Death of a devout Christian

We don’t like talking about death, yet it is a natural process that we must all go through. The stages of dying are described factually in The Natural Death Handbook [1] and anyone fearing the event will hopefully be comforted by the account given in the book. That also applies to those around the dying patient, as it is as hard for the watchers as it is for the dying: shown clearly in Edvard Munch’s painting By The Death Bed (1896):

Of course, death can also be sudden and dramatic and the act of dying may not follow the sequence described in the book. There is also the emotional involvement in the process that religious belief has conditioned into us. In Christianity, death is the end of our time on Earth before our soul passes to an afterlife and, hopefully, entry to Heaven. The “fire and brimstone” school of Protestant preaching is designed to make us scared of the alternative: something that might happen if we move away from a particular set of religious beliefs and practices that some preachers espouse.

Although I am not a Christian, I would have thought that belief in Heaven and the death of Jesus to save our souls would bring comfort, but I wonder if it does? To try and find an answer, I wanted to see what happened to Philip Henry Gosse as he was among the most devout Christians that I have read about.

Gosse was an outstanding naturalist and achieved both popular, and scientific, fame from his books, papers and lectures. It can be argued that the most important events of Henry Gosse’s life were the death of his first wife Emily; his young son Edmund being “saved”; and the challenge to Creation (as described in Genesis) provided by ideas on evolution and the concept of geological time. He was a member of the Brethren (leading his own group) and had a profound belief in the imminence of the Second Coming, when believers would be carried up to Heaven in rapture.

Emily died of breast cancer [2] after being subjected to an “alternative” treatment that was more like quack medicine. During her final days, Henry was busy on writing and natural history projects, so Edmund and Emily spent much time together. Later, Henry wrote an account of Emily’s last days and I have not read it, nor am I likely to, as there are few copies still in existence [3]. She had a deep Christian faith and, while suffering a great deal of pain, I imagine that, at the end, she was happy to make the transition to Heaven, her main anxiety being that Edmund would be “saved” after the adult baptism that the Brethren practised.

As it turned out, Henry arranged that Edmund would be baptised as an “adult believer” three weeks after his 10th birthday, an act so unusual that people came to Torquay from miles around to witness the act. In his autobiography, Edmund, too, recognised that this was a very significant event in his life [4], but he went on to reject the rigid beliefs that Henry followed and this caused much tension between the two men. Edmund was also very involved in the Arts World of the time and Henry could not identify with this, or with Darwin’s important work in promoting ideas on evolution. In the year that Emily died, Henry had published Omphalos [5], that contained his theory that everything was created in six days; even rock strata that appeared to be millions of years old and which contained the fossilised remains of plant and animals. Unsurprisingly, Omphalos was rejected by both the scientific, and religious, communities and this further isolated Henry, making him even less able to shift from his strict literalist stance. I’m not sure how happy he was after becoming estranged from Edmund; being ridiculed by some readers of Omphalos; and generally worrying about being on the straight and narrow, although he was so dogmatic on that front that his passport to Heaven must have been assured in his own mind. 

He did enjoy the company of his grandchildren (the photograph above shows him in old age) and Edmund describes a happy time when the family spent 19th September 1887 at Goodrington, collecting along the shore [6]. It was shortly after this that Henry became ill with congestive heart disease and he died at “Sandhurst”, his home in Torquay, a little before 1 a.m. on 23rd August 1888; his nurse recording his last words as “It is all over. The Lord is near! I am going to my reward!” [7]. It was a peaceful end, as one would expect of someone with such a strong religious faith. Yet we know that, in the days before, Henry was angry with God, as his belief in the Second Coming was so strong that he hadn’t contemplated the act of dying that he had seen Emily pass through. How odd that such a devout Christian felt let down by God because he had to die, even though this is the fate of all humans.

Henry’s final days are described by Eliza [7]:

Even within the last fortnight, seeing me distressed, he said, “Oh, darling, don’t trouble. It is not too late; even now the Blessed Lord may come and take us both up together.” I believe he was buoyed up almost to the last with this strong hope.

Although Eliza describes being supported by Henry, Ann Thwaite [8], in her brilliant biography, details Henry’s own distress:

Eliza said that, though Henry Gosse had never had a revelation that he would himself be “one of the favoured saints who shall never taste of death”, he had waited and hoped and prayed. “This hope of being caught up before death continued to the last and its non-fulfilment was an acute disappointment to him. It undoubtedly was connected to the deep dejection of his latest hours on earth.”

So, does a religious faith help us when dying? I guess it all depends on the nature of one’s beliefs, whether one feels bad about past misdemeanours, and whether there are terrible threats of what might happen if one is on the wrong side in the afterlife. Of course, I don’t know whether I will make a deathbed religious conversion and I have no idea when, or how, I will die. However, I’m grateful to have been able to be broad and imaginative in my thinking and not constrained to what seems like the straitjacket of religious belief. Fancy going through all that for nothing.

  

[1] Stephanie Wienrich and Josefine Speyer (eds.) (2003) The Natural Death Handbook. London, Rider.

[2] Robert Boyd (2004) Emily Gosse. Bath, Olivet Books.

[3] R.B.Freeman and Douglas Wertheimer (1980) Philip Henry Gosse – A Bibliography. Folkestone, Dawson.

[4] Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son: a study of two temperaments. London, William Heinemann.

[5] Philip Henry Gosse (1857) Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot. London, John Van Voorst.

[6] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[7] Eliza Gosse (1896) Appendix I in Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[8] Ann Thwaite (2002) Glimpses of the Wonderful: the life of Philip Henry Gosse 1810-1888. London, Faber and Faber.