I. The first of these is that to all men the end of Life is an awaking.

The representation of death most widely diffused among all nations is
that it is a sleep. The reasons for that emblem are easily found. We
always try to veil the terror and deformity of the ugly thing by the
thin robe of language. As with reverential awe, so with fear and
disgust, the tendency is to wrap their objects in the folds of metaphor.
Men prefer not to name plainly their god or their dread, but find
roundabout phrases for the one, and coaxing, flattering titles for the
other. The furies and the fates of heathenism, the supernatural beings
of modern superstition, must not be spoken of by their own appellations.
The recoil of men's hearts from the thing is testified by the aversion
of their languages to the bald name--death. And the employment of this
special euphemism of sleep is a wonderful witness to our weariness of
life, and to its endless toil and trouble. Everywhere that has seemed to
be a comforting and almost an attractive name, which has promised full
rest from all the agitations of this changeful scene. The prosperous and
the wretched alike have owned the fatigue of living, and been conscious
of a soothing expectance which became almost a hope, as they thought of
lying still at last with folded hands and shut eyes. The wearied workers
have bent over their dead, and felt that they are blest in this at all
events, that they rest from their labours; and as they saw them absolved
from all their tasks, have sought to propitiate the power that had made
this ease for them, as well as to express their sense of its merciful
aspect, by calling it not death, but sleep.

But that emblem, true and sweet as it is, is but half the truth. Taken
as the whole, as indeed men are ever tempted to take it, it is a
cheerless lie. It is truth for the senses--'the foolish senses,' who