MILTON'S VIEW OF DEATH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 39, 11 March 1909, Page 4

MILTON'S VIEW OF DEATH.

" Milton asks what Death really is. I The common notion which delines it as the separation of soul and body, is of course inadmissible in his theory. 'Here, then,' he says, 'arises an important question, which, because of the prejudice oi divines on behalf of their precoucehcd opinions, lias usually been dismissed without examination, instead of being treated with the attention it deserves. Is it the whole man or the'body alone that is deprived of vitality 1 As this is a subject which may be discussed without endangering our i'ait'h or devotion, 1 shall de-clam freely what seems to me the true doctrine, as collected Irom numberless passages of Scripture' The result is uncoiumiii). Whereas the orthodox Protestant noliou is that at the death of every human being the soul takes llight at" once to heaven or to hell, leaving the body in the grave till the Insurrection, Milton's conclusion is that at the last gasp of breath, the whole man dies, soul and body together, and Thai not till the Resurrection, when the body is revived, does the soul live again, does the man or woman live again in any sense or way, whether for happiness or misery. Are the suuls of the millions on millions of human beings who have died since Adam, are these souls already cither with ttod and the angels in heaven, or down in the diabolic world, waiting to be rejoined to their bodies on tlie Resurrection Day. They are nol, says Milton, but souls and bodies together, he says, are dead alike, sleeping alike, defunct alike, till that day come. There they lie, is Milton's vision of the dead of tlieworld before his own time - there they lie, all ready dead, all feelingless, all silent, the millions and millions of them, thick and sere as the autumnal leaves ill Vallombrosa, till the last trump shall stir their multitudes. When lie himself lav down to die, what nc felt in his pillowed blindness was that he too was about to uccome one of the sleepers, wholly at rest, wholly extinct, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, till the great re-awakening. What matter for regret or disappointment, he virtually asks, is there in this view of the Scripture doctrine of immortality •>. If those who fell asleep in the temples of the heroes were fa led to have no sense when they awoke, ;..vcr however long an that they had slept more than an instant, how much more would intervening time be annihilated for those who sleep" in Jesus V They die; Ihcy •make to be with Christ; to them, though there may have been hundreds or thousands of veal's of a noisy world, meanwhile, "ill not the dying and the awakening seem to be in one and the same moment ? Would there be any degradation of Christianity, he virtually asks, in such an interpretation of the ell'cets of Christ's mission and ministry on earth H What greater boon could there be to a world of fallen and sinful humanity than a religion offering rellemption ami pardon through Christ, renovation of nature, adoption by God, the imperfect glorification possible ill this life, and the assured hope at last of perfect glorification, when body and soul shall he. revivified together, and there shall be the call into God's presence and the life everlasting ?"—From Masson's .liite of Milton.