YES, notices such as the following are painful reading. Tears start to our eyes as we see in them the grief of stricken hearts― “sons, fathers, husbands, and so on,” swept away to be seen no more, while children, widows, and parents are left crushed and desolated by this terrible and savage war.
The obituary notices give a sinister complexion to the advertisement columns. In peace time obituaries occupy the smallest space. Now they dominate the field; an ocean of grief and sorrow is displayed. How much human joy this miserable war has destroyed. Dead! Dead! Dead! Column after column! Sons, fathers, husbands, and so on. A few months ago they were still among us in glorious youth and health. Now a foreign soil covers their bodies, and a gloomy oppression tells us that they are no more. ―Press Association.
“A foreign soil covers their bodies, where their graves are probably unknown, and a gloomy oppression tells us they are no more.”
All true, and all most bitterly sad! And yet these obituary notices give us not a thousandth part of the suffering. They tell of the death of a few who have willingly and courageously sacrificed their lives in responding to the national call, and they help to fill its Roll of Honor; but, for every one killed, how many are wounded and maimed for life-sent back from the field of blood to spend, perhaps, a few useless years of existence, and then to follow in the train. A miserable load, indeed! And all the more so because of its universality.
“Dead, dead, dead!”―oh! the reality of it, and the sorrow and the agony! “A gloomy oppression tells us they are no more!” Worse and worse!
One thing the obituary notice cannot do, and that is it cannot lift the veil, and show us life on the other side of death. It cannot unfold to us the resurrection. It ends with the grave and oppression. How many of those “fathers, husbands, sons, and so on,” may have gone in spirit from the field of carnage to be forever with the Lord? Yes, how many? God alone can tell.
Mark, when God’s children die, their bodies may be covered by foreign soil, but their spirits—they themselves―are “present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:88We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. (2 Corinthians 5:8)), and their bodies will be raised from the dead at the coming of the Lord.
How this glorious truth, revealed to us in the gospel, disperses the cloud of gloom, and wipes the tear away from the believer’s eye. “Life and immortality [lit. incorruptibility] are brought to light by the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:1010But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel: (2 Timothy 1:10)), and happy it is to place God’s revelation alongside of the poor lugubrations of man, and let the light of His truth carry some cheer to the bereaved and sorrowing heart.
There death is unknown―all is life, life, life! and the hope of glory instead of “the oppression of gloom” is known to the believer in Christ.
J. W. S.