplate, let alone to discuss or describe. It is symptomatic of our present condition that one of the most flourishing sects in the world today is Christian Science, which denies the fact of physical death and which refuses to allow the word to be printed in the columns of the Christian Science Monitor.

A modern writer has said: “The fact of death is the great human repression, the universal ‘complex.’ Dying is the reality man dare not face, and to escape which he summons all his resources … Death is muffled up in illusions” (H. F. Lovell Cocks, By Faith Alone, 1943, p. 55). And yet we cannot live indefinitely on illusions; we know that eventually we must stop kidding ourselves. Some of our best thinkers and writers are courageous enough to say that we must face the fact of death. George Every, a gifted and sensitive poet, said: “In the younger poets the urgent problem is the imminence of death, the need of some significance that can be attached to dying in a world where there is no common belief in immortality” (“Designs for Culture,” Humanities, Vol. II, No. 2, 1948). Storm Jameson, in an address on the writer’s situation, echoed the same thought:

At this moment in history, a writer who concerns himself with anything less than the destiny of man on the earth is only amusing himself. If that is the thing he does best, he should do it. And we, when we want to be amused, pleased, enchanted … will listen to him. But in the anxiety that weighs upon us now, what we sometimes want most of all is to be answered … I propose a way to test the value of the writers of our day. Not a test to find out whether he is honest or dishonest, brave or cowardly. No!—what we should ask the writer is only this: Is he able to tell us about the destiny of man, our destiny, in such a way that we have the courage to live it, and gaily? If not, then he may be a very clever writer, he may even be honest, but he is not a great writer—not for us [The Writer’s Situation and other Essays, London, 1950, pp. 18–19].

The Victorians surrounded death with pathos and with sentiment. Twentieth-century man is cynical about sentiment and callous about death. What are the possibilities before us now? They are, quite simply, the alternatives of either brave endurance or triumphant conquest.

Fatalistic Resignation

First, there are those who face the inevitable fact of death calmly and stoically, without flinching and complaining, in a spirit of fatalistic resignation. They contemplate the bleak prospect of “emptiness, absence, the void,” and, in the classic words of Ronald Duncan, they point to the darkness and say, This Way to the Tomb (London, 1933). They proclaim a destiny of “dust and ashes.”

Bertrand Russell is a typical representative: “I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation” (What I Believe, London, 1925, p. 21). No one can despise the real courage of this confession. But only a few heroic souls are able to face the chilling and cheerless prospect of the waiting grave with such unflinching fortitude.

Triumphant Victory

What is the alternative? The alternative is triumphant conquest. “Thanks be to God,” says the Apostle Paul, “who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” On the one hand, the Christian recognizes the horror of death—death indeed is a hated enemy. On the other hand, the Christian recognizes the reality of Christ’s resurrection and the hope of the life to come. For the Christian the horror is submerged in the hope, so that the sting of death is taken away and the victory of the grave is overcome.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, noted lexicographer and prince of conversationalists, was a devout churchman and an earnest Christian. He was concerned about the licentiousness and levity of his age, both of which he endeavored vigorously to combat and withstand. He was a man of personal integrity and public rectitude, and he was also diligent in the practice of private prayer. Nevertheless, he had a deep horror of death and a lively fear of the coming judgment. He believed that those who were indifferent to such dread realities were guilty of shallow insensibility, and that they were not only foolish but irresponsible. In the Rambler (No. 110) he wrote the following sober thoughts:

If he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting with insecurity; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient convictions.

Sense Of Judgment

Samuel Johnson, for his part, was aware not only of the precariousness of life but also of the reality of coming judgment. He was fearful of the sin of presumption, despite his own earnest faith and exemplary conduct.

James Boswell has recorded the following conversation:

JOHNSON: … I am afraid that I may be one of those who shall be damned. (Looking dismally)

DR. ADAMS: What do you mean by damned?

JOHNSON: (Passionately and loudly) Sent to hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.…

BOSWELL: But may not a man attain to such a degree of hope as not to be uneasy from the fear of death?

JOHNSON: A man may have such a degree of hope as to keep him quiet. You see I am not quiet, from the vehemence with which I talk; but I do not despair.

MRS. ADAMS: You seem, Sir, to forget the merits of our Redeemer.

JOHNSON: Madam, I do not forget the merits of my Redeemer; but my Redeemer has said that he will set some on his right hand and some on his left.

He was in gloomy agitation, and said, “I’ll have no more on’t” (The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1927, Vol. II, p. 526). Nevertheless, when Johnson came to die, he was able to face man’s last enemy with calm and cheerful composure. “He was able to be cheerful in spite of a deep belief in divine judgment, because he also had a deep belief in the gospel of salvation” (Elton Trueblood, Dr. Johnson’s Prayers, London, 1947, p. 13). His deep fear was overshadowed, and therefore silenced, by a deep hope.

The Christian Realities

This is the authentic Christian experience. On the one hand, there is the fact of death, inevitable and inescapable, frightening and forbidding; on the other hand, there is the fact of Christ’s resurrection, irradiating the darkness of the grave, dispelling the gloom of death, “bringing life and immortality to life through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).

Strengthened by Christ, we face death calm and unafraid; we are preserved from sentimentality on the one hand and synicism on the other. We are able to say with the Apostle Paul and all the faithful: “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55, 57).

S. Barton Babbage is Principal of Ridley College and Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne, Australia. A native of New Zealand, where he pursued studies leading to the B.A. and M.A. degrees, he earned the Ph.D. degree in London and the Th.D. in Australia. He is author of Puritanism and Richard Bancroft and Man in Nature and Grace. The excerpt in Principal Babbage’s essay from This Happy Breed (copyright 1943 by Noel Coward) is reprinted by permission.

The question of Abraham Lincoln’s religion has proved a knotty one for biographers and students of his life and work. This is due in part to the nature of the evidence in the case, and also to the fact that the evidence, in many instances, has not been thoroughly or impartially examined. The result has been unfortunate, for atheists and believers, Christians and non-Christians alike have found grounds for claiming him as their own.

The logical place to begin the study of a person’s religion is his heritage, background and early training. In an examination of this particular phase of the subject Dr. Louis A. Warren has brought to light many interesting facts. Lincoln’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Samuel Lincoln, who came to America in 1637, helped erect Old Ship Church in Hingham, Mass., the oldest church building in America in continual use. His great-great grandfather, Mordecai Lincoln II, married a granddaughter of Obadiah Holmes, noted Baptist minister of Newport, Rhode Island, who was savagely whipped on Boston Common in 1651 for preaching in forbidden services of worship (Benedict, History of Baptists). John and Rebecca Lincoln, who migrated from Freehold, New Jersey, to Virginia, were Baptists. They assisted in building the Linville Creek Baptist Church on their own farm. Lincoln’s grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, was a member of this congregation. When he located in Kentucky in 1782 he also gave land upon which to build a church, which was called Long Run Baptist Church.

Lincoln’s father, Thomas, and his mother, Nancy Hanks, both devout people, built their Kentucky home near Severn’s Valley Baptist Church near Elizabethtown, the oldest Baptist organization west of the Alleghenies. Some five miles from the Lincoln cabin was the Little Mount Separate Baptist Church. There is reason to believe this to be the Lincoln family church.

Dr. Warren also states that when the Thomas Lincoln family moved to Indiana in 1816 they settled near White Pigeon Creek Baptist Church in Warrick County. That Thomas was both an interested and faithful member of it is evidenced by the fact that he was elected one of the trustees and appointed to interview fellow members who were not practicing Christian conduct or church rules. The records of this church show that “Sister Sally Lincoln,” sister of the future President, was received by an “experience of grace,” April 8, 1826 (Lincoln Lore).

Worthy Spiritual Background

These brief facts indicate that Lincoln’s religious heritage was as good as the country afforded. That his forbears, down to his father and mother, were God-fearing men and women who took an active interest in the spiritual affairs of the community in which they lived, is obvious.

The background of Lincoln’s home life was excellent. Religion was respected by the members of the family, there is evidence that grace was said at meals, and the parents gave their children such spiritual instruction as they were able (Lincoln Lore). He said himself that before he could read he memorized passages from the Bible by hearing his mother quote them as she went about her household duties. Tradition holds that he once said, “My mother was a ready reader and read the Bible to me habitually.” These things bore fruit in Sally becoming a member of the church, and it is reasonable to assume that young Abraham was influenced by them.

Tragic Period In Youth

When asked why he did not unite with the church, as did his sister, he said, “If any church will inscribe over its altar as its sole qualification for membership … ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my heart and soul.” An indirect reason for his not joining the church may have been the fact that Baptist church membership in those days was much more confined to adults than it is now. Children and unsettled, unmarried young people were hardly considered as eligible for membership. It could therefore have been that young Abraham did not unite with the church because of a lack of encouragement to do so at the right time.

When he left home and went to Salem, Illinois, a brief disappointing chapter in his life began. In all probability we are right in thinking of it as a tragic period. There he fell under the influence of a group of rough, irreligious young men of about his own age. He wrote silly, sometimes vulgar poetry, and entertained them by imitating the pioneer preachers of the day. About this time a fad for reading French philosophy and free-thinking literature swept the country. He devoured Volney’s Ruins and Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. That such works left a deep impression upon his mind, there can be no doubt.

Experience Of Change

Then a change came over him. Although we cannot be certain what brought it about, we know that he turned away from ideas which were at variance with his early teaching. The Rev. James F. Jaques, a Methodist minister, said that after hearing him preach in 1839 on the text, “Ye must be born again,” Lincoln visited him to talk and pray with him concerning his soul’s salvation. “I have seen hundreds brought to Christ,” said Mr. Jaques, “and if ever a person was converted Abraham Lincoln was.”

So far as is known Lincoln did not corroborate this story, but he does say later that about that time a deep experience of change came to him. When charged by the Rev. Peter Cartwright, his opponent in the 1846 Congressional campaign, with having expressed anti-Christian sentiments, he went to see his old friend Mrs. Rankin. In their conversation he said that there had come into his life “sad events and a loss” that she knew about. As a consequence he was “tossed amid a sea of questioning.” In spite of it all he grasped a higher thought that reached into eternity with “a clearness and satisfaction” hitherto unknown to him and his attitude toward the Bible changed. He still had doubts, he said, but there was also in his heart a strong desire for a more perfect faith. It is believed by many that the “loss” was the death of Ann Rutledge.

A Seeking Spirit

In the same conversation he said to Mrs. Rankin, “Probably it is to be my lot to go on in a twilight, feeling and reasoning my way through life, as questioning, doubting Thomas did. But in my poor, maimed, withered way, I bear with me as I go on a seeking spirit of desire for faith that was with him of olden time, who, in his need, exclaimed ‘Help thou my unbelief.’ ” Unquestionably, in the pre-Washington days at least, he was torn at times by a struggle between doubt and faith, belief and skepticism. Herndon said, “I admit that Mr. Lincoln, in his moments of melancholy and terrible gloom, was living on the borderland between theism and atheism—sometimes quite wholly dwelling in atheism—in his happier moments swinging back to theism and dwelling lovingly there.”

A study of Lincoln’s life impresses one with the fact that his great heart hungered for a satisfying faith. “I am not a Christian,” he once said, “but God knows I would be one.” Critics have read too much, and friends too little, into this agonized cry of a seeking soul. Being familiar with the rigid creeds and practices of Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and others of his day, and not being able to ally himself with any of them, he classified himself as an unbeliever. All reasonable evidence in the case is to the effect that he was too harsh with himself.

An inquiry into any person’s religious faith must begin with his attitude toward God. On this point Lincoln was as orthodox as Peter Cartwright. He frequently declared his unwavering faith in divine sovereignty and an unchangable purpose for the world. He was fond of quoting Hamlet:

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them as we may.

In the second inaugural address he said, “The Almighty has his own purposes.”

Conscious Of God’S Guidance

Moreover, he believed that God was directing him in the stupendous task he had undertaken to perform. In his farewell address to friends and neighbors at Springfield, after comparing his responsibility with that of Washington, he said, “Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.”

In a conversation with L. E. Chittenden in Washington he said, “I have had so many evidences of his direction … that I cannot doubt that this power (which controlled his will) comes from above.… I am satisfied that when the Almighty wants me to do or not to do a particular thing, he finds a way of letting me know it.”

Lincoln’s attitude toward Christ is of vital importance. When he learned that twenty of the twenty-three ministers in Springfield in 1860 were opposed to him on the question of freedom for slaves, he said to Newton Bateman, “I know I am right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God.” Dr. W. E. Barton sums up his appraisal of Lincoln’s religious life by saying, “Abraham Lincoln believed in God, in Christ, in the Bible, in prayer, in duty, and in immortality” (The Soul of Abraham Lincoln). His own statement regarding his experience should be taken at full face value. Neils John Peterson quotes him as saying, “When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest test of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.”

As to the Bible, Lincoln’s constant appeal to its words and teachings bespeaks honest faith in it. Carl Sandburg said, “Before he had learned to read as a boy he heard his mother saying over certain verses, day by day as she worked. He had learned these verses by heart; the tones of his mother’s voice was in them” (Abraham Lincoln; The Prairie Years). To Joshua Speed he once said, “I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this book you can upon reason, and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man. It is the best book God has given to men.” Of him Theodore Roosevelt said, “Lincoln built up his entire reading upon his study of the Bible. He mastered it, he became a man who knew the Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein.”

His use of Scripture passages in his public addresses is well-known. Edgar DeWitt Jones read all of them, and marked the passages wherein he quoted the Bible or referred to it. “Some of the pages,” he said, “are literally covered with pencilings; some single paragraphs contain as many as a dozen of these. The fair and inescapable conclusion is that his devotion to the Bible was that of an honest, sincere man.”

Dr. Barton also said, “Too much of the effort to prove that Abraham Lincoln was a Christian began and ended in the effort to show that on certain theological topics he cherished correct opinions. Abraham Lincoln was not a theologian, and several of his theological opinions may have been incorrect; but there is good reason to believe that he was a true Christian. The world has need of few theologians, and of a great many Christians.” That he had come to believe himself eligible for membership in the church is seen in his remark to Dr. Phineas D. Gurley, pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church of Washington in 1865. “I have made up my mind,” he said. “At your next communion I shall apply for admission to your church.” Before that time arrived an assassin’s bullet had quenched his life. This was tragically unfortunate, for had he lived to carry out his announced design, the question of whether he was a Christian probably never would have arisen. As it is, each investigator must arrive at his own conclusions.

Raymond W. Settle is a retired Baptist minister who devotes his time to historical research and writing on American history, particularly as it concerns religion on the American frontier. He is a graduate of William Jewell College, has held pastorates in Kansas, Missouri and Colorado, and now makes his home at Monte Vista, Colo. He is the author of: March of the Mounted Riflemen (Clark, 1940), Empire on Wheels (Stanford, 1949) and Story of Wentworth (1950).

The cry for “World Government” represents, I think, something like cosmic anxiety about the future. People are frightened. They ponder the prodigious problems and long for the magic of simple solutions. Have we, at long last, come to that hour in history which so many prophets of older days envisioned as an invitation for “The Coming Caesars”?

History is connected stuff. Happenings are related reactions. The dictatorships of the Stalins, the Mussolinies, the Hitlers and others arrive not by accident, but because a deep force is at work in the central flow of things. When Goering told the German people the need was desperate for “more guns and less butter,” Western civilization screamed its denunciation of “gutter ethics.” The strange influences have deepened their control. In Christian America last November a top government official told the nation the need is now for “less butter and more guns.” The trend is not trivial.

We now wonder at rather than criticize Spengler’s idea that this is “the age of world wars” and that “Caesarism” is setting armies, not parties, to be the future form of power. In the World Government dream it is significant to note how the emphasis everywhere falls upon “an instrument of overwhelming military force.”

Utilizing the central weaknesses of democracy, dictatorships have gotten miracles out of pelting the mass mind with senseless hopes. Incited individualism, uninhibited and ruthless, generates profound troubles. The result is that sick democracies troop to strange doctors. These medicine men with gifted cliches and fascinating nomenclature offer blueprints for every contingency. But the stabilities of civilization disintegrate until terrified and bewildered people literally beg for “controls” that will be strong and ruthless enough” to shoot mankind’s way to peace. World Government with matchless power thus offers fabulous hopes. In the background one can almost hear the ghost of Tacitus repeating the old lines: “In peace representative government, in war generals, in peril dictators!”

Disintegrating Democracies

Whether we like it or not, the whip of despotism cracks like rifle fire in the modern world. These despotisms are the frightening forces that today are making all of earth’s millions dance to their tunes. The principles of democracy seem like fading fires. Leaders, not people, are glamorized. “Spain is Franco and Franco is Spain.” “Peron is the Republic.” Churchmen and politicians hailed Mussolini as “the man sent by Providence.” Said Hess to the German people: “Hitler is what the soul of the country is.” Echoes in America spin up wonders. Writers in recent years speak not of democratic presidents but of “strong presidents.”

At this moment, military force is accepted as the only hopeful arbiter of humanity’s fate, a situation where the tendency usually gravitates into single-minded control. The spell of things calls for a saving greatness that they cannot themselves produce. The tensions now tightening to an explosive point, all over the world may answer themselves with a Caesar, or a Cromwell, or a Napoleon, or some one worse. In history the dangerous man is always waiting to exploit the social, political and religious tensions of difficult times.

If democracy softens up and loses its wondrous strength, designing despotism will systematically destroy its foundations. That is why wisdom must hold the ascendency of physical force to be suspect, even if it is lighted with the glow of that idealism which characterizes the dream of World Government. Power over other people is loaded dynamite. The more so when it pinnacles into enormities for ruling the globe. We cannot submit to “the great political superstition,” namely, the divine right of parliaments to absolute authority over the people.

In the budding years of this century only a few men saw with far vision the beginning of influences that could bring human storms.

No one in his good senses entirely dismisses the possibilities of those prophecies now.

An article in Harper’s Magazine (1902) extended the possible trajectories of those developing forces and said some amazing things about “the evil days to come” and about “hours of defeat.” “There will,” said the prophecy, “arise The Man. He will be strong in action, epigrammatic in manner, personally handsome and continuously victorious. He will sweep aside parliaments and demagogues, carry civilization to glory, reconstruct it as an empire, and hold it together by circulating his profile and organizing further successes. He will codify everything, rejuvenate the papacy or, at any rate, galvanize Christianity. He will organize learning into meek academies of little men and proscribe a wonderful educational system. And the grateful nations will deify a lucky and aggressive egotism.”

World Government

Contemplate the proposed World Government and the eventualities if an evil fate should give it wrong-way directions! Prevailing psychologies sag with desperate dangers. The “mass man” is here and the masses are on their way up. Society may have to develop a genius it has never shown before if it is to withstand demagogues promising paradise to earth’s millions, especially when hatred and the spirit of revenge are highly developed techniques. Politicians running a global government will use every means for quick results. The atmosphere is ominous. The mightiest of all ages is saturated with expediencies, with adulterated principles and catchwords that capture the mobs. Strange that the spiritual ambassadors are now dreaming of a paradise organized almost exclusively on military, political and economic lines!

World Government, taken realistically, faces enormous odds. Ponder the tensions in the making when the multitudes, as at no other period in history, are themselves becoming the force of law. How long will they come to heel before “One Voice Rule”? The outrages of misinformed mobs, on a global scale, will of course dramatize feeble responses to loyalty. The bait they yearn for is “advantages.” They will leave leader after leader in the lurch whenever somebody else offers better bribery. Even a superstate cannot crack down too far to get obedience. You cannot put millions of people in jail.

It would be easy to discount this picture of human nature, easy until one recalls the behavior of the multitudes when “the likest God this planet ever saw” was crucified at Golgotha. For self-safety the masses left the dying Christ who still is, whatever you say, the solitary grandeur of the world. If he with the genius of the spiritual did not hold the crowds in that terrible hour, what can world politicians do with nothing to fall back upon but the might of physical force? On this basis the emancipated (?) masses setting the gravitation of political history may be ominous. Especially when so many religionists are willing to put their trust in a world government with matchless military power.

Churchmen And The Masses

Without some new and more powerful spiritual influence, our age—which is a revolutionary age of the masses—may produce an all encompassing catastrophe. Against the dark background of affairs, the emotional dedication of churchmen, often the most aggressive exponents of World Government, may not be a hopeful omen. The law of political forces (Burkhardt’s) raises questions about the ability of this century to avoid “the rule of the masses” in its passage through perilous history. Toynbee wonders about the same thing, “the vast proletariat” now developing “one of the most portentous products of the Westernization of the world.”

Religious forces may be failing their assignments in permitting spirituality to be sucked into proletarianizing commonplaces without terrific protests. If Christianity weakens before the secularisms of the day, even the most idealistic of World Governments does not have a chance. The sweep of things the globe over is dark and bleak. The wickednesses of modern life are not withering away and their remedies seem nowhere in sight. A supergovemment is not the answer.

Of all the ills that human hearts endure

How small the part that Kings and Laws

Can cause or cure …

Power is not the way to the Kingdom. There is nothing in human nature to insure that an all-powerful World Government will not widen still more the gap between the tendencies to tyranny and the demands of the moral law. The issue is old and fundamental. In the historic English debate, defiant justice shouted, “The common law protecteth the King.” “That,” said the embittered monarch, “is a traitorous speech, the King protecteth the law and not the law the King.” Are the principles of democracy drifting now again to the side of the King? A socialist weekly emphasizes that in America “… the Presidency, rather than Congress, has become the main spring of the constitutional system.” How strange that people who have lived under democracy and who have experienced something of its wonder can so terribly misunderstand it. If we are to keep freedom we must undergo the fatigues of supporting it. Only lackeys will want somebody else—some organization or some selected group—to assume full responsibility. “In crisis hours peace must be sacrificed for freedom but never freedom for peace!” (Pericles).

Nothing is more anomalous than Christian leadership turning for miracles to peace, and not to liberty, to naked physical might and not to the spirit. “The men of the cloth tend by the nature of their calling to be naive and easily enlisted in glamorous causes.” Of this we have seen much. The World Government idea is, I think, a repeat performance. It is breath-taking to find the ambassadors of the love of Christ crusading for a top-boss rule “so strong that nothing on earth will be able to thwart its compulsions.” Especially when not a single guarantee of safety is offered anywhere, and when no magic exists for curbing human nature. Religionists laboring for a monolithic state caricature Galilee.

It is now easy for pulpits to glorify the man-made United Nations, for at the moment Western influences dominate it. What will happen when the deciding power in every issue will be in the hands of others?

Churchmen and military might! Will the drifts eventually spin, Hegel fashion, into a theology of the superstate, a rule to be trusted without a doubt, a force with divine right, a return to the idea that “the King can do no wrong?” Never before did man have such faith in politicians. The concept, in world form, would be a consummation of the principles of Nazi Germany, of Soviet Russia, of pre-Pearl-Harbor Japan: one top dictator, unimpeachable, infallible, the sole controller of men, of resources and of the military might of the globe. It appeals to certain minds in tough times. Certainly nothing is simpler than a Napoleon in charge. History says the gamble will be an evil force but what is history against the vast wishfulness of naive sentimentalism? When before did Christianity aim to meet hardships by setting up an oligarchy or by crowning some politician a king?

World Government will not escape the normal developments of human logic. At the start it will mean to exercise power usefully, but it will mean to exercise it. It will mean to govern well, but it will mean to govern. It may promise to be a kind master, but it will be master. “Power turns those endowed with it into tyrants.”

Real Risk Involved

There are some realistic and heavy-duty risks for Christianity in World Government. Today the real issue cries Think or Perish! Ponder the terrifying facts! Western civilization is a small segment of mankind. Christianity is smaller still. Enormous possibilities reside in these relations. The ultimate and momentous question is simply this: “Who will govern the world?” More than two billion of the earth’s inhabitants are either pagan, atheistic or non-Christian. A composite World Government—if honestly democratic—is something for Christianity to ponder and to fear. The very processes of democracy would destroy effective Christian influences, for in such a Government Christianity would be an insignificant and helpless minority. (The average religionist crusading for World Government is understandable. But there is a basis for fear when the echelons grow fanatical and equate the dream with something like the Kingdom of God.)

Contemplate the nature and psychology of a political government with 800,000,000 communists, all militant atheists; with 700,000,000 Moslems, all anti-Christians; and with almost a billion Indians and Chinese and other kindred Asiatics. In such an assembly, what would be the voice of Christianity? The law of democratic principles would sink it into silence. Other religious groups might be eliminated in the same fashion. But—and it is a terrifying thought—the atheistic powers, protected by numerical superiority, could never be eliminated. Furthermore, “the communists today have more fervor than Christians.”

World Government is then a bid to make godless communists and their multi-million allies the governors of the world. Russia and Red China with their communist satellites are thus assured in any democratic World Government the sovereignty of the planet. Such a shutdown on Christianity can be lethal business for mankind. You do not argue this when you know what is happening to the minds of the young people in the Soviet Union. Let’s be realistic. A democratic World Government may be Christianity’s road to nothingness. Think on these things! In the present United Nations, dominated for the moment by the Western powers, we see the parliamentary maneuverings to block what the West does not want. When the setup is otherwise, can we expect to find a higher behavior in conduct? Can you imagine a presiding Khrushchev giving Christian interests any effective influence? The process itself would decimate the soul and spirit of democracy. It would obliterate every civilized value.

The glamor-dream is to supplant individual nation-hoods with one big Jumbo Boss, assuming for reasons nowhere explained that this monstrous government, unlike every other political organization in history, will be administered by something like the love of God, and will forever be immune to any type of political corruption. The devotees cannot imagine that the glowing dream could turn into a terrible and hideous delusion. The fantastiques of history parade through the mind. Think of the Bolshevik vision of 1917. “The world today lives amidst the death agonies of that great dream. Now, only three decades later, a few mesmerized fanatics still exist, but for everybody else it has become clearer and clearer that a type of brutality and exploitation and sheer barbarism, such as history has never before known, is the consummation of those highest of 1917 hopes.”

The idea of World Government is a hypnotizing and a fabulously fascinating thing. It is easy to see why millions succumb. But Christianity should comprehend the immense and terrifying implications.

Commander H. H. Lippincott, United States Navy CHC, Retired, served as Chaplain with the United States Fleet from the First World War. He holds the A.B., A.M., and S.T.B. degrees from Dickinson College and Boston University, and once held pastorates in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. He has written for religious, philosophical and literary journals. This article is a resume of a chapter from his forthcoming hook on World Government! Heaven Help Us!