The inferior animals, also, usually die either a violent and sudden death, inflicted by some carnivorous enemy, or in extreme old age, by mere decay of the natural powers, without disease. The violent death can usually have in it little of suffering; and the slow decay still less. But although some men die violent deaths, how few survive to extreme old age, and sink at last almost unconsciously into the grave, because the vital energies are exhausted! Were this the case, the physical terrors of death would be almost taken away, and we should pass as quietly into eternity as a lamp goes out when the oil is exhausted. But in general we see a constitution yet unbroken, struggling with fierce disease, and yielding to its fate only with terrific agonies; because sin has early implanted the seeds of disease in the constitution.
Imagine, now, that death should come upon a man in the course of nature; that is, without disease, and with little suffering, and with no painful forebodings of conscience. Suppose, moreover, that the dying individual should feel that the change passing upon him would assuredly introduce him to a new and spiritual body, undecaying, and adapted to the operations of the mind; that it would, in fact, be _the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens_; and that the soul, after death, would enter into free and full communion with all that is great and ennobling in the universe; and that joys, inconceivable and eternal, would henceforth be its portion: O, how different would such a death be from what we usually witness! Yet, were men all to accept of the offered ransom from sin and death, and, under the guidance of pure religious principle, were to pay a strict regard to hygienic laws, such would be, for the most part, the character of the death they would experience. The excepted cases would be those of violent and sudden death from accident, or of disease from unavoidable exposure, and they would be comparatively few. So that, in fact, an observance of the laws, physical and moral, which God has ordained, would change almost the entire aspect of death, even in this fallen world.
These remarks seem necessary in order to obtain a correct idea of the character of death, when not aggravated by the sins of men. For those aggravations seem superadded, in the case of men, as penal inflictions for their sins; and we ought to leave them out of the account, when we are considering death as a benevolent provision. I do not contend that death, even in its mildest forms, is no evil; nor that the apostasy of man was not the cause of its introduction into the world. These points I shall consider in another place. But I contend that, in the present system of the world, death, when not aggravated by the sins of men, is to be regarded as a benevolent provision, bringing with it more happiness than misery; although, had sin never existed, a system productive of still greater enjoyment might have been adopted in this world. But as the arrangements of the world now are, death affords the following evidences of infinite benevolence and wisdom.