THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 184, 21 August 1937, Page 14

THE MYSTERY OF DEATH

There is the mystery of death. No mystery as to what happens to this fraii earthly tenement: \any cliemist eau tell us that: but what of all that goes to form the spirit of man 3 When Handel breathed his last in London what happened to the genius which, a little while before> had thrilled a great audience in Covent Garden with the strains of the Messiah? When they iound Maeaulay sitting upright in his chair with a book'open at his side, his heart had stopped: but what had happened to the vision that saw so elearly the moving dfama of a nation's life? The evening before his death Robert Louis Stevenson eomposed the nlemoN able prayer, "Be patient still: suffer us yet a while longer — with our brolvcn purposes of good, with our idlo ondeavours against cri! — suffer us a while longer to endure and (if it may be) help us to do better." They laid his body in the ground, but what happened to "that spirit, never so noble as when in prayer? Who can •answei these questions? In a Univorso that is rational there must be an answer. It would be intolerable if man were compelled to pass his days without the possibility of clear light. There is a modern writer of fiction who is advertised by his publishers as "a writer of inscrutable mysteries. " It is a strange oDmmendation. For while "inscrutable" mvsteries might intereBt us for a time, they would end by annoying Us. That is why wo put up even with a weak ending to the story, so long as it is an ending. When the last page is turned we want to know. Oaa we know?