it 6 At the Darkest Hour. 



sword to slay the children of men who had sinned. Hence, 

 the strange description of death in the Apocalypse. 



To the Hindu death was personified by the soul of 

 Yarma (Adam), the first man who died (according to their 

 tradition), and who thus became the monarch of the dead. 



Our old Norse ancestors thought of death as a cold, 

 misty presence, rolling darkly on, like the whirlwind 

 storms of their own northland, wintrily enveloping its 

 victims and sweeping them away, enwrapped and lost 

 from sight forever. With them death was associated with 

 the bleak, elemental forces of the air, the sea, and the 

 night, caught in the strife of which they so often perished. 



In our times and in all time the vulgar imagery of death 

 is a skeleton. Death makes a skeleton of man, hence man 

 makes death a skeleton. In such grisly representation he 

 foresees his fate. It was reserved for the grandeur-loving 

 genius of Milton to draw death at once awful and 

 truculent : 



" The shape, 



If shape it might be call'd that shape had none 

 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 

 Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd 

 For each seem'd either, black it stood as night, 

 Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, 

 And shook a dreadful dart ; what seem'd his head 

 The likeness of a kingly crown had on." 



It is a curious fact that death, which is a nonentity, has 

 always been typified by substantive imagery. In a word, 



