Death--and After?

Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with a terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass — all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of TerrorsA name for death originating in the biblical Book of Job, often used to describe death as a terrifying ruler over humanity.. Milton, who has done so much with his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent dictionThe choice and use of words and phrases in speech or writing. to surround with horror the figure of Death.

The other shape,

If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dartIn historical art, Death is often shown carrying a "dart" or javelin to strike down the living.; what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,
With horrid strides; hell trembled as he strode . .
. . . So spoke the grisly terror; and in shape
So speaking, and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deformHere meaning "deformed" or hideously misshapen. . . . .
. . . . . . . but he, my inbred enemy,
Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart,
Made to destroy: I fled, and cried out Death!
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed
From all her caves, and back resounded Death. Book ii., from lines 666-789. The whole passage bristles with horrors.

That such a view of Death should be taken by the professed followers of a Teacher Referring to Jesus Christ. said to have “brought life and immortality to light” is passing strangeAn old-fashioned way of saying "extremely strange" or "highly unusual.". The claim, that as late in the history of the world as a mere The sentence breaks off here and continues on the next page.