Definitions of Life and Death

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 25, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 33.

Definitions of Life and Death

In the Forum for July Mr. Grant Allen says:—

"Life is merely one particular set of correlated movements, occurring, under the influence of solar radiation, in a certain group of material bodies on the surface of one small and unimportant planet, in a minor solar system, hidden away on the skirts of a galaxy in some lost corner of a boundless universe."

That is very exact. It is most satisfactorily definite. The corner of anything boundless is good, but when it is the corner of a boundless cosmos, and that, too, a lost corner, and the thing hidden away there besides, then the thought becomes grand. Now with that definition of life put the following definition of death, by the much admired Professor Drummond—he who was brought all the way from England to help Moody in his missionary training-school:—

"Death is lack of correspondence with the environment."

These two definitions match very well, each is the complement of the other. And both answer very well to the demands of the Spiritualistic sentimentalism that now passes for the Christian religion.