Coleridge’s Death in Life

Here lies a Poet; or what once was he;

Pray, gentle Reader, pray for S.T.C.

That he who three score years, with toilsome Breath,

Found Death in Life, may now find Life in Death.

Mercy for praise- to be forgiven for fame

He ask’d and hoped through Christ-

Do thou the same!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a lot of things during his lifetime, but perhaps none are so poignant as his epitaph. 

His life was not happy, riddled with loss, addiction, failure, and broken relationships. His brilliant mind and capable pen were not able to spare him the “death in life” that he experienced.

While I was out to lunch with a friend recently, we were discussing addiction, and I shared some of what I had been reading about Coleridge’s opium addiction. My friend, who has a history of drug addiction, nodded thoughtfully and said, “He’s not very different from any of us. Don’t we all have an addiction to sin?”

Malcolm Guite, one of Coleridge’s most faithful biographers, wrote, “You can be in a state of mind and soul where you may be surrounded by plenty but it does you no good, where the more you consume, the less satisfied you are, where you pursue an addiction until the very means of satisfying it becomes a poison that prolongs rather than relieves the agony of craving.”

Sin is a poison we’ve all imbibed. 

Biblical counselor Edward Welch writes, “As someone released from his own slavery to sin, a good friend shows an addict where to find life and hope. The Biblical arithmetic is this: for every one look at your sin, take ten looks at Christ.”

That’s just what Coleridge did. He knew that Jesus was his only hope. 

In his Biographia Literaria, Coleridge wrote about experiencing, “a more thorough revolution in my philosophic principles and a deeper revelation into my own heart… through my final reconversion to the whole truth in Christ.”

Not only did the Gospel of Christ help Coleridge to see himself, his thought life, and his addictions in light of God’s Truth, but it also helped him get a clearer view of how God’s Truth could echo through his mind to produce imaginative works of literature that would edify generations and steer others away from the dangerous seas of addiction. 

Instead of allowing what remained of his life to be consumed by sin, Coleridge pursued Christ, writing Aids to Reflection in the formation of a manly character, on the several grounds of prudence, morality, and religion.

In it, he wrote, “Christianity is not a theory or a speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.”

His close acquaintance with Death in Life spurred him to seek the One who could grant resurrection to the living process that would culminate in Life in Death. 

Just as the addiction to sin is universal, so is the Remedy. Do thou the same! calls Coleridge from his grave, knowing that Jesus Christ ever lives to make intercession for us.