Death Be Not Proud
from The Holy Sonnets, by John Donne (1572-1631)
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
This is a very famous poem that most of us read in high school. (In one of my high school English classes, I was assigned a book entitled, “Death Be Not Proud” by John Gunther, who took his title from John Donne’s poem; that book was a very moving story of Gunther’s teenage son’s losing battle with brain cancer.)
Although I have read Donne’s poem several times, I never stopped to think about how Scripturally correct was his understanding of death and the state of the dead. The Bible invariably describes death as a sleep.
John Donne was born into a Roman Catholic family, served in parliament, became a deacon in the Church of England and was eventually ordained into the priesthood (at the insistence of King James, not because Donne wanted to be ordained). During the last ten years of his life, Dunne was dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, an important and well paid position.
The noteworthy point for today’s purposes is that the Church of England was orthodox on the state of dead as of the early 17th Century. When did the unbiblical heresy come in that at death one did not sleep until the Resurrection on the Last Day, but rather one’s disembodied consciousness continued on its own after death, going either to heaven or to that other place?
It has been noted by commenters on this site that, judging by the Book of Common Prayer, the Church of England was orthodox on this point throughout the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Even in the early 19th Century, belief in ghosts and spirits was still largely within the category of folk belief, or belief of the common people, not something taught by the clergy and believed by the educated.
But sometime toward the middle of the 19th Century, spiritualism came into prominence. (If you have the patience to plow through someone’s masters thesis, here is one from Eastern Michigan University: “The American phantasmagoria: The rise of spiritualism in nineteenth-century America.”)
I believe that one of the noteworthy cultural markers was Charles Dickens’ 1843 masterpiece, “A Christmas Carol.” Dickens was making a true and very Christian point about not living for selfish gain, but living for the benefit of others. (“Mankind was my business!” yells the ghost of Jacob Marley in response to Scrooge’s comment that the chain-laden spirit was “always a good man of business.”) We must understand Dickens’ novella, with its ghosts and spirits, as a parable, not a doctrinal statement about the state of the dead, just as we understand that Jesus, in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, was not making a doctrinal statement about the afterlife, about heaven and hell and their proximity to one another.
It is interesting that spiritualism began coming into prominence right around 1844, something we have pointed out is also true about Darwinism and communism, and even Mormonism, as well.
Another important step in the cultural growth of spiritualism in the English-speaking world, and especially in America, came in 1848 in Rochester, New York, when Kate and Margaret Fox, the infamous Fox sisters, claimed to be in communication with a ghost residing in their house. The rappings of the purported spirit were later found to be fraudulent, but the Fox sisters understood, and helped to create, the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, as they say in German.
Another driver of spiritualism was the American Civil War, which brought death on an unprecedented scale. Often, the bodies could not be identified (a problem that got much worse in the Great War) or could not be shipped home but had to be buried nearby, which prevented closure for their loved ones, and added to an interest in trying to communicate with the dead.
Today, spiritualism is everywhere. Everyone seems to believe that when you die, your ghost continues on, presumably to haunt or help the living. Even Christians, who ought to know better, seem to prefer the idea that a disembodied consciousness continues on after death to the Bible doctrine of unconscious sleep until the Resurrection Morning, when we are given new life in glorified, incorruptible bodies.
But John Donne had it right centuries ago. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally. And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!”
Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Grave, where is your victory?”