Here is an except for Charles Spurgeon’s sermon on 1 Cor. 15:54-58, (found here) in which he personifies the Grave in order to demonstrate the victory of Christ over it:
From its hollow depths the Grave says, “Ask me where is my victory! Why, O foolish son of Adam, [you should] ask where is NOT my victory? Onward, from the first age even until now, I have proved to men that I am victor. Where are my triumphs! Open the soil upon which your fair world rests, and see if every vault is not filled with vivid evidence of mortality. Could you bring up your fellows from the grave, and pile them above the sod, there would be so many dead that there would not be room for the living…Where is my victory! There is not a spot of ground but feels it, there is not an age but must testify to it. The signs of it are everywhere…and yet you ask me where is my victory! Why, you are every one of you captives of my perpetual triumphing; you are marching on, every one of you, downwards to my jaws. Go where you may, you are always coming down to my doors, I shall soon shut my gates upon you, every one of you. Strong and healthy men, men of brawny arms, men of massive intellect…I shall one of these days receive each of you, helpless as little children, and you shall lie in [the ground], and I shall then prove to you and to the world where my victory is.”
[However,] Even as we tremblingly listen, the Grave shuts its yawning mouth [as] the voice of faith, looking down upon the dry bones and believing that they shall yet live, cries, “Despite your [confidence], you braggart, your boastings are as hollow as yourself. Where is your victory? We will prove you impotent yet, O desperate Grave! You have no triumphs. Our Lord, the Christ, has been Resurrected—He has broken open your portals, and made through your territories a wide passage for all believers to the Land of Promise…
As for the grave, dear brothers and sisters, let us answer its foul-mouthed boastings. We tell the grave that it has no victory in itself. ’Tis true we shall sleep in it, but we sleep as victors; thus we lie down as warriors taking their rest, not as vanquished ones. Christ has made the tomb, which was once a prison, a resting place for the bodies of His saints; He has made the tomb His royal closet, where he bids His beloved lay aside the dusty garments of their work days till they shall be cleansed and made fit to be the garments of His everlasting holy days in heaven.