The coronavirus pandemic has shaken the world to its very core. The weaknesses of our political, social, and economic relationships have been exposed. Most of what we know is a house of cards which can be overthrown by a microscopic life form. This event, which is unprecedented in the modern ‘civilised’ world, may well be era defining, in the ways in which the fall of Rome, the 30 year war, the Lisbon Earthquake, the World Wars, and 9/11 left a legacy influencing the culture, thought, and faith of following generations. It is a moment, like those mentioned from history, which throw open the frailty of the reality we have constructed and rely upon.
In many cultures not used to death, widespread panic, and an increasing sense of fear, wisdom from those who have lived through such uncertainty in the past is very welcome. William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649), Scotland’s most illustrious seventeenth-century poet, inhabited a world filled with mortality. Healthcare was relatively poor, and life expectancy was short. Additionally, plague and disease were largely unstoppable, while religious and political wars ravaged the European continent and, in Drummond’s own lifetime, the British and Irish isles. In 1623 there was a severe famine in Scotland. Many poor people in Edinburgh, near to Drummond’s estate, died, and his mother, with some of his friends, also passed on. Dealing with this loss, Drummond produced a collection of poems entitled Flowers of Sion (1623), to which he attached a meditation upon death, ‘A Cypresse Grove’. Marshalling his extensive knowledge of Reformed Protestantism, the majority religion of early modern Scots regardless of ecclesiology, and the philosophy of the classical tradition, Drummond wrote an essay which eruditely and poetically explored why humans are scared of death and rationalised the real nature of mortality. In so doing, he provided sound advice on how to face the loss of life with calm, and so this article examines at Drummond’s ruminations on death.
Death is scary, a prospect which can cause terror and anguish. Drummond asked what it is about morality which evokes fear. For one, death is a separation of the soul and the body. As we are familiar with experiencing life through the senses, the loss of corporeality creates great uncertainty. We lose life itself, and the many things that we love in the world, such as glory, power, wealth, and pleasure. The process of dying also arouses trepidation, as the wrenching of the soul from the body seems like a painful experience. We are afraid of dying earlier than we expect. Death is always sad, but the threat of death ‘before one’s time’ is what increases petrification. And ultimately this is not a fear of death as such, but the reduction of time one has in the world. Put another way, it is a grief that life will be shorter than one would hope for. Thus, death is naturally terrible and to be abhorred, so Drummond conceded, being a privation of life.
Drummond employed many kinds of reasoning to pacify his reader’s concerns around death. His way of doing this is by showing that death is more terrifying in ‘Conceit than in Verity’. The first strategy he employed was to contextualise dying as a natural process. If death was unique to you and those who you care about, then one would have a reason to feel aggrieved by the universe. However, it is a necessary condition of humanity, past, present, and future. Our death is a part of the order which constitutes this ‘All’, the life of the world. Death provides space for new life. To stop dying would be putting a halt to the whole of the cosmos for the sake of your life. And just as one’s birth is out-with their control, remaining the result of Divine providence, one should not feel anger when the same God recalls the life He gave so that new creatures can flourish. Beyond our control, Drummond concludes we should be grateful for the life we have been given and accept it has its place within a greater whole, and thus of the essentiality of death in the harmony of creation.
Having established the naturalness of dying, Drummond moved to demonstrating that life is not as good as imagination makes it. The things that we love in life, such as pleasure, honour, and power, are insufficient to satisfy our desires. Being finite, they cannot exhaust our infinite appetite, and so we continually strive to find something more fulfilling. Moreover, all we attain and achieve is ever prone to decay. The temporal nature of creation means nothing lasts forever, and so even the sweetest joy, the greatest accomplishment, the most excellent state of life, cannot last. The finitude and time-bound nature of this world is compounded by the suffering we endure. The body is often afflicted with ailments and pain. Life is a cycle of toil. Rulers oppress the poor, princes die in wars, nature devours the wicked and the righteous. Half of our life is spent sleeping, a state akin to a living death. Life is miserable, and whatever good is contains is often fleeting and fragile.
In fact, while we portray life as primarily good when it is in many ways not so, it is death which is actually good. Dying is not a painful process, but a loss of feeling. Slipping out of this life, we are unshackled from the burdens of oppression, ill health, and wearisome work. Released from a material prison, the soul is freed, enabled to ascend to perfection. Made in the image of God, the soul is like God. It is a world within itself, containing ‘Heauen, Starres, Seas, Earth, Floods, Mountaines, Forests, and all that liueth’. Taking after the Creator in knowledge, will, and memory, the human soul is the ‘Hymen of eternall and mortall things’, but freed from the body one will know themselves. They will perceive their own beauty.
Gazing upon its own nature, the Christian soul, in death, has perfect communion with God. It will behold the face of God, knowing and loving the God who is the same as ‘Happinesse’. The body, which possesses the residue of Adam’s original sin as embedded corruption, holds back the soul from participating in the happiness which is God’s nature, the Triune fellowship. Freed in death, the soul is like a hatchling rising from an egg, the death-day of the body ‘thy birth-day to Eternitie’. In time, God will restore the union of the body and soul in a perfect conjunction, so that even the loss of materiality is only temporary. That this is sensed by all people’s is reflected in the care of the dead and religious rituals seeking to gain the favour of the Divine: they all acknowledge that post-death there will be a judgement at the climax of time. Thus, for they who have been justified by faith, death is a gateway to true happiness. It is the path to communion with God.
Given it is natural, a release from a burdensome life, and the gate to bliss, Drummond urged his reader to not be afraid of mortality. Accept it. Look forward to it. And in the meantime, live life to the full, as it is the quality of one’s time on earth, not its length, which expresses the measure of gratitude to God for the gift of existence one has. Revealing death’s true nature in relation to the order of reality, the experience of suffering, and the consummation of salvation, Drummond hoped to have given grounds for facing death with calm, poise, and peace.
Drummond’s advice is not exhaustive. He does not meditate upon Christ’s participation in human suffering and thus knowledge of what we face in death. He fails to consider that sorrow is an appropriate response to losing fellowship with those we love. And Drummond does not engage with the idea that death is an enemy of God’s people, an evil which blights creation, defeated by Christ’s resurrection. Nevertheless, his guidance provides at least three points of reflection for the modern Christian.
First, that death has been incorporated into God’s plan for creation. It resides under God’s providence, just as the whole of human being, whether in birth, dying, or the afterlife, is a gift contingent upon the Divine will.
Second, he challenges us to consider why it is we are afraid of death. Is it because we love something in this life too much? If so, idolatry is motivating our fear, which needs to be broken.
Third, Christians have a treasure in heaven – God in Christ. We ought not to put stock in the things of the world, but value above all else loving God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. Fulfilling our vocation as those who have received mercy to be God’s people, love of God ought to be the impulse behind our thoughts, feelings, and actions. With such an attitude, death is not to be feared, for a greater reality is ours that cannot be lost. In fact, death frees us to embrace what we treasure the most – Christ.
Let us each day enure our selves to dye
If this (and not our feares) be truelie Death,
Above the Circles both of Hope and Faith
With faire immortall Pinniones to flie?
If this be Death our best Part to untie
(By ruining the Jaile) from Lust and Wrath,
And everie drowsie languor heere beneath,
It turning deniz’d Citizen of Skie?
To have more knowledge than all Bookes containe,
All Pleasures even surmounting wishing Powre,
The fellowship of Gods immortall Traine,
And these that Time nor force shall e’re devoure?
If this be Death? what Joy, what golden care
Of Life, can with Deathes ouglinesse compare?
(William Drummond, Sion’s Flowres, 23)
