On Death

MS. For Russell Dicks, 1500-1800 words

By Rev. Jesse Halsey, D.D.

Lane Professor of Pastoral Theology and Liturgics

McCormick Theological Seminary | c1947

The Puritans gave much thought to death; we give very little. But with the passing of a friend or relative, and with increasing years, death comes nearer and reveals to us his fearsome mien. One modern preacher of wide experience avers that “death is not long from the thought of any person.”

Be that as it may, the writer here testifies that only twice in a ministry of forty years has any person come deliberately and asked frankly and fearlessly to talk about death.

The writer of Hebrews says that Christ came “to destroy him that hath the power of death (that is, the devil) and to deliver them who through fear of death were al their life-time subject to bondage.” Even without Luther’s emphasis on the part the devil plays in the picture, we would all gladly confess that the deliverance from this, as form every other devastating fear is in some very real measure related to Christ and our fellowship with  Him.

First then, look at His teaching; then at His experience, though they are so interwoven that, with Chaucer, we rejoice in saying, “first He wrought and afterwards He taught.”

Jesus never argues about God’s existence or being; He calls God “Father,” and teaches his disciples to pray and say “Our Father.” He himself is overhead to pray thus, “Father, I thank Thee . . .” (Luke 10:21) In the hour of death He asks the question we often ask, “My God, why? . . .” thus bringing comfort to many who have come after:  “in all our affliction he was afflicted . . .” He learned obedience by the things that he suffered: “having suffered being tempted he is able to succor them that are tempted.” But in the last article of death He is heard to murmur—or was it in a strong voice to say, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” This is the ultimate faith, His or ours.

Likewise, Jesus never argues about immortality, He takes it for granted. It is an axiom of faith. Stated in argument: “A cosmos cannot have a chaos for its crown” (Latze), it seems reasonable. But that was not Jesus’ approach. In the Upper Room when they were all distressed by his departure, He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled, ye believe in God; believe also in me; in my Father’s house are many rooms: If it were not so I would have told you.” Philip was not the last to ask such questions, nor the last to get an answer: “not what I do believe, but Whom”; “I know whom I have believed (trusted) and am persuaded He is able . . .”

“We do not believe in immortality because we can prove it, but we constantly try to prove it because we believe it,” so says Martineau. Then, as George Herbert Palmer said at the death of his wife, “emotion joins our reason,” and we refuse to longer doubt.

As Christians we walk by faith and in the fellowship of Christ: trusting as He trusted, it is impossible to be afraid. Many, like Mr. Fearing and his daughter, Miss Much-Afraid, when they finally come to the river go over “not much above wet-shod.” The roots of our religion are in Christ’s resurrection and the concomitant belief that as He lives we shall live also. Communion with Him along the way—prayer as we most often call it—is the –is the secret. Willum MacLure, the Highland doctor who all his life from boyhood had knelt down every night and said, “Now I lay me down to sleep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take, and this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen,” like many another found light in the night of death. Prayer; honest confession; bold assurance of faith; humility, confidence, trust; “vocal or unexpressed”; this is the best preparation for death.

An illuminating experience, and encouraging to us because it is rather typical of the experience of many others who have for human reasons changed their point of view with a change of personal circumstances, is that of Sir William Osler, the great physician, who in a lecture on Immortality delivered at Harvard* in 1904 says that as a physician he has seen many persons die and most of them were unconscious or unconcerned. He confesses that he is also a “Laodicean,” i.e., indifferent (Revelation 3:15). Some ten years later his only son, Revere, was killed in the First World War. Sir William’s whole attitude changed. Thereafter he was often heard singing or humming snatches of Abelard’s hymn about heaven: “O what the joy and the glory must be.” His center of gravity had changed.

When the feelings are neutral one can argue for or against immortality in as remote a way as some of the Ingersoll lectures*, but “let one of his own flesh and blood bid him goodbye and pass within the veil and reason surrenders the place to love, and many a man has set his face toward the Eternal City in the hope that he may again see a golden head on which the sun is ever shining.” (Ian Maclaren)

“Aunt” Abby Grey, ninety years old was dying. She had read the Bible through over sixty times and knew great passages by heart. In her youth she had learned an ancient catechism. Her young pastor stood by her bed. Because her children, and her children’s children who stood by were of another form of faith, the minister had read from their Book, with no response from the patient. Then the minister began to repeat, “In my Father’s house . . .” The old lady picked up a verbal inaccuracy and carried on half the chapter, then sank into a coma. Presently, however, her lips moved and the nurse said that she couldn’t make it out, it sounds like “souls of believers.” Fortunately, the young minister had also once learned the Catechism and picked it up: “the souls of believers do immediately pass into Glory and . . .” “Aunt” Abby had “gone home.”

*For the last fifty years Harvard has sponsored the Ingersoll Lectures on Immortality. Clergymen, scientists, and others have given their ideas in a series expressing many points of view, and now totaling nearly thirty different books.

List of Southampton Folks Influential to Jesse

from the folder marked "HALSEY AUTOBIOGRAPHY Carbons," this half page of notes reads:

Ed Foster – Natural Prayer

Miss Mallory – Cheating Boy

Frank Corwith – Fold Paper

Pop Johnson – Black Shoes

Madison - Boy like that.

Jen Baird- Ella Bennett

Father and 46 Psalm

Dr. Campbell – Leave it there

Wilson – Any other way

Edgar Hildreth

M Jagger-

Lil Halsey

Chas Foster – Pro Bono Publico

Encouragement – M. Jagger

Chas A. Jagger

Wm H Pierson

M. A Herrick – Thank God; best part of Education

Warren Hildreth – Don’t you think you ought to?

Honesty. Encouragement –

Abigail and Book – Poetry

MEMORIALS OF THE NORTH END: Part Three

by Lizbeth Halsey White | circa 1932

Some years after this, a certain young man living in the South End was so attracted to this same gambrel-roofed house that he desired it for his home in case he could persuade a certain young woman living at Long Springs to share it with him. She was cool to his suit and he sailed away on a whaling voyage with his dream unrealized no news was heard of him, nor of the ship, for many a long day.

The vessel was wrecked on the shores of Brazil and twelve sailors made their way, as best they could, through the tangled forests to Rio de Janeiro. It took them a month to reach it—torn and bedraggled. They told their story to the captain of a small vessel sailing for New Bedford. He could take only a part of their number. So they drew lots, and the young man of our story was not one of the fortunate. When the ship sailed, however, it carried one more than the lot had selected and the stowaway was not discovered until the ship was far at sea.

So he received with cheerfulness the captain’s order that he should sail “before the mast” for his passage. Thus it happened that on a September afternoon of this same year two men, grimed with dust, were walking toward Southampton. Meanwhile, the good ship Warren had been given up for lost, and the crew also. A woman standing by her gate on the Sag Harbor road that day saw the men. She looked at them, then looked again. She grew pale, and ran down the street crying, “Oh, Lord a Massy! There comes them two poor fellows that was drowned in the bottom of the ocean!”

The young lady meanwhile had changed her mind and not very long after this incident, Austin Herrick and Mary Jagger went to live in the gambrel-roofed house which has furnished history and atmosphere for the neighborhood and for the village for many years before and since.

Capt. Austin Herrick made seventeen voyages to sea and after he retired he kept the store attached to the house. He is described as tall and very dignified, especially in his elder days when he carried a cane. It is related of him that on the Sunday morning after the Rev. William Neal Cleaveland, pastor of the Presbyterian Church, had preached his sermon in defense of African slavery, Capt. Austin Herrick arose and walked out of church with a very decided step. Though none followed, his action was much approved and the Rev. Cleaveland soon afterwards resigned his charge. Capt. Herrick’s son, the Rev. Samuel Edward Herrick, was a prominent minister in Boston for many years and his daughter Mary remained in the old home.

In the early days when only wood fires were known and the only means of lighting them was by the slow process of flint and steel, it was the custom if the coals burned out to seek live coals from a neighbor that the fires might be replenished. Coals were not the only things borrowed for there were no markets and grocery stores were not as convenient as today.

One woman of the olden time was heard to say, “The devil is always around, even in church on Sundays, taking your mind off the sermon by reminding you that you owe your neighbor a loaf of bread.”

Mrs. Elizabeth Howell Pierson of the South End and Mrs. Elizabeth Jessup Post of the North End were having tea together. In the course of conversation, Mrs. Pierson remarked, “Well, Elizabeth, you know the South End is the Court End of the town because the minister and the doctor and the squire all live there.” Theodore White in his composition written about 1850 when a boy of 13, upon the “South End,” said there was one advantage the North End had: “The farmers could raise a better crop of corn on their land.”

So there have been rivalries; but since the Methodist Church has given to the North Side its quota of the clergy; since doctors, village presidents, and bank presidents are counted among its leading citizens and the Town Hall has marked its boundaries, many of these have been eliminated. We suppose, however, we must concede to the South End the Summer Colony. The North End, too, has its “city voks”—we remember well the Bonner family who were at Charles Selden’s, and Connie’s birthday parties when all the children of the neighborhood were invited, and you had ever so much ice-cream!

The Gemmells and the Duers who were sometimes at the Wilmun Halsey’s. The mother of Katherine Mackay O’Brien was a little girl and her toys and dainty ruffles were the admiration of all the neighborhood children. Her dresses, like her mother’s, were pressed each time they were worn and we discovered for ourselves a secret, even though there was no maid to do the pressing. (Southampton has learned many tricks from the “City Folks”—and is still learning.) Then there was the very friendly Mrs. [Lizzie Jean Nelson wife of Cyrus*] Sears and the dainty Aline? We still can see Madame Sears sitting and rocking in our mother’s kitchen, chatting gaily while the Saturday baking was going on—but mother could bake and listen, too.

The North End has good reason to remember the Coffin family who were at Wm. Jagger’s, for they must have furnished several parlors with the priceless heirlooms they gleaned in the North End. In our grandmother’s parlor were six high-back fiddle-backed chairs of Queen Anne pattern. Mrs. Coffin succeeded in persuading her to part with three of them at the (then) fabulous sum of $5.00 each.

In general, however, the North End has been too far from the ocean for summer rentals and she has been left to follow her accustomed ways, and much of the informal neighborliness, which is one of her traditions, remains, unbroken, as in the years agone.

A prominent representative of the South End when asked by a prominent resident of the North End how his next door neighbor was, (who was chronically ill), he replied he did not know, then added somewhat apologetically, “You know in the South End we do not boil our teakettles on our neighbor’s stoves as they do in the North End.”

The North End has adown the years cherished her traditions of old-fashioned neighborliness and when families have commenced together for several generations the ties of friendship become very strong.

There was one especially, who has but lately left us [Mary Herrick] (and the gambrel-roofed house still speaks), whose life among its many graces is remembered, first of all, for its kindly interest and friendly neighborliness, which like the flowers in her garden have made the years of her generation fragrant and sweet. It is spirits such as these that have made the atmosphere of the old North End, and happy shall be those who make a like contribution to the perpetuation of her traditions.

Courtesy Lizbeth Halsey White Files, Southampton Historical Museum Archives and Research Center

*[Cyrus Sears was for some time in the wholesale grocery business in Boston, with his brother, under firm name of Sears & Co., but removed to New York City and engaged in the real estate business. He served from 26 Sep 1862 to 7 Jul 1863 as 2d Lieutenant 45th Regiment, Mass Volunteer Infantry, with much credit, the officers and soldiers associated with him, becoming much attached to him. He died of apoplexy at his summer residence in Southampton, L.I.]

She knoweth that her hour is come

B. Andrews told me that one of the revealing moments of God was when he laid his hand on his wife’s abdomen and felt the first stirring of new life before the advent of their first baby.

I knew I was grown up and must take the places of the Fathers when Heckie, of all souls, the most cheerful and courageous through the years, looked to me for comfort in her last days. When I repeated Samuel Rutherford, “deep waters crossed life’s pathway,” etc., she said something that was like the accolade of knighthood after a long vigil; I knew I had been initiated.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey