“Aren’t you afraid of death, Mr. Grant?”
“No, I am not. Why should I fear the best thing that, in its time, can come to me? Neither will you be afraid when it comes. It is not the dreadful thing it looks.”
“Why should it look dreadful if it is not dreadful?”
“That is a very proper question. It looks dreadful, and must look dreadful, to everyone who cannot see in it that which alone makes life not dreadful. If you saw a great dark cloak coming along the road as if it were round somebody, but nobody inside it, you would be frightened—would you not?”
“Indeed I should. It would be awful!”
“It would. But if you spied inside the cloak, and making it come towards you, the most beautiful loving face you ever saw—of a man carrying in his arms a little child—and saw the child clinging to him, and looking in his face with a blessed smile, would you be frightened at the black cloak?”
“No; that would be silly.”
“You have your answer! The thing that makes death look so fearful is that we do not see inside it. Those who see only the black cloak, and think it is moving along of itself, may well be frightened; but those who see the face inside the cloak, would be fools indeed to be frightened! Before Jesus came, people lived in great misery about death; but after he rose again, those who believed in him always talked of dying as falling asleep; and I daresay the story of Lazarus, though it was not such a great thing after the rising of the Lord himself, had a large share in enabling them to think that way about it.”
When they went home, Davie, running up to lady Arctura’s room, recounted to her as well as he could the conversation he had just had with Mr. Grant.
“Oh, Arkie!” he said, “to hear him talk, you would think Death hadn’t a leg to stand upon!”