good conscience takes away from death all its terrors. Is not that so, my dear brethren? There cannot be a doubt of it. For if I ask a doctor why the pills he gives me are so bitter, and he tells me that the bitterness comes solely from the wormwood in the pills, it follows that if it is taken away the pills will lose their bitter taste. Now see whether I shall not prove what I say.
Otherwise we have no good reason to fear death, as it is not terrible in itself. Shown by a simile. How comes it that we are so afraid of death? Gloomy death! sorrowful death! bitter death! painful death! the most terrible of all terrible things! so we generally represent it in our imaginations whenever we think of it; these are the epithets we apply to it when we speak of it. Hence arises such an aversion to it in the minds of men that most of them cannot hear of it without feeling sadness, fear, and anguish; nay, many purposely avoid sermons in which death is treated of, and the great majority of men try not even to think of it. But when we consider the matter duly, we find that we do death a great wrong when we paint it in such black colors, and apply such opprobrious epithets to it. Our ideas of death are mere fancies; for there is in it nothing more fearful than in life; nay, it is less to be feared, although we give life such sweet names. Does it take much to frighten a child? Let its father only cover his face with a mask, and the child will run off at once crying and screaming to its mother’s lap, as if to hide itself from the horrible spectre. But, you little goose, what are you afraid of? It is only your father; see here, and taking off the mask he gives it to the child. At once there is an end to its fear; the child seeing that the mask is harmless, begins to play with it, to turn it around, and cries if some one tries to take it away. So it is with us, says the wise Seneca; “our fear of death is ridiculous,”[1] for we know not what it is. Let us only remove the black mask that the imagination of men has covered it with, and look at it in the clear light; then we shall see that it has nothing terrible, and must acknowledge that we have been of the number of those of whom David says: “There have they trembled for fear where there was no fear.”[2]
The death of the just is certainly not terrible. What, then, is death? Do you think it perhaps a grisly skeleton such as is generally painted? Not by any means! It is simply the end of life. Now I can find nothing bad or terrible in that. For, either the life that comes to an end has been a
