CHAPTER XIII.

Does it seem absurd to say that, in order to study life, a man must die? For that is what this method amounts to in the last analysis.

Now, I beg of you not to be unnecessarily alarmed. I have said nothing about burial. If death were only another name for annihilation, then death and burial would be inseparably associated, no doubt. But suppose it should be true that it is an error to associate the thought of annihilation with any man, is it not clear that whoever permits that error to have any place in his mind is sure to give a meaning to the word death which does not belong to it? Is it not evident that the thought of death in that case must borrow blackness and mystery of a kind that does not pertain to it? Most surely. But let it be said again, that death is a reality; it is not a fiction, nor a mere seeming. A man cannot possess bodily life and at the same time be dead. The two conditions are incompatible. Otherwise there would be no advantage to be gained toward the study of life by experiencing its opposite.

Shall I try to tell you, from the standpoint of experience, what death is? Perhaps it will be best to tell you first what it is not. It is not a snuffing-out like a candle, unless we could suppose one where the spark should remain quietly alive until the candle was relighted.

It is not a going to sleep, unless we assume it possible for the dream-life to be woven on to the daytime consciousness at both ends without a break, so that the dreamer, however strange may have been his dreams, and whatever the testimony of others may be, is able to say, with conscious truthfulness, I have not slept at all.

Death includes, without question, an entire suspension of bodily sensations and activities. The consciousness of being, however, remains, and with it, as a necessary consequence, the consciousness of being alive, however shut in by the enclosing walls of a senseless frame.

What is to follow does not occur to the mind. A peace that is absolute belongs to a death that is clean. Appetite of every kind is dead with the body. Desire is not; resignation takes its place. What is this resignation like? It includes a consciousness of a more potent yet kindly will, and contentment with the result of the action of that will.

The Giver has resumed His gift, the gift of life, for the benefit of him who has parted with it. The resulting peace is permeated with gratitude, not different in kind, although different in manifestation, from that which the little child expresses in every motion of his happy little body, when he seems to say continuously, I am glad to be alive. The man is glad to be dead.

Do you think it impossible that such an experience could come to any one who should afterwards recover life to describe it? Very likely. But stop for a moment and consider. When a man dies, the result may be said to manifest in a twofold way. First: To the man himself, who is, to say the the least, cut off from his customary outward activities. Second: To the world at large, where the word is passed around, Such a one is dead; and one acquaintance after another, as he hears the news, turns to a certain part of his mental organism and marks it down in black where it is not likely to be forgotten. Henceforth he will send out toward that friend, now become a name or memory, a different kind of mental current.

But wait: the word comes, Not dead after all--a false report. Immediately the operation is reversed. The black marks are rubbed out, the little switch is re-turned, and the friends all agree, to save troublesome thought, that the man who was supposed to be dead was not really so, and the old question asked by Job, If a man die, shall he live again? is prevented once more from obtruding itself.