17 Sermon Illustrations on Nature Of Death

It is therefore death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant: makes them cry, complain, and repent, yes, even to hate their forepassed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it. Raleigh.

Death has a deep meaning and many issues. We cannot by our searching find it out. None of us have seen its other side. Death is like a mighty angel, with one foot standing on time, and another on eternity. Arnot.

When I die, the centre of a widely-extended family will be taken away; and yet it is scarcely desirable that such a centre should continue very long after one's children have acquired a position of their own. They will each form their own new and special circles in the time to come. But while an old man, with the remains of his former strength, sits on in the centre, a thouand concessions are made to him by all the other families; and horns are drawn in which are intended to be thrust with vigor, or to be rubbed off, as the case may be. The old must give place to the new. And as to the gray-beard himself; when time has tugged at us long, we cease to do more than vegetate; we become a burden to ourselves and to others; and, what is worst of all, we get a horrible longing for a still longer life. When I look at many old men around, I am reminded of Frederick the Great's expostulation with his grenadiers, who demurred at going to a certain death, "What, you dogs! would you go on living forever?" Perthes.

A minister says, that he was called, early one morning, by a wife to visit her dying husband. She appeared to be in perfect health. They knelt to pray with the dying man, and, when prayer was concluded, he found the wife in the last struggle of the mortal conflict; and the dying husband mingled his cries with the frenzied family. Often the well die, and the dying live.

As in chess-play, so long as the game is playing, all the men stand in their order, and are respected according to their places,—first the king, then the queen, then the bishops, after them the knights, and, last of all, the common soldiers; but when once the game is ended, and the table taken away, then they are all confusedly tumbled into a bag, and haply the king is lowest, and the pawn upmost. Even so it is with us in this life: the world is a huge theatre or stage, wherein some play the parts of kings, others of bishops, some lords, many knights, and others yoemen; but death sends all alike to the grave and to the judgment. Spencer.

A little girl was asked why she was working so very hard. She replied, "My candle is almost burned out; and I have not got another." Life is as a candle burning out. Sometimes there is a thief in it, a disease consuming it more quickly; or it may be blown out, suddenly extinguished: and we have not got another.

— Dr. Wise

The grave is a bulwark cast up between time and Eternity. Our eye may not pierce it. Below works corruption, and the form which once contained a beloved spirit is crumbling into earth. We also are following after. Soon our dust will rest there too; the dust of our children and of our children’s children will soon be added. Generations bloom and generations fade; those who enter upon the surface of the earth are sinking again below it. The world is nothing more than one single, great grave. As it swing’s around the sun in its accustomed orbit, like a true mother it carries the dust of her child in her bosom!

Description of. Sleep, death's beautiful brother, fairest phenomenon, poetical reality, thou sweet collapsing of the weary spirit, thou mystery that every one knows, thou remnant of primeval innocence and bliss; for Adam slept in paradise. To sleep,—there's a drowsy mellificence in the very word that would almost serve to interpret its meaning,—to shut up the senses and hoodwink the soul; to dismiss the world; to escape from one's self; to be in ignorance of our own existence; to stagnate upon the earth, just breathing out the hours, not living them; "Doing no mischief, only dreaming of it;" neither merry nor melancholy, something between both, and better than either. Best friend of frail humanity; and, like all other friends, it is best estimated in its loss.

— Longfellow

Sudden and violent death, shocking to the senses, may not be, probably is not, painful to the victim. Drowning, hanging, freezing, shooting, falling from a height, poisoning of many kinds, beget stupor or numbness of the nerves which is incompatible with sensation. Persons who have met with such accidents, and survived them, testify to this. Records to this effect are numberless. Death from fire dismays us; we can scarcely conceive aught more distressing. In all likelihood, however, it appears far worse than it is. Fire probably causes suffocation from smoke, or insensibility from inhaling flame, so that the agony we imagine is not felt. They who have been near their end have experienced more pain on returning, so to speak, from their grave, than if they had gone to it. They have endured all the pangs, corporeal and mental, of death, without actually dying. It is an error, therefore, to suppose that men may not have tasted the bitterness of death, and yet be alive and in good health.--JUNIUS HENRY BROWNE, _The Forum_.