Death is but a passage. It is not a house, it is only a vestibule. The grave has a door on its inner side.
Interpretation
Death is a transition rather than an end; it leads to another existence.
This quote by Alexander Maclaren suggests that death should not be viewed as a final destination or a permanent state. Instead, it is depicted as a transition or passage, similar to how a vestibule serves as a transitional space leading into a larger area. The metaphor of the grave having a door indicates that there is more beyond death, inviting contemplation of what lies after life.
In practice
In a eulogy, to remind attendees that death is not the end.
Did any of you, parents, ever hear your child wake from sleep with some panic fear and shriek the mother's name through the darkness? Was not that a more powerful appeal than all words? And, depend upon it, that the soul which cries aloud on God, "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," though it have "no language but a cry," will never call in vain.
Do not let the empty cup be your first teacher of the blessings you had when it was full. Do not let a bard place here and there in the bed destroy your rest. Seek, as a plain duty, to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.
Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.
In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts which He also gave us. A man who has not learned to say, No -who is not resolved that he will take God's way, in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery choice that woos him aside-will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies.
If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.
For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.
Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also.
I think we all want to know that if our lives don't turn out the way we imagine, there's still a purpose.
For America, our interests are our values, and our values are our interests.
The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.
Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.
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