p. 139 | Life and Death

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · May 1, 1879

Life and Death.

SOME time ago, a man whose name is familiar in the annals of skepticism—Mr. Austin Holyoake—passed away. Three years he had been on the brink of the grave, and when his end drew near he dictated some “thoughts in the sick room,” in the course of which he said, that for twenty years he had experienced the most perfect mental repose, and that the near approach of the “grim King of Terrors,” did not give him the slightest alarm.

We do not see any reason to doubt that Mr. Holyoake spoke truly when he said this, and we do not see any cause to be sorry that it should be proclaimed to the world that the redoubtable atheist had “no bands in his death.” The knowledge of the fact may help to correct two errors. In the first place, there is a vulgar idea in some quarters that an atheist is always visited on his death-bed by an avenging Nemesis, and that the experience of Thomas Paine is the universal lot. It ought to be considered that at the present time unbelief does not represent the same type of moral character which it did in the days of Bolingbroke and Voltaire. Many skeptics live blamelessly and die quietly. The strong-minded and intellectual of them having persuaded themselves that there is no God, view death as merely a physical change—a falling asleep, an extinction of being, and unless they should have any very strong earthly affections, perceive nothing in the in the change to excite their fear.

The manner of Mr. Holyoake’s death may, therefore, be expected to check the habit, still to be found in some quarters, of sensational descriptions of the atheist’s death. In the second place, it may also lead to a more just perception of what it is that makes the Christian’s death-bed so instructive. It is not the mere fact that he has peace. It is the fact that, notwithstanding his views of sin, of himself, of God’s justice, and of his own deserts, he has peace. His peace does not come, like the atheist’s, through denying God’s existence, or God’s justice, or his own sinfulness, or through sopiting his conscience in any way; but with a far quicker conscience than most men, a far livelier appreciation of God’s justice and opposition to sin, and of his own deserts as a sinner, yet, through Christ, he has perfect peace. The Christian’s death is a real victory. But after all, the evidence of the death-bed, is but an addendum to the evidence of the life. The great rule is, that as men live, they die.—Sunday Magazine.