--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Babcock, G. Milton collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 24 number: 12 published: 1921-10 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'G. Milton Babcock, "Why Fear Death?," *Improvement Era* 24, no. 12 (October 1921): 1053–1058.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera24012unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera24012unse start_page: 1053 end_page: 1058 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1921-10) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera24012unse publication_year: 1921 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1921, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Why Fear Death? IMPROVEMENT ERA Vol. XXIV OCTOBER, 1921 No. 12 Why Fear Death? By G. Milton Babcock Why should we fear the departing from this life? The sons of God "shouted for joy" at the thought of leaving the pre- mortal life ! The pang of regret for the past, the grief of part- ing, the dread of the uncertainty and mystery of the future — all these were put aside and God's children rejoiced at the prospect of coming to this earth and obtaining bodies of flesh and bone in which their spirits might dwell and progress. Surely there was no weeping and wailing at the departure of a loved one there. Why should there be here? Why should we not feel to say, as did one good sister who died many years ago: "If you Jiear of my being dead, let the first thing you say be, 'Hal- lelujah!'" One great man recently wrote: "Death is only another birth — a new creation. It is the stepping out of one environ- ment into another. It is the dawning of a new day. We have been like children in the dark, 'clinging to the familiar things we call our own.' Death opens the door and lets in the sunlight. Why should we fear its beams? Christ taught: "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." President Brigham Young said: "All sons and daughters of Adam who live according to the best light and knowledge they have, when they go into the spiritual world, are happy in proportion to their faithfulness.'' Again, he said: "If we could see things as they are, and as we shall see and understand them, this dark shadow and valley (death) is so trifling that we shall turn around and look upon it and think, when we have crossed it, why this is the greatest advantage of my whole existence, for I have passed from a state 1054 IMPROVEMENT ERA. of sorrow, grief, mourning, woe, misery, pain, anguish and dis- appointment into a state of existence where I can enjoy life to the fullest extent as far as that can be done without a body. My spirit is set free, I thirst no more, I tire no more, I run, I walk, I labor, I go, I come, I do this, I do that, whatever is required of me, nothing like pain or weariness, I am full of life, full of vigor and I enjoy the presence of my heavenly Father by the power of his Spirit." Death is but a form of sleep, and we do not dread sleep. We do not fear when we close oud eyes at night that we shall not greet the morn. We welcome the opportunity to rest our bodies, to relieve our minds of the cares and anxieties of the day, to "forget" ourselves for a time. Indeed, we exclaim with the Ancient Mariner, "O blessed sleep, beloved from pole to pole!" A British officer reported that when the wounded were brought into the hospitals during the World War many of them, when about to die, asked as a last request that the children's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep," be repeated. Hearing of this, "B. L. T." of the Chicago Tribune (who recently died) wrote the following homely lines: SUNDOWN When my sun of life is low, When the dewy shadows creep, Say for me before I go, "Now I lay me down to sleep." .T am at the journey's end, I have sown and I must reap; There are no more ways to mend — "Now I lay me down to sleep." Nothing more to doubt or dare, Nothing more to give or keep; Say for me the children's prayer, "Now I lay me down to sleep." Who has learned along the way — Primrose path or stony steep — More of wisdom than to say, "Now I lay me down to sleep"? What have you more wise to tell When the shadows round me creep? All is over, all is well — "Now I lay me down to sleep." What last word would you wish to say? What have others said when their time came? Socrates, the wise man of old Athens (who taught, among other principles, the pre-mortal existence and immortality of the soul), told his judges who sentenced him to drink the cup of hemlock poison : "A man who is good for anything ought not WHY FEAR DEATH? 1055 to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to con- sider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or a bad." His last words were: "Crito, I owe a cock to Aesculapius; will you remember to pay the debt?" (Aesculapius was the Greek god of medicine, to whom cocks were sacrificed). The following is told of Saladin, the great Egyptian ruler of the twelfth century : "In his last illness, instead of his usual standard, Saladin ordered his shroud to be uplifted in front of his tent; and the herald who hung out this winding sheet as a flag was commanded to exclaim aloud, 'Behold! this is all which Saladin, the van- quisher of the East, carries away of all his conquests.' " The Marquis of Montrose, a Catholic condemned by certain Scotch Presbyterians to have "his head and limbs severed from his body, and to be hanged on the Talbooth at Edinburgh and in other public towns of the kingdom," said to his executioner: "I wish that I had flesh enough to be sent to every city in Christen- dom, as a testimony to the cause for which I suffer." Sir Henry Vane, who might have escaped death by a simple apology for his denunciation of the corrupt Court of the Stuarts, exclaimed: "Ten thousand deaths for me, ere I will stain the purity of my conscience!" In the history of our own country we have the immortal words of Lawrence: "Don't give up the ship!" and of Nathan Hale: "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country." Major Andre, the British spy hanged by the Americans, called on the crowd about him to testify that he died as a brave man. And what have women said? Madam Rowland, executed by the French Revolution for which she had worked, proclaimed: "Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" Another woman of this period, Madam de Stael, who was called "the greatest woman of her time," and of whom it has been said, "The only person whom the great Napoleon feared," testified just be- fore her death, "I have loved God, my father, and my country." Lucretia Mott, the great Quakeress speaker and educator, who braved the wrath of the pro-slavery mobs, and who helped call the First Woman's Suffrage Convention in this country at Seneca Falls, N. Y., in 1848, closed her eventful life with: "If you resolve to follow the Lamb wherever you may be led, you will find all the ways pleasant and the paths peace. Let me go ! Do take me!" Helen Hunt Jackson, American poetess, who died in 1885, and who spent the later years of her life in creating a sentiment for the education and Christianization of the Indians rather than their extermination, said of death only a few days before she passed away: "It is only just passing from one country to an- 1056 IMPROVEMENT ERA. other. * * * My only regret is that I have not accomplished more work; especially that it was so late in the day when I be- gan to work in real earnest. * * * There is not so much difference I fancy between this life and the next as we think, nor so much barrier * * *" The last conscious words of our own beloved "Aunt Em" Wells were in response to the statement "everybody loves you." She looked quizzically at the speaker with a touch of her own humorous character and said: "I hope so; if they don't, I can't help it." History has been somewhat slow to record the last words of women, in silent tribute, perhaps, to the fact that the great ma- jority of women have died as only Mothers of Men can die, cry- ing "Oh, my children!" And what have men of God had to say at their departure? David counseled his son Solomon : "I go the way of all the earth : Be thou strong, therefore, and show thyself a man; and keep the charge of the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies." In what sublime language did Simeon, of Jerusalem, ex- press his gratitude at the fulfilment of the promise that "he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ:" "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel." Paul wrote Timothy : "The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for ine a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." The words of Stephen as he was being stoned to death: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." How like the forgiving spirit of his Master, who, as he hung on the Cross, pleaded: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Again, he said, "It is finished." Yes, his atoning sacrifice had been made. He had taken upon Him the sins of Adam and of his posterity ; he had laid down a plan whereby the children of men might return to their heavenly Father and there be judged ac- cording to the deeds done in the flesh! Nephi petitioned : "I pray the Father in the name of Christ, that many of us, if not all, may be saved in his kingdom, at that great and last day. And now, my beloved brethren, all those who are of the house of Israel, and all ye ends of the earth, I WHY FEAR DEATH? 1057 speak unto you, as the voice of one crying from the dust: Fare- well until that great day shall come." Moroni's departing words were: "And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the eternal Judge of both quick and dead." Joseph, the Prophet of this dispensation, when he felt that his mission had come to an end, and as he was giving himself up to those who had so persistently sought his life, testified to his companions: "I am going like a lamb to the slaughter, but I am calm as a summer's morning. I have a conscience void of of- fense toward God and toward all men. If they take my life I shall die an innocent man, and my blood shall cry from the ground for vengeance, and it shall yet be said of me, "he was murdered in cold blood." As the assassians' bullets pierced his body, he exclaimed, "My Lord! my God!" President Brigham Young, in thought of his beloved fellow servant, called: "Joseph — Joseph — Joseph — Joseph." In his last words to his children, President Joseph F. Smith said: "When I look around me, and see my boys and my girls whom the Lord has given to me — and I have succeeded, with his help, to make them tolerably comfortable, and at least re- spectable in the world — I have reached the treasure of my life, the whole substance that makes life worth living." The following is quoted from Bacon's "Essay on Death:" "It is worthy of observing that there is no passion. in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death. * * * Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it; may, we read after Otho, the Emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign and as the truest sort of followers. * * * A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. It is no less worthy to observe how little alteration in good spirits the approaches of death make, for they appear to be the same men till the last instant. Augustus Caesar died in a compliment, 'Livia, mindful of our union, live on, and fare thee well.' Tiberius, in dissimulation as Tacitus saith of him, 'His bodily strength and vitality were now forsaking Tiberius, but not his duplicity.' Vespasian, in a jest, sitting upon a stool, 'I am become a Di- vinity, I suppose;' Galba, with a sentence, 'If it be for the advantage of the Roman people strike,' holding forth his neck. * * * Better, saith he, 'Who reckons the close of his life among the boons of nature.' It is as natural to die as to be born." Again I ask, What last word would you wish to say? "I have done the best I could?" or, "It is good to have lived a life of usefulness in the Church of Jesus Christ?" In any event, let us each "So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves 1058 IMPROVEMENT ERA. To that mysterious realm Where each shall take his place In the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like a quarry slave at night — Scourged to his dungeon; But, sustained and soothed, by an unfaltering trust Approach thy grave like one who wraps the drapery Of his couch about him And lies down to pleasant dreams."