When faith is lost, when honor dies, the man is dead.

The line asserts that a person’s true life is measured less by physical survival than by moral and spiritual integrity. “Faith” suggests an inner anchoring—trust in God, conscience, or a sustaining moral order—while “honor” points to outward ethical conduct and fidelity to principle. When both collapse, Whittier implies, the self becomes hollow: one may continue to breathe, but the animating core that makes a human being fully alive has perished. The aphoristic structure (two parallel clauses culminating in a blunt conclusion) gives it the force of a moral maxim, consistent with Whittier’s broader tendency to treat character and conscience as the foundations of personal and civic life.